Apologies to Gina G for the theme in Answer Me This! Episode 289. YOU WERE ROBBED, GINA! The injustice smarts as much now as it did in 1996! Neva 4get!*
On today’s agenda:
Pret a Manger
ladies ‘freshening up’
homecoming queen
wood-panelled station wagons
red Solo cups 60 Minute Makeover
the Mosquito Alarm vs turds
stealing leftovers
Olly’s schoolboy politics Marlene from Neighbours Four Weddings and a Funeral vs The Inbetweeners vs Trainspotting
Skype calls with your parents
pebbledash (again!)
the cloakroom
Peter Andre’s career
and
Nigella Lawson’s handbag condiments.
Plus: abandoned milkshakes bring all the Olly Manns to the yard; Helen tries to become the Barbara Woodhouse of effusive emailers; and please excuse Martin the Sound Man, he’s just off for a ‘bio-break’.
We’re talking brown sludge in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, albeit not the same kind of brown sludge as covering the lawns at the beginning of this episode, or being emitted by ladies under the cover of Euphemisms. The tide of not-effluent is available for iDevices, Android or Windows gadgets.
There’s also a shitload more bonus material here – the full-length interviews we did with podcasters including Marc Maron, Roman Mars, Night Vale, Keith and the Girl, Dan Savage and the Bugle for our Radio 4 documentary Podcasting: The First Ten Years. So head over there if you’re interested in hearing Helen talk shop with other podcasters; Olly’s interviews will be added to the playlist shortly.
Many thanks to Squarespace.com, who have not only funded today’s podcast, but also offer you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer when making your website-building dreams become reality.
Make our question-answering dreams become reality for the 290th time: call the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And you are of course welcome to join us at facebook.com/answermethis and/or twitter.com/HelenAndOlly to discuss your findings following this episode.
Until AMT290 on 22nd May, farewell,
Helen & Olly
••• AMT289 Child-Friendly Rating: 68%. Early scatchat. A few strong swears. Largely harmless overall. •••
*We’re sure Gina G is reading this from the secret clubhouse where she, Sonia and Love City Groove retreat to shoot spitballs at a cardboard cutout of Katrina and the Waves.
Retro Feedback Time is here again! Nick in Hampstead writes:
I am a recent convert to your podcast, and have been steadily been working through your back catalogue on iTunes. Everything was all fine and dandy and adequately amusing until I reached episode 222 and your discussion of Battersea Power Station when I was SHOCKED by an inaccuracy.
You bring up that it was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and mention that he is commemorated in the restaurant of the St Pancras Hotel. Well, apologies for this, but that is WRONG WRONG WRONG. The Gilbert Scott Restaurant is named not after Giles Gilbert Scott, but his grandfather, Sir George Gilbert Scott, also, confusingly, an architect. The elder Gilbert Scott was the one who originally designed the St Pancras Hotel, along with the Foreign Office and The Albert Memorial to name a few others.
I realise there this is hardly an earth-shattering update, but I felt it was worth noting.
Duly noted, Nick. We will travel back in time to July 2012 to slap our wrists, and also to place a lot of bets on the outcome of the London 2012 Olympics.
Your emails are so full of surprises! For instance, I was amazed to learn from Luke aka Boney Stark that not only does Suffolk have a roller derby club, it has MORE THAN ONE roller derby club:
I help run Suffolk’s first co-ed roller derby club, Suffolk Roller Derby. Most roller derby events have a theme and punny name for example “Mad Smax: Beyond Rollerdome” and “Skate from Alcatraz”. Can you suggest any for our upcoming events that will take place in our home town Bury St Edmunds?
Buried Alive?
Suffolk You Up?
Bury St Edmutherfuckers? Sugar Beet You to Oblivion? Ab(bey)olition?
Alright readers, your turn. Skate over to the comments and offer Luke some suggestions for his co-ed wheely carnage.
We do enjoy the glimpse into private lives that so many AMT listeners willingly supply; here Anonymous from DC writes:
In AMT288, you mentioned that you felt like you lose all your power in the sexual relationship if you’re the third in a couple’s threesome.
I would like to say from experience that this is NOT the case, and that actually the third often is the most powerful player in the proceedings. As the third, I’m the exotic new addition to the state of affairs, so I get to call the shots.
Maybe it’s different because I’m gay, though, and both other members are attracted to me, whereas if you’re a guy in a MMF threesome with another guy, the focus is still on the girl.
Anyway, that’s my unsolicited confession from my sex life! I’m sure you live for emails like these.
We certainly do, Anonymous; in fact any readers are entirely so welcome to share their own Penthouse Forums musings about their sense of status in multiplayer sexytimes.
What have you been listening to lately, dear reader? Share your recommendations in the comments.
A few more things that recently caught my attention:
Martin and I were on holiday driving around a desert sparsely populated with small towns, and when you’re in a desert sparsely populated with small towns, the most suitable soundtrack is of course Welcome to Night Vale.
Also on the subject of driving around in deserts is this extraordinary story of reclusive billionaires, legal wrangling and Mormons on Love + Radio.
If you’re a fan of the Jimi Hendrix cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, allow me to direct you to this great account of how the record came about, including a hilarious clip of founding Rolling Stone Brian Jones contributing a piano part, before being relegated to the vibraslap.
Housekeeping:
• Catch up on AMT288 and the episodes preceding it. • AMT episodes 1-170 and the special AMT albums are all available for a piddling little price at answermethisstore.com, and if you buy any of them you’re bankrolling the podcast, so consider yourself a philanthropist. • The BBC have decided to make our Radio 4 documentary, Podcasting: The First Ten Years, available indefinitely here to stream. If you simply must download it, go here. •Olly’s on LBC every weekday 1am-4am. If you’re an insomniac, a night worker, or in a time zone where those hours are compatible with waking life, tune in. • On Saturday evenings I’m on BBC 5 Live’s Saturday Edition, available subsequently as the podcast Let’s Talk About Tech. • I also host the monthly Sound Women podcast. • Martin the Sound Man makes numerous other podcasts, including Brain Train, The Global Lab and The Sound of the Ladies.
Requests are welcome at the Thursday Listening Party. No need to dance sexily next to the DJ booth hoping to be noticed, just recommend shows in the comments.
Listeners, in your opinions, what is appropriate first date chat? The weather? Stocks and shares? How many kgs you can bench-press? Ugh, no – but surely not dental work or having sex in paint, as contended with by questioneers in Answer Me This! Episode 288:
Also on today’s agenda:
Northern Hemisphere vs Southern Hemisphere
nerdy Jewish vampires
cat toothbrushes
Facebook culls
sex pickles The 64,000 Sixpence Question
washing up
communion wafers
fangs
and
the Clam Van Damme.
Plus: Olly tempts terribly fate by ignoring chain letters; Helen needs to learn to love ‘visually striking cerebral foreign dramas’, whatever Netflix thinks those are; and Martin the Sound Man studies human behaviour via the greasy spoon breakfast.
Many thanks to Squarespace.com for supporting today’s podcast, and for supporting your website-building ambitions by giving you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer.
That’s it until a fortnight hence – unless we fall prey to questioneer Scott from Long Island’s knack for podcast-scuppering, in which case, so long and nice knowing you.
Helen & Olly
AMT288 Child-Friendly Rating: 47%.
A long question about the bawdy requests of Australians. A handful of cuss-words.
Following Joe’s complaint about his slapdash-talking wife in AMT287, let’s tackle this question from Joan from Fremantle:
I have a friend who is a self-proclaimed ‘grammar Nazi’.
Having completed a general arts degree at a parochial university in the 1970s she considers herself to be an expert in correct English syntax, diction and style and takes great satisfaction in pointing out and correcting other people’s mistakes.
I know her well and over our long friendship have come to understand that she is quite sensitive about being judged by others, having struggled over the years with feelings of general inadequacy. I think her censoriousness about grammar reflects that this is one area where she clearly feels confident and empowered, and can judge people instead of feeling judged. For this reason, although I am more qualified and experienced in this area than she is – as a professional editor who has done post-graduate study in linguistics including descriptive as well as traditional grammar, philology and the history of the English language – I have always kept my mouth shut when she strays onto shaky ground, as prescriptive grammarians often do.
For 30 years I have even refrained from correcting a bad habit she has, which is to refer to her husband and herself as “James and I”, even when they are the object of the sentence. For example, she will say, “The film didn’t appeal to James and I”, or “They gave James and I this advice…” and once even signed a card to us “With love from James and I”.
Here’s the problem: as a Facebook user she has started frequently posting humorous instances of grammatical errors using such networks as ‘Grammarly’, sometimes several times a day. I am starting to worry that someone else is going to point her own imperfect command of grammar out to her, possibly publicly, and definitely very hurtfully.
Answer me this: now that she is so publicly proclaiming her grammatical supremacy, is it time for me to come clean to my friend about her overuse of the nominative case when referring to her and her husband? How can I tactfully point this solecism out now, after all these years of putting up with it? Or should I just continue to ignore it (hoping that no one else will be so unkind as to shatter her self-image) and let pronouns be pronouns?
This is actually a rather sweet motive for picking up someone’s linguistic solecisms. Joan herself can clearly tolerate the solecism, having not mentioned it for thirty years.
She may be worrying unduly about other people correcting her friend, because this particular pronoun problem is so common that even teacher extraordinaire Susan Kennedy falls prey to it.
But here’s an idea, Joan: since I sound off about this very issue in AMT287, play the episode to your friend! Pretend you really want her to hear one of the other questions in the show – perhaps she has an interest in human statues? – and hope she absorbs the information.
If she does not, manufacture a conversation in which you cast yourself as the pronoun-messing fool. “Gosh, friend, I found out something the other day – did you know the pronoun formulation is supposed to be ‘Joan and ME‘ in all non-nominative uses? I’ve been using it wrongly all these years, and now I feel like such a tit!”
Readers, if you have any superior suggestions for tactful grammatical corrections, please go to the comments to share them with Joan and I me.
We may be immune to the charms of Helly Kitty, but the rest of the world certainly is not. Luke in Fife says:
After listening to last week’s podcast, I was reminded of a holiday to Japan I went on when I was younger with my family in which we visited Hello Kitty Land! Knowing Olly’s love of Disneyland, I thought this might be of great interest.
Hello Kitty Land consisted of rollercoasters/rides and live performances. I distinctly remember a horrifying dance routine featuring a group of rabbits with cups on their heads. It turns out they are actually meant to be marshmallow bunnies named after different kinds of hot drinks, so there is cappuccino, hot chocolate etc.
There is also an evil and gothic counterpart of Hello Kitty who wears a black leather mask. Scary!
A Hello Kitty dominatrix character? Seems…off-piste?
Katie also informed us:
You can buy Hello Kitty champagne and wine in my local off-licence. No jokes. I live in Hong Kong. Hello Kitty is a BIG DEAL.
Poor Miffy. Whither Miffy Land? The Miffy Booze? The Miffy sex toys? Oh Miffy, it sucks to arrive before your time and be usurped by that dead-eyed creature.
Kitty gets a theme park, Miffy just gets sodding MATHS. So unfair.
•Roman Mars Kickstarts an extraordinary pile of dosh to fund 99% Invisible (which is worth every penny). •Richard Herring talks about Stephen Fry using his podcast to drop the bombshell about his suicide attempt. •Theresa Thorn of One Bad Mother talks dirty (diapers). •Welcome to Night Vale fans show their devotion by expanding the weird world of the podcast. •Keith and the Girl fans show their devotion through HORRIFIC FLESH WOUNDS. Warning: seriously gross.
Requests are welcome at the Thursday Listening Party. No need to dance sexily next to the DJ booth hoping to be noticed, just recommend shows in the comments.
More retro feedback, harking all the way back to AMTs 180 and 181! This is from B in The Hague, Netherlands:
In two of your previous episodes, you answered a question about whether rough foods (e.g. chips, toast) are okay to be eaten after tonsillectomy or not. In a second episode, somebody emailed to say rough foods actually help in cleaning up the buildup at the back of the throat after the operation.
And because you guys are my main source of medical advice, I decided to eat a piece of toast three days after the operation. And guess what…it did help in cleaning up the wound! This resulted in my mouth smelling less of 10 dead rats – it is now a very tolerable 1 dead rat.
I am now on my fifth day post op and I eat one piece of toast in the morning and anothee one before I brush my teeth in the evening.
Toast, it’s a miracle cure! Buy official AMT toast, PROVEN to be medically effective, only £20 a slice!
Further to last week’s bit about street performance statues, last year my girlfriend and I were in Budapest. We noticed a very good statue that was earning lots of money. After quite a long time of not moving at all we saw a guy arrive and collect the money, this was when we realised that the “human” statue was just a grey painted mannequin!
That’s even worse than the statues who aren’t doing anything beyond wearing a crappy mask or a funny hat! OUTRAGEOUS and IMMORAL. Unless it’s all an art piece. You can get away with a lot of shitty behaviour if you pretend it’s an art piece…
OK guys, since we’re on the subject, let’s workshop my human statues sitcom idea . I suggested a working title of Statues at Liberty; Olly opted for Standing Still. James has raised the bar:
I think Statue-Tory could be a success. Following an ageing Etonian Tory cabinet minister recently removed from office.
Or, along those lines, StatueTORI: cash-strapped Tori Spelling has to resort to working as a human statue to keep her family together. This is more a reality TV show and book than a sitcom, I’ll admit.
OK, how about: Statu[e]s Quo! Human statues by day, Status Quo tribute band by night! And in life they’re struggling to cling onto their current situation, running fast just to stand still.
Or: On a Pedestal. An adorably ingenuous young man/woman is crazy for human statues and thinks they’re the greatest thing ever – but upon spending time with the people behind the facepaint, he/she is forced to learn a few hard truths, and reconcile themself to the fact that nobody is perfect. Not even a human statue. Especially not a human statue.
Alternatively: Freeze!. Human statues are caught up in a stick-up, and a crime caper ensues as the statues have to prove their innocence and track down the real culprits, all without moving a muscle.
Any more for any more? COMMENTS. GO. Together let’s nail this pitch.
One thing’s for certain, whichever option gets made: the outro music would be ‘I’m Still Standing’.
Answer Me This! Podcast 