Unfortunate questioneer Lizzie was made redundant in AMT308 and dumped by her long-term live-in boyfriend in AMT310. But if it’s any comfort, Lizzie, you’re not the only questioneer to become jobless, dumped and homeless in the space of a month. Sam currently in the Netherlands writes:
Basically the same thing happened to me in January of 2013. It was hard work at the time, but in retrospect it was great.
Less than a month later I had an offer of a nice job in another country which I took, and just less than a year ago I met my current girlfriend in that country. The job was a bit better paid than my last one so I have even managed to start saving money for the first time since I went to University.
So, I’d say that as well as being positive, take this opportunity to do something with your life that you would have liked to do but haven’t considered for long because of personal responsibilities.
And put you ex’s nads in a jar.
We’re all rooting for you, Lizzie! As Yazz would tell you, the only way is up*. Let us know if you need to borrow a jar.
*I hope this isn’t tempting fate. I really don’t want Lizzie to call in AMT312 to tell us that all of her loved ones died and she’s broken her collarbone.
Behold the following correspondence from Ellie, 24, from Newhaven, East Sussex, having escaped from Bangor, Northern Ireland:
Your Yazz-related jingle from episode 310 reminded me of a Yazz-related occurance from my latter years of secondary school.
Stick with me…
In my A-level history class, two girls were discussing someone called Yazz who was singing with their church (Hamilton Road Church, Bangor, Northern Ireland).
“Yazz?” I enquired, as it is a peculiar name.
“Maybe her parents liked 80s singer Yazz, as in, ‘The Only Way Is Up’?” I joked. No one chortled but, nonetheless, I didn’t expect them to know the reference.
“Oh, is THAT the name of her song?” one girl replied. “Yeah, someone was saying she sang in the 80s.”
I’m not a Christian myself, but I asked my god-fearing auntie whether this was true and sure enough, Yazz visits and sings with the church often.
Answer me this: what the ruddy heck was Yazz doing in Bangor of all places?
As a 80s music enthusiast and sinner, I must know.
Firstly, I assume Bangor is a stop on Yazz’s regularish tours performing songs from her recent Christian albums. Secondly, Yazz didn’t write ‘The Only Way Is Up’ herself, but you certainly could interpret the lyrics as having an ecclesiastical spin. (You could also reasonably interpret them as being about a lover, a friend, or a merry band of squatters.)
Readers, feel free to analyse Yazz’s movements and spiritual life, AND/OR to share your own Yazz tales. Ever had an interesting interaction with Yazz? Or a barely Yazz-adjacent experience like Ellie’s? The only way is down, because that’s where the layout puts the comments.
A question we are often asked but have never answered is why there are pairs of shoes dangling from telegraph wires.
If this question has always plagued you, I refer you to this short film The Mystery of Flying Kicks, in which several theories are posited, though a definitive answer remains elusive. Sometimes you’ve just got to accept you’ll never know why the shoes are on the damn wires, but I realise this is a bitter milkshake to swallow.
Yesterday evening, I had a sort of real-life Listening Party – a little group of friends and I each chose a podcast episode we all had to listen to, then we gathered together to discuss them, a bit like a book group but for audio (I imagine. I have never actually been to a book group). It was a fun exercise; I recommend it. I listened to some shows I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise, and was more thoughtful about them than usual. Generally, my main thought about podcasts is ‘Please be loud enough to drown out this argument on the bus’.
Anyway, if you’re interested, the shows which came out on top at Podcast Club were Song Exploder and Death, Sex and Money. Let us not speak of the bad.
Go to the comments to suggest podcasts I/Podcast Club should try, please! I’m always on the lookout for new things to listen to.
If you’re looking for a selection of different shows that you wouldn’t necessarily come across otherwise, try Radiotonic. The feed has documentaries, dramas, stories, all well made and worth your time.
Probably not worth your time is courtroom TV, but I really enjoyed this episode of Strangers in which the reluctant booker for those shows shares the ups and downs of the job. Also, it was a bit of a relief to hear a Strangers episode that didn’t make me a tad weepy on public transport…
Last week AMTpal Dave Pickering celebrated reaching 200 episodes of his podcast Getting Better Acquainted by letting other people get better acquainted with him, for a change – including me! Hear me interview Dave here.
Remember to listen to Olly host The Media Podcast. And there’s a new episode of my other podcast The Allusionist, all about how dictionaries look like they’re telling you the truth but are in fact LYING LIARS. I am very disillusioned. (DisAllusioned?) Click here for more about the episode and ways to hear it, or just play:
Have you listened to AMT310 yet? We speculate about putting on a production of Jurassic Park: The Ballet, reminisce about the Brownies, and spare no mercy for crappy chicken-flavoured crisps. Don’t even try to defend them when there’s cheese’n’onion flavour in this world.
Why are we leering over an inaccurate drawing of Her Maj? Find out in Answer Me This! Episode 310:
Today we consider:
Brownies
bacon
Hamlet cigars
cleaning your stovetop cleaning like Robocop
the redundancy of toothpaste
the ethics of Tesco Clubcard vouchers
Jurassic Park: The Ballet
Home Alone: The Ballet
Miss Saigon: The Helicopter
post-coital smoking
post-coital tristesse
and
chicken-flavoured crisps.
Plus: Olly is ready to join a Cub Pack for adults; Helen campaigns for Cheetos to be sold in the UK; and the latest victim of Martin the Sound Man’s uncanny impersonations is Jeff Goldblum. What did Goldblum ever do to you, Martin? We also hear back from AMT308 questioneer Lizzie, whose life is getting more Sliding Doors with every passing episode.
For further beanery following AMT309, peruse the listener-submitted Bean Gallery, and listen to today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows gadgets) in which listener Nick describes his recent experience of sitting in a baked bean bath for 27 HOURS. For charity. Not for his own fun.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. Go forth and create the website of your dreams! (The good dreams, not the ones where you’re being chased by a terrifying headless monk with the claws of a bear.)
we’ll return on 2nd April 2015 with AMT311. Join us!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT310 Child-Friendly Rating: 77%. Only a couple of swears. Content is pretty clean, even a question about post-coital smoking. •••
Re AMT287, I see our well known painted statue gentleman walk through the neighborhood to catch the bus quite often. He is also regularly downtown at the bus stop and outside his post at Pike Place. Regularly in the rain with no running of his body paint. It astounds me.
When I see him walking past my house I always want to say hello and invite him in for a drink but alas, what is the protocol there? Answer me this: how does one go about convincing a living statue to come in and chat? (Is that creepy?! I am so curious about how and what he does outside of work.)
Readers, do you think there’s a romantic element to Angela’s interest in the human statue? Does she want to Pygmalion this situation?
Whether you do or not, head to the comments to suggest non-creepy ways for Angela to extend the hand of friendship – and also to discover the secrets of his stay-put make-up.
We love a good prank and we love a happy ending, so we double-love this correspondence from Richard in Finsbury Park:
In AMT303 you talked about my inappropriate prank on my elderly mum. I had put Fifty Shades of Grey on her Kindle with the names of the main characters changed to my mum and dad’s: Christine and Frank.
Well finally she has read the thing. I was worried she might go ape when she rumbled me. She didn’t. Look at the email she sent me. I think I have the best natured parent on the planet.
Well you little bugger, I have been making such a fool of myself as I thought that the characters in 50 Shades were really called Frank and Christine. It would never have occurred to me that the names throughout a whole book could be changed. This morning in the hairdressers I asked a lady who had read the trilogy why the names had changed in the second book. She said they hadn’t and when I said they were Frank and Christine, Lee said ‘I think someone has been having you on’. Then the penny dropped and everyone in the shop was in stitches. I don’t know how you did it and I had been telling people what a coincidence it was, how silly am I. Dad said, ‘Well, that is a typical Richardism,’ so now you can have a good laugh. Wait ’til you get here and you might find your flies sewn up or one leg off your trousers!
Mum
So answer me this: what can I do to wind her up next?
It’s surely her turn to prank you in return, isn’t it? But if you really want to risk a second round, perhaps some of the AMT squad have some cunning ideas. Readers, go to the comments and suggest a jape. I still think you’ll be hard pushed to beat Richard’s original prank, but I feel you’re up to the challenge.
We are pleased to hear back from Matri-Money Troubles from Kent and also AMT306:
Thanks very much for your advice. Your chat raised some good points and ultimately you were right: the groom is a good friend, it’s one day (hopefully) and I shouldn’t be such an arse about it. In the end I stuffed an envelope with a wad of cash, put it in his hand and wished them a happy honeymoon.
And boy was I glad I took your advice when, during the speeches, he thanked me for all I had done, all my help, and for being such a good friend, before giving me a rather expensive thank you gift in front of everyone.
Had I not followed your advice I would’ve:
a) felt like a dick; and
b) looked like a dick.
Thanks for saving my arse.
You’re welcome, MMT. Don’t think of it as a wedding gift; think of it as an investment in the future of your friendship. Cheap at twice the price!
Whether or not you’re a fan of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews – and who in the podcast-listening realm isn’t? – apply yourself to Mark Kermode‘s recent Radio 4 series The Business of Film, also available as a podcast. It’s as entertaining and informative as you’d expect Kermode to be about the business of film, plus there’s some pH1 bitchery from film industry insiders (ahem, Matthew Vaughn).
Private Eye has a new podcast! Which is a surprise, given how their staff usually prefer to remain anonymous. Here it is, for you news, politics and satire fans.
As regular Thursday Listening Party attendees will have clocked, I have an apparently inexhaustible appetite for podcasts in which people divulge true stories from their lives. I’ve recently been listening to The Longest Shortest Time, which may be sold as a parenting podcast but is really about LIFE, and is very welcome to me even given my child-averse status.
Finally, I’m recommending The Sporkful to you again, because it’s so much fun, and particularly when Dan Pashman goes all agony uncle for food.
And please try my newish show The Allusionist. The new episode will confirm what you’ve always suspected when you’ve been going round a museum: the real exhibit is YOU. THEY ARE WATCHING.
In things-we-didn’t-know-we-wanted-but-are-sort-of-pleased-you’ve-decided-to-give-us news:
Following the baked bean bath chat in AMT309, some of you have, of your own volition, decided to get busy with the photoshop. Click on the images for the full-sized pictures, and bean artist credits.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (get it for iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets) there’s a little more about the history of Gotham. We think we’ve triangulated where Catwoman is pursuing her postgrad education.
In case you were wondering about feline viral star Luna who appeared in AMT308, her manager/human owner Jess has been back in touch:
Just for clarity, I’d like to point out that despite being somewhat intially perturbed by her bath experience as a 8 week old kitten, Luna is now 6 yrs old and continues to investigate the bath EVERY SINGLE TIME I have one. She has fallen in several times whilst sitting on the edge (once with painful results for me…), so if anything she seems to enjoy falling in, or she has the memory of a goldfish.
OR she’s trying to get another viral hit out of it. But lightning doesn’t strike twice, Luna. You’re going to have to get your head stuck in the toilet seat or wear a funny outfit, otherwise everyone will think you’re just a one-trick pony cat.
Answer Me This! Podcast 