Before you read the following piece of listener feedback about last week’s Tour de France chat, consider this: which outfit better behoves the King of the Mountains?
This:
Or this?
I think I’ve made my point. You may continue, Sammy from Pocklington:
I was disappointed to hear Olly mockingly describe Le Tour’s polka-dot jersey as “a consolation prize.”
Whilst the yellow jersey for best general classification is the most esteemed, the King of the Mountains jersey is far from being a consolation and is an very prestigious stand-alone category. It requires huge strength and effort to amass a winning amount of points over some of the toughest and most demanding challenges in world sport.
In fact, your general tone when discussing Le Tour (and other sports in previous podcasts) leads me to ask – why the hell do you hate sport so much?
I can’t speak for Olly, but I’d guess that he started out indifferent, then this was calcified into active dislike by the expectation of Society that he, as a man(n), must give a shit about it.
In my case, you might interpret it as a rebellion against my background; for I grew up bloody well surrounded by sport. Every other member of my family is a sports enthusiast. Of rugby and cricket was the majority of discourse formed. The soundtrack of Sunday lunch was the insidious whine of the Grand Prix buzzing in from the television left on in the other room so that my dad could pop out to check the progress of the race every few minutes. All summer, the living room curtains were closed so the sun didn’t strike the TV screen while my brother was watching cricket. In autumn, there was the interminable wait for the end of the football scores being announced so people could check their pools; the prospect of watching telly that was actually entertaining telly seemed impossibly distant. The injustice stung that we were never, ever allowed to watch television in the morning, but my dad could, as long as it was athletics. My spine even now spasms involuntarily at the unmistakable tone of football commentary: the unmodulated sub-shout. And I still think it’s unfair that so many quiet pub suppers have been ruined by big screen sport – but NEVER big screen films or sitcoms or YouTube playlists or David Attenborough programmes.
Also, people take sport too seriously. Especially YOU, football fans. Don’t start fights or let your mood be dinted by a loss, because… it’s just a game! No, it is.
It really DEFINITELY is.
AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE TORTURE OF OUR FORMATIVE YEARS THAT WAS SCHOOL SPORTS.
So there are a few reasons for you to chew on, Sammy. But perhaps you’ll be placated to hear that we both managed to swallow our natural antipathy for long enough to record the Answer Me This! Sports Day album. We don’t mind sport so much if we can use it to fund the show, as it turned out.
Although we still don’t necessarily agree with all it, we admired this impassioned and informed defence of steampunk from Sean from Ashford, Oregon:
Although I am not an active practitioner I have used the style in several theatrical scenic designs and have come to respect it. True, at its worst, it is an excuse for girls to dress-up in corsets and carry nerf-guns spray painted gold. But at best it is a “maker-movement” analogous to John Ruskin and Arts and Crafts.
The true Steampunk crafts-persons are creating unique works of art from mass-produced objects: iPad cases, flash-drives, lamps, handbags, and clothing, while employing 19th-century materials: copper, brass, bronze, exotic hardwoods, leather, and velvet. It owes more to Jules Verne than Blade Runner.
The cogs in the pocketwatch are exposed, Helen, to celebrate the beauty of the working parts. Today most things we own are mass-produced by the millions in plastic boxes factory-sealed in China. Steampunk romanticizes an age of tinkerers and inventors who had a hand in creating the things they used. The welding goggles and chauffeur dusters are simply an icon representing that idea.
So yes, much of Steampunk has become an excuse for 20-somethings to dress up in waistcoats and pith-helmets, but it has a counter-cultural heart that celebrates the unique and handmade while longing for the adventure’s spirit of Victorian explorers and scientific pioneers.
We certainly enjoy the unique and handmade, too, Sean; we just still wonder why the steampunk aesthetic seems to be so homogenous. John Ruskin eschewed homogeneity. Although he also eschewed sexual maturity, so let’s not get too invested in things John Ruskin was a fan of.
Now we’re off to the library to try to find 150-year-old lithographs of Victorians carrying around nerf-guns.
However, at the time of posting, the creature hasn’t actually been born, so try to keep a lid on that ROYAL BABY EXCITEMENT for long enough to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 263:
Plus: Olly’s money-based conjuring tricks weren’t fooling anyone; if Helen’s guess is correct and the ROYAL BABY receives the same middle name as Diana, Frances (Francis for a boy), then everybody has to give her £10 in congratulation; and Martin the Sound Man knows where to go in the event of nuclear apocalypse in the middle of Europe.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, we harp on about Royal Baby Krispy Kreme. No, we haven’t had a heads-up that the baby will be named Krispy Kreme Kambridge (but if it IS, you definitely have to give us all £10); we’re talking about this shit.
But…if you are absolutely desperate to piss away money on some spurious tie-in with the ROYAL BABY, then the AMT Jubilee is obviously the best direction in which to piss. And we have no qualms about recommending our SMASH HIT TOP 15 ALBUM Answer Me This! Holiday.
Also, please do send us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT263 Child-Friendly Rating: 90%. Minimal swearing and a fair amount of educational content, but one question about a listener’s sexual dalliances and the psychologically damaging actions of his girlfriend’s parents, which some children may find troubling.
You wouldn’t throw an original Hockney into a swimming pool, but is body art more washable? Gemma asks:
How long do I have to wait after getting a tattoo to go swimming?
We’re not experts on tattoo preservation, but surely some of you readers have practical experience which can answer this question. Do so in the comments. The future blurriness of Gemma’s ink is down to you.
Presumably the reason why so many people have dolphin tatts is because they’re water-compatible. Right?
Last week we spoke of Pulse and Cocktails, that salubrious-looking Adult Shop at the side of the A1. No doubt it has stimulated many people in its time, and now it has stimulated Mark from St Neots to write in with a little bit of backstory:
It was originally built as one of the first generation McDonald’s with a larger twin site opposite. And there were plans for a bridge across the road so you could visit either site. Along with many other food sites on the A1, they were closed down as the market changed, and if you drive up and down the A1 today you will still see many empty restaurants (there are better ways to spend your time however).
McDonald’s were looking for a new occupier for the property, but whilst the property was set up as a restaurant and still had some equipment in it they wouldn’t allow any new occupier to sell chips or burgers, the staples of a motorway services, so there was little interest.
Then the property got broken into, the copper wiring stolen and the insides trashed. Walking through a pitch black former McDonald’s with a slightly stale smell of fried cooking and then your torch picks up a picture of Ronald McDonald on the wall makes you feel like you’re in a scene from Stephen King’s IT, I can tell you.
So Pulse and Cocktails actually used to be even LESS salubrious than it is now. Imagine!
Nonetheless, the site does figure in some of your misty water-coloured memories. Bryn writes:
I have to say it was a bit of a shock to hear you talk about Boothby Pagnell in your last show, as my family and I used to live there. What’s more, the A1 adult store you referenced in your show used to be a McDonald’s.
As it was just down the road, therefore easier to get to than Grantham, this was the McDonald’s our dad used to drive us to on special occasions (i.e. when mum was away and we needed tea). So you can imagine our the dismay on my and my brother’s faces when it was transformed into something rather different.
This however was nothing compared to the sheer terror and panic on my dad’s face when forced to explain to my inquisitive younger brother what had become of our local McDonald’s.
And THAT was the exact moment your brother’s childhood ended.
Two of my friends at school used to get a giant cookie from Millie’s Cookies every week and they got steadily stranger. Goes to show they’re happy to put most things on there!
Click the thumbnails to view the series of cookie abuse:
Uh oh, Hoff-based contention! Though he unites nations, he has divided our listeners. Gesine writes:
David Hasselhoff (our beloved hero) did not bring down the Berlin Wall by standing on it and belting out “I’ve been looking for freedom” – he did his New Year’s Eve gig AFTER the wall came down. He also didn’t stand on the wall – they got a crane in for him.
If he had tried to do it before November 9th 1989, he would have probably been shot. If he had come from East Berlin, he would have needed to navigate thousands of armed soldiers, barbed wire, dogs, trenches and the death strip. And even though he must have been pretty fit during his Baywatch heyday I doubt he could have climbed the 3-4m smooth concrete wall on his own.
If he had managed to come from West Berlin and climb the wall, he might have been shot as well because his blinking leather jacket must have been a pretty tempting target.
So enough ranting – Olly you can redeem yourself by answering me this – beside the ladies in red bathing suits, what made Baywatch so popular around the world?
IT WAS THE LADIES IN RED BATHING SUITS OF COURSE. What more do you need?
But Gesine, you don’t address a greater mystery, as contemplated by Neal from Crawley in West Sussex here:
Olly mentioned that Hoff’s popularity in Germany was due to his Berlin wall unification gig. However the reason he was on the wall in the first place was because he was already popular there. So. Why was he popular in Germany in the first place?
Any ideas, anybody? Go to the comments to cast light upon this mystery, although Gary rejects the assertion upon which it is based:
Normally, I am not the type to write to podcasts and express my discontent.
But I do want to clarify something about Germany and David Hasselhoff.
Yes, he had a big hit in Germany at the time the Berlin Wall, but that was the only hit. The rest is just hype and The Hoff’s PR team. Saying Germans love David Hasselhoff based on one hit is like saying Brits love Chumbawumba because of that Tub Thumping song.
Sorry to pick nits, but the truth need to be put out there.
Can it be? You’re smashing a lot of myths there, Gary…German readers, are you just going to sit there and let him defame your beloved Hoff? Or sit there and let everybody think you have mystifying taste in music?
I’d also be interested to hear from Japan-based readers about whether bands that are renowned for being ‘big in Japan’ really ever were big in Japan. Tell me: does the country have statues of Shampoo in every city, and a national holiday in honour of Corduroy?
Hello listeners! We hope you have survived our three-week absence. If not, it’ll be no use to you to know that Answer Me This! Episode 262 is ready for your attentions:
Nor to learn that in it we speak of:
the A1 (the road, not the boyband)
baseball caps
food trucks
hammock hazards Pulse and Cocktails (link NSFW)
ice cream vans and cocktails
Steven Spielberg’s headgear ‘Looking for Freedom’ vs ‘Looking for Linda’
pate
and
great big strapping Michael Parkinson.
Plus: Olly receives the wrath of the Hoff; Helen would not give away what goes on in large discreet carparks; and Martin the Sound Man describes his brief moment as the young Frank Rossitano in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App – or, given the subject matter, this week’s Bit of Cap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android.
Please do click here to preview/purchase our SMASH HIT TOP 15 ALBUM Answer Me This! Holiday, that was briefly but thrillingly sandwiched between Robbie and Rihanna.
And also please do send us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT262 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. Question about sex shops polluting an otherwise innocent episode.
It’s rare we receive feedback about one of our jingles, even rarer that such feedback contains courtroom drama, 90s number one hits (in Norway and Greece), venomous centipedes and tragic death. But this email from Claire from Cork has it all:
In one of your bits in the middle of the podcast, Olly has recorded a piece which goes as follows:
“Hello I’m the monk out of 90s band Enigma.
Helen, answer me this.
Why-aii-aaiiii…etc
What was that all about?”
I’ll tell you exactly what that was all about.
It was an Ami (indigenous peoples of Taiwan) traditional song.
In 1988, husband and wife duo Ying-nan Hsiu-Chu Kuo sang the song in Paris as part of a cultural exchange, where they were paid $15 a day. It was recorded by Maison des Cultures du Monde and later put on CD of ‘Taiwanese Aboriginal Songs’.
Then, Michael Cretu of Enigma fame got his grubbly little hands on it and began sampling – resulting in the classic ‘Return to Innocence’. The Kuos then took their asses to court along with EMI for violation of copyright.
They won the case which was then settled out of court in 1999 for an undisclosed amount. Cretu still maintains that he was of the impression that the song was part of the public domain.
Mr Kuo died in 2002 from a venomous centipede bite. Hsiu-Chu died a few months later.
Another bit of business left over from AMT261, addressed by Storm:
Re: the accountant who gets the ‘bored’ look from people when he tells them he is an accountant..
I’ve had this for years…I tried to evade the subject by just saying ‘I work in an office’ and then I discovered that my neighbours thought I was a cleaner!
I now try to talk about a project I’ve been working on, as I tend to find that what people think accountants do isn’t. For example I’ve recently been working on a project to open up new children’s homes.
In the 1980s there was a big move to use the private sector to provide old people’s homes, it was very successful with price decreasing and quality increasing. So the project was extended to children’s homes. Children in care are substantially different from old people, there is more shoplifting, casual violence and vandalism so the private sector haven’t been made keen to move into this market.
These places are really expensive: it costs less to send a child to Eton than to put them in a private children’s home. I met a guy who owned two children’s homes and had bought a helicopter to fly between them.
It’s better for children to be nearer their old homes, school, and friends. And I found that opening a new children’s home would save over a million pounds per year.
Good work, Storm: you’re providing many potential avenues of conversation for your chat-partner. However, not every accountant can speak of an interesting, socially important project. Does anybody have a useful gambit to say instead of, “I help a wealthy corporation stay wealthy”?
Or maybe it’s best to avoid referencing any jobs, ever. Here’s a cautionary tale from Kendersrule:
Many moons ago, while I worked at a supermarket deli counter…
*wibbley camera of the past*
One day when a woman came up to the counter to ask for some ham, we got chatting about the probiotic yoghurt drinks in her trolley.
I asked her how they tasted, as the actors in the ads all looked like they were about to vomit when they downed one.
She replied, somewhat indignantly, that she was one of the people responsible for those ads.
I said “oh” and we spent the next 30 seconds of ham wrapping time in silence. Whoops!
Silence was better than her screaming, “I don’t tell you how to wrap ham!” which would have been quite a reasonable response.
Before we embark upon the new series, let’s clear up some loose ends from the last series, namely your opinions of energy drinks. Yasmine, 16, from Cheltenham, you have the floor:
I was just listening to AMT260, in which you were talking about Red Bull, a drink I have never tried or ever intend to try, being a self proclaimed H2Only – only drinking water.
I was at the doctor’s talking to a nurse about my new inhaler prescription, when the nurse said, out of the blue, “Don’t drink Red Bull with your inhaler as you can get high.”
Answer me this, is it true? And if so, WHY WOULD SHE TELL THAT TO A 16-YEAR-OLD?!?
Because she thinks it’s a safer way for you to get high than meow meow.
It sounds risky, but less so than the concoction Rachel in Phnom Penh describes:
Your assumptions about SE Asian energy drinks are basically true – in Cambodia you can buy energy drinks far stronger than Red Bull quite happily from just about everywhere. The entire teaching force of the country pretty much runs purely on energy of these drinks.
At work (I’m an ESL pre-k teacher) the staff room provides a popular local mix – a heaped spoonful of strong freeze dried coffee, another spoonful of chocolate drinking powder (Milo) about 1/3 of a cup of condensed milk. And hot water in what little space there is left. It basically tastes like a heart attack.
Answer me this – am I knocking a day off my life every time I drink this?
Dunno, because it doesn’t like the sort of substance whose long-term effects have been subjected to proper scientific studies have been done. If you’re having palpitations, mood swings and insomnia, you’re probably drinking milky amphetamines.
Pack your flippers, sunblock and emergency stomach medicine, because our new album The Answer Me This! Holiday is ready to depart!
It’s 58 minutes 3 seconds of all-new material – right down to the jingles – all about holidays, vacations, minibreaks, staycations, jaunts, sojourns, escapes; whatever you like to call them. In the usual AMT style, we tackle questions about such holidayish topics as:
things to do in New York City
summer reading lists
artificial insemination for pandas
dads’ embarrassing holiday-wear
what lies behind – or, more accurately, beneath – the scenes at Disney
Legoland sculptors
why the Spanish Steps in Rome aren’t Spanish
what to expect from a Chinese breakfast
stag parties abroad
and
why the Brits are lagging behind in competitive eating contests.
• A full range of holidaywear: clip-on sunglasses, short shorts, convertible trousers, Speedos, gilets, electroejaculators; • Classic tourist attractions: the Staten Island Ferry, Downton Abbey, Disney’s utilidors, Burghley House, the Winchester Mystery House, Flambards and A Day at the Wells; • Delicious holiday grub: satirical breakfasts, ‘world famous’ foods, congee, Sex on the Beach, the Heart Attack Grill, pork and its tasty friends, Economy Candy; • Delightful holiday companions: Cara Delevingne, Eugene Levy, Nancy Mitford, Adam Richman, naked mole rats, Spagna; • Fun holiday activities: the ‘bollocks’ game at festivals, drinking games, humiliating your fellow diners, being assaulted by Mexican shots girls, trying to remember your one-night-stand’s name.
Big thanks to Amy Smith and Sam Pay for the jingles and Jenny Robertshaw for the cover – and speculatively to you for buying it, because your outlay helps fund Answer Me This! (and our actual holidays).
Answer Me This! Podcast 