This week, we learn a few very important lessons about sheep: not to underestimate them intellectually and emotionally; what they have in common with Margaret Thatcher; and what they also have in common with Helen’s mum. Discover these things right now in Answer Me This! Episode 261:
In which we also learn about:
emogothpunk style Casper the Suicidal Ghost
small-talk with accountants
the losers’ cafe in The Apprentice
BHS Dr Martens
free sunglasses
pony-drawn rollers
the Cabinet vs. the Divine Right of Kings
iced coffee vs. cold coffee Olly’s face vs. Richard Gere’s face
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
hair-blindness
and
advice from Paul Ross.
Plus: Olly had to go cold turkey on the brown, by which we mean Mr Brown drinks, not heroin; Helen sounds and looks and smells like an old fart; and Martin the Sound Man’s emotional needs are not going to be met by sheep. Let’s not even contemplate whether they can meet his sexual needs, please. But you can meet Martin’s needs by going to his website or YouTube to watch his spectacular new music video (/visual evidence of his nervous breakdown).
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Helen expresses her ever-unrealised desire for unusual-coloured hair. She may have wimped out of having an experimental phase in her teens, but when she’s a geriatric she WILL go full-bore Marge Simpson. Promise.
Promise us to send us your QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We’ll be back with AMT262 on 11th July, so please join us then; in the meantime, check back here for our imminent album, the Answer Me This! Holiday, our all-new follow-up to our Top 20 (no really!) albums Jubilee and Sports Day, available for your delectation at answermethispodcast.com/albums.
Byeeee!
Helen & Olly
AMT261 Child-Friendly Rating: 90%.
References to hiding pornographic magazines; very mild profanity.
The following question from Kev wouldn’t be too weird if he worked in a strip joint. But, he doesn’t:
I recently started working at a call centre for a bank. I am nearing the end of my training, and a couple of days ago I met with the team I am to join, and my prospective manager. They all seem perfectly likeable, and my manager – a woman in her mid-forties – is very welcoming. But during this brief meeting she announced that she plans to organise a day of pole dancing for the group, which I do not like the sound of at all.
I realise that in the corporate world this kind of thing is important for team building etc, and as a new member of the team I could perhaps benefit from an event at which I would have a chance to socialise with my future colleagues, but I simply do not want to go. I don’t like doing even vaguely work-related things outside of work as this is not a career I wish to be in for a long time and there are things that I am passionate about that I could be doing with my spare time. I also think that either watching or doing pole dancing sounds completely boring; not because I am a man, but because it’s just not my thing.
I tried to find out when it was to make up a prior engagement, but I was told that the date of the event is yet to be decided based on our schedules.
So, answer me this: What do I do? Do I make up a weak and potentially transparent excuse and not go? Do I go, and have a very uncomfortable, unpaid day constantly thinking about what else I could be doing with my time? Or do I outright and honestly tell my manager that I do not want to go as I don’t think I would enjoy it or get much out of it? Would that result in her making my life at work harder than it needs to be?
Even though we discussed in AMT221 how pole dancing can be an athletic discipline rather than a purely sexy one, this does not seem to be an APPROPRIATE WORK ACTIVITY. Can you suggest an alternative?
If not, and you’re determined not to go, just tell her you have a long-standing spinal or muscular complaint. Pole dancing is physically demanding, and your manager is unlikely to want you to be laid off work with a slipped disc.
Readers, any other ideas? I’m not best placed to help, since I’ve managed to get myself out of all such situations by working on my own since 2005.
KLAXON! AMT LISTENER IN DISTRESS! It’s Lachlan, who writes:
I have just been dumped by my girlfriend of one year.
Recently I attended a music festival, where I got very drunk and ended up making out with another girl. Because I was so drunk, I cannot even remember this girl’s name or what she looked like.
As I could never lie to my girlfriend, I told her everything the second I got back. She was obviously extremely saddened by this, and as much as I tried to tell her that it is not something I would ever have done if I was sober, for obvious reasons she says she can never trust me again and she can’t stop thinking about me with the girl.
We have always been very close and I have never lied to her. Answer me this: WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO TO MAKE HER TRUST ME AGAIN?!?!
Unfortunately, Lachlan, I cannot offer you a quick fix to regain trust. It will take time, and willingness on both sides to overcome this incident. I imagine you have already gone strong on contrition, but you could also demonstrate your commitment to such a thing not happening again by giving up drinking.
Readers, if you have any suggestions for Lachlan convincing his girlfriend to give him a second chance, deliver them in the comments, as well as tips for him avoiding getting himself into similar scrapes again. For instance, wearing a welding mask to music festivals would preclude extra-curricular kissing.
Following last week’s discussion of Red Bull, Timothy and Melissa in Australia sent the following inquiry:
Energy drinks contain a shitload of taurine so answer us this: what is taurine?
Taurine, nicknamed NH2CH2-CH2SO3H, is a sulfonic acid that is already sloshing around in your human body performing many important functions in your heart, muscles, blood, nerves and bile. Bile? Bile. Yes. Taurine was first discovered in ox bile, and thence came the bull in the name Red Bull.
Although your Red Bull only contains synthetic bile these days, it has maintained the authentic flavour of a bull’s puke.
Last week, we spoke upon the act of judging one’s neighbours by the contents of their recycling bins. This week, Hattie‘s recycling-judgement-capacity has been completely scrambled by her neighbours:
I recently noticed one of my neighbours had an entire glass recycling box FULL of empty Nutella jars. I had to walk past twice to make sure I wasn’t imagining things…but yes – the box was entirely crammed with empty pots.
So, please answer me this – how on earth can someone eat so much nutty spread? Or, alternatively, what are they doing with it?
Evidence:
Exhibit A: a LOT of Nutella jars
My hunch is that they were making a giant Ferrero Rocher. It’s the only reasonable explanation…OR IS IT? Readers, go to the comments to offer your own hypotheses for the profusion of Nutella. Someone was getting rid of their late grandmother’s lifetime collection of Nutella jars? They bath in it? They’re using it to regrout the bathroom? The floor is yours.
This week, listener Melvyn from Israel got in touch to ask whether we have a system for identifying AMT episodes which are suitable for his children to listen to. So from this point forward*, each episode will have a rating so you parents/children are aware of the incidence of blue language and depraved material. Answer Me This! Episode 260 scores a Child Friendly Rating of 70% (mild swearing/bawdy talk and one question about dicks).
Today we discuss:
Wagon Wheels
jalapeños
disappointing Oxford Circus Loose Women‘s stools (not as in bowel movement stools)
tuk tuk drivers
Fentimans
The Pammy vs. The Governess
Lord Adonis
helium
and
dressing to the left/right.
Plus: Olly has a simple but cunning method for hiding his Special Racy Magazines; Helen is a fan of neither Buckfast nor Red Bull; and the only thing bigger than Martin the Sound Man’s head is his…ego?
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we discuss Desert Island Drugs. We may be squares in our normal lives, but leave us to die alone on a desert island and we’ll give any intoxicants a whirl.
Your favourite West Midlandese sound man has been very busy this year, and not with the invention of new compound cuss-words involving balls. No. He’s been paper-cutting, green-screening and back-projecting to make the video to his song 10,000 Letters of Love, and the finished product is finally here:
Wow, right? Surely the best papercut video about London sewerage pioneer Joseph Bazalgette you’ll see all year.
If you’re interested in how he made the video, click here; and if you liked the song and want to buy it plus ten more, click here to purchase his beautiful album The City of Gold and Lead, under Martin’s musical alter ego The Sound of the Ladies.
This question from Margaret in Indiana is the kind that some people spend their whole lives trying to answer*:
I was listening to the lightbulb jokes on last week’s episode, and I had a question:
What is the best joke?
*Not me, though. I am not especially fond of jokes. Therefore I delegate to you, readers, the task of going to the comments and submitting your best joke. The winner gets to be plagiarised by everyone else forever.
Go on, by the end of today I expect the comments section to be like this:
When I say that this question from Will from Bristol is draining, I mean it is even more so in the emotional sense than in that of drawing off liquid. Here goes:
Answer me this: how on earth are you meant to clean a sieve successfully? It’s always the item I leave to the end of the washing up due to its annoyance. Is there a kitchen tool out there for aiding in the process if cleaning a sieve?
Yes. A BRUSH.
And if that’s too commonplace and sensible for you, Will, find a fencing champ and ask them what they use to clean their mask.
In last week’s episode we suggested that a desert island, such as the one you’d be stranded on in Desert Island Discs, might be more like this…
…than this:
But Luke disagrees with our interpretation:
Surely the ‘desert’ in desert island is about it being deserted rather than the climate……
You may be right, Luke. However, perhaps they decided not to call the show the more accurate name of Deserted Island Discs to avoid confusion with one of Britain’s more unpleasant deserted islands.
Today we discuss the world’s greatest audio format apart from this one: Desert Island Discs. What would your luxury be? (If you’re a cheating cheater who wants to take a fully-stocked iPod, throw yourself into the sea.) Find out ours, along with myriad other important nuggets of information, in Answer Me This! Episode 259:
In which we also consider:
condoms vs. opera gloves
knits vs. nits
Tim Burton vs. Faust
Olly vs. Ollie vs. Olleigh
cherry-pickers gentlemen’s clubs (nb not ‘gentlemen’s clubs’) The Reform Act This Life
personalised Coke bottles
Simon Cowell’s reflection
mayonnaise spa treatments
retro-live-tweeting
and
Russ Abbott.
Plus: Olly is nostalgic for an infestation of headlice; Helen WOULD with the person who changes the lights in supermarkets; and Martin the Sound Man doesn’t want to swallow himself. Just reflect on that quietly.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Olly rhapsodises about the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machine. All the different types of sugar water – in one machine! A miracle of modern life.
Another miracle of modern life is to be able to watch thousands of hours of entertainment for FREE thanks to our LoveFilm offer – which, equally miraculously, helps pay for future Answer Me Thises.
As well as free money, we can only sustain the podcast with your QUESTIONS, so send them along in the form of voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Joe in Oxford could be getting himself into a sticky situation, in more ways than one:
My wife has a friend, who now does porn.
How annoyed would my wife have the right to be if I watched her friend’s videos, on a scale of 1 – mildly annoyed, to 10 – divorce?
Readers, go to the comments to express Joe’s wife’s annoyance in a number; but you may not want to waste your time, since he’ll have obviously watched the videos by now anyway regardless of the potential spousal fury.
Answer Me This! Podcast 