Here’s an email from Joe that must have got lost on its way to Penthouse Forum:
Do you think that Vanna and Pat ever had sex with each other?
I’m a fairly handsome and charming man and whenever I work closely with a woman, we end up having sex at least once. There’s something about working together and building a rapport that, in my experience, make banging each other a foregone conclusion. So long as she’s somewhat attractive, this is going to happen.
What’s worse, I’m in the army surrounded by men and this never fails to happen when I work with a female lieutenant.
I know Vanna married someone else, but since they’ve been working together for decades, surely she’s at least tossed him off.
I don’t know Vanna or Pat. But I do know that in eight years of working together and building a rapport, Olly and I have succeeded in never having sex or tossing each other off. You may not believe us, Joe, but this was not in the least challenging. So maybe Vanna and Pat also managed to keep it professional.
Ben in Edinburgh is not speaking our language (our language being the sound of rolls of squidgy lazy flesh slapping against one another):
I am into obstacle course running: tough mudder, rat race etc.
I am due to compete in an event this year called ‘The Unknown‘, a 48-hour event which is basing itself on telling the competitors nothing about what will be expected, and whose aims are ‘to get you to quit before the end’ thus the psychological element of the event is huge.
I am fit and train regularly for 20-mile obstacle course events!
So, answer me this…
How can I train for an event whose obstacles, events, skills required etc are completely unknown and how can I prep myself mentally for such an event?
GUESS WHAT? We are totally unqualified to advise on how to prepare yourself for the Krypton Factor minus the fun! But we’d imagine a lot of readers have put themselves through such events, and/or are currently planning to with the early January fitness fervour. Run (up a cliff, through a snakepit and over embers covered in broken glass) to the comments to advise Ben.
Here’s a question from Ed from Colchester:
A while back, I visited Essex University to take part in a science convention with selected other students. Prince Charles was there, but I didn’t really care as all the stalls had freebies!!!! These ranged from glow in the dark pens to slices of bread.
So answer me this: what are the greatest freebies you have ever retrieved from fairs, conventions, hotels etc???
Olly gets all kinds of good shit because he’s a gadget columnist, but how can free phones and iPads compete with Ed’s FREE SLICES OF BREAD?
Readers, go to the comments and boast about your greatest ever achievement in freebies! (Legal ones. The time you shoplifted from the post office does not count.)
I was listening to your podcast and Olly mentioned that he had had afternoon tea – a treat he clearly enjoyed.
I love afternoon tea but my husband just doesn’t get it. He has said that next time I want to go I should take a friend instead, but I want to share the experience with him! How can I help him to ‘get’ how amazing afternoon tea is so we can keep on sharing the experience?
Thanks very much for your help – this is a very pressing problem in our relationship as you can no doubt tell!
The three of us all are afternoon tea fans, and obviously, Lou, we are all strongly on YOUR side. Your husband is lucky you’re standing by him, despite this absolute perversion of his. Such a monster doesn’t DESERVE afternoon tea. You could try showing him the saga of Olly’s conversion to tea in this video we made. Or perhaps you could jazz up his hot beverages with this tip from listener Chris:
In your Best Of, Martin commented about how he’d buy a breakfast with a dick’n’balls drawn in tomato sauce.
I live in Melbourne and sometimes Courtenay from Cup of Truth will draw me a dick’n’balls in my morning coffee:
Celebrating in a way that we weren’t allowed to on our own eighth birthdays.
Happy new year listeners! And happy birthday to us, for it was 2nd January 2007 that this podcast took its first wobbly steps on the interwaves. Thanks so much for joining us and supporting us along the way.
If/when you’re sick of all the jingling bells and falalalalaaaas, and you’ve already finished your annual listening party of the AMT Christmas album, don’t worry! You can depend upon us to keep your ears full.
For a steaming hot gravyboat full of Olly Mann, listen to the latest Media Podcast, then tune in to LBC because over Christmas he’s on at some uncharacteristically civilised hours, to whit:
Listeners, thank you so much for contributing your attention, questions and eartime to us this year. What a year it has been! Relisten to the highlights – and lowlights, including such annual delights as the Parade of Melancholy Calls and the blooper reel – in The Best of Answer Me This! 2014:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 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)
So many precious moments… Create more of them in 2015 by sending us your QUESTIONS: leave a message on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
By the way, if you have the AMT app on your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets, you have access to all the previous AMT Best Ofs. For those of you who are app-less, you can obtain these joyous compilations from answermethisstore.com/best. Also at the AMT store, iTunes and Amazon, you can buy our albums and old episodes – the perfect festive gift for the AMT fan, ie you, and the perfect gift for us, ie money to continue making the show next year.
Another Christmas gift we would love is for you to tell a friend about the show! There are still a few billion people in the world who are yet to hear it, so do your bit to remedy this sad situation.
Voice your opinion in the comments if you can think of a way to salve questioneer Peter‘s festive pain:
How can I get out of spending Christmas with my in-laws? My horrible, small-minded, racist, bigoted, climate change denying, Daily Mail-reading, UKIP-voting in-laws.
Or should I just suck it up, try and remain polite and go along?
I and my wife both are Guardian- (and Independent- and BoingBoing-) reading lefty libertarians. I really am not looking forward to three days of my in-laws banging on about immigrants being to blame for everything, as well as the EU, and their trotting out the Daily Mail and Express as evidence that renewable energy doesn’t work and is all just a big con (I work designing wind farms and marine energy installations), even though it reduced Britain’s energy bills by 10% compared to gas last winter! How the recession was really caused by the Germans (not the British bankers) as a ruse to take over Europe again (because, you know, The War).
I’ve had ten of this shit! I despise them. I despise their circular thinking nonsensical irrational arguments, and I regret every moment I waste in their miserly company.
So should I break a leg? Emigrate to Germany or France? Crash the car into a tree so we cannot drive there?
Or should I just suck it up, try and remain polite and go along?
Or something else?
Peter, you’re acting like this torment is all negative, but it does fuel bitchery for you and your wife for a whole year. Perhaps you could intensify this by turning it into a satirical game: your challenge is to access your inner Chris Morris and see just how ridiculous a point of view you can get them to agree with. Brush up on Brass Eye for ideas.
Or take the easy way out and just piss off abroad till January.
(If you can’t afford to go abroad, just tell them you’ve gone abroad and don’t answer the phone or doorbell.)
Also, reluctant as I am to badger you, HAVE YOU LISTENED TO THE AMT XMAS ALBUM YET?
If not, redress before the festive season has expired: go to answermethispodcast.com/Christmas, whence you can follow links to buy it from the AMT store, iTunes and Amazon. It’s the perfect track with which to drown out the sound of the family row about the best way to achieve the crispiest roast potatoes.
Plus: for Olly, giving is better than receiving (when it comes to picture messages); Helen does not belong on wheels; and Martin the Sound Man searches for logic in cartoon characters off adverts, which is really the wrong place to look.
All we want for Christmas are your QUESTIONS, so shove them into our stockings, by which we mean leave a message on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Also, forge the bounds of internet friendship at facebook.com/answermethis and twitter.com/HelenAndOlly. Not LinkedIn, NEVER LinkedIn.
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’. That’s got to be better than anything you win in a cracker. (Except for the set of tiny screwdrivers or a bottle-opener shaped like an animal; both of these come in surprisingly useful. But, you know, the miniature pack of cards or tiny plastic comb or annoying puzzle made out of metal rings.)
The Best of AMT 2014 will be out next Thursday, 18th December. Return then!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT304 Child-Friendly Rating: 74%. Opens with further discussion of AMT303‘s cheese handjobs, but once the first couple of minutes are over, the rest of the episode’s topics are clean aside from two or three strong swears. •••
I recently confided to my husband that when I was younger I had a dream of a sexual nature. He was all for details until I got to the part where the leading man in my dream was Skeletor from Masters of the Universe. He was deeply disturbed and assured me that this was not normal.
So Helen and Olly, answer me this…
Are dreams of liaisons with animated characters a normal part of growing up, or am I a complete freak of nature?
Who cares about ‘normal’, eh? Is anyone really normal? And who ISN’T feeling a little hotter under the collar at the sight of this bulging specimen?
Skeletor’s O face
OK, most people apart from Meredith. But it’s pretty mainstream to have crushes on conventionally attractive cartoon hotties like Jessica Rabbit, Marge Simpson and Wilma Flintstone. Is Skeletor really so deviant in comparison, just because his face has fallen off?
Readers, hop into the comments and admit your own cartoon crushes. I bet plenty of you dream of getting into Spongebob’s squarepants.
Although AMT is usually all about fun and frivolity, occasionally we are compelled to share something serious with you, such as this email from long-term listener and questioneer Jessii:
It’s Jessii from St Helens with the piercings. Do you remember me?
Of course, Jessii! How could we forget this and these?
Although I haven’t been in touch in a long time, I do still listen to you guys. In fact, I must thank you as your hilarious conversations and familiar voices have kept a smile on my face through a really tough time recently.
My 27-year-old sister Claire passed away unexpectedly in August from a brain haemorrhage caused by Polycystic Kidney Disease. It has devastated our family, especially since she has a 3-year-old daughter.
Since her death, I have taken to fundraising for PKD to raise money and awareness as a lot of my family have it and Claire’s daughter has a 50% chance of developing it.
Me and my fundraising group have raised money and awareness at our old school’s open evening and had a very successful show night! So far, with gift aid included we’ve raised a total of £1658.75. I have a signed Paul Gascoigne picture on Ebay at the minute with all proceeds going to the charity. My JustGiving page is www.JustGiving.com/careforclaire and has more information about my sister and her condition.
Raising money won’t bring Claire back, of course, but it will help find a cure for other sufferers. So, me this: what are some interesting and effective fundraising ideas??
My ability to raise funds is second only to my athleticism, so readers, I appeal to you to the comments and help Jessii out.
And, of course, do bid on the Gazza picture – an ideal Christmas gift for fans of football and/or troubled people.
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