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.
My nephew got married last summer to a woman he had lived with for two years.
Four months later he suspected that she was cheating on him and after Christmas we found our that they had separated but were in counseling.
A month ago we were told that they were getting a divorce.
Yesterday I found out that my nephew is already seeing someone.
While I want him to be happy and find a new soul mate, isn’t this all a bit too fast? Answer me this: how long after deciding to divorce should someone wait before starting to date again?
Readers, if you believe there is an appropriate set period of singletude, or if you have designed an equation to calculate that period in proportion to the length of relationship, share in the comments.
Personally, I don’t see the harm if Pat’s nephew is just having a not-to-serious time with a new paramour, moving on with a fun fling, salving the wounds left by his cheating partner.
If, however, he and his ladyfriend are already dressing alike, running non-essential errands to Ikea, making wedding plans or buying adjacent burial plots, I can understand Pat’s concern. But since he’s an adult man with dominion over his own decisions, I’m not sure she can intervene. As an aunt myself, frankly I wouldn’t feel comfortable judging when my nephew was ready to love again, but my nephew is only five and a half years old so I can hazard a guess that he should play the field for another couple of decades at least.
In AMT257 we learned why in-house polling stations are likely to remain a pipe-dream. But if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammed’s house and offer him a lift, according to Leon from Morpeth:
On the subject of corrupt polling stations:
I live in a small village in Northumberland and our local Conservative councillor (of about 20 years now) owns and runs the country house hotel in the village.
On polling day he regularly pays a member of his hotel staff to stand outside the village hall greeting everyone and taking a private register of every eligible voter in the village.
By the late afternoon he will then drive to the house of anyone who hasn’t voted to give them a lift to the polling station to vote for him.
I always thought this was pretty dodgy.
This on its own is not dodgy:
1. As a man heavily invested in the democratic process, the importance of people exercising their right to vote will surely be even more important to him than his own success.*
2. The people he transports can still vote for whom they like once they’ve been driven right into the booth.**
*Which doesn’t seem much in question anyway, if he’s been the election winner for twenty years.
**On the other hand, if he provides them with a homemade ballot paper with just one name on it…
Sound the sirens – today, in Answer Me This! Episode 258, we address a VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION. One of those questions that completely reshapes your neural pathways, redirects your chi, repapers the hallways of your spiritual palace. Get ready:
What is a dickbag?
A bag OF dicks, a bag FOR dicks, or a ballbag?
Yup. One of the greats.
We also discuss:
cinema intervals
sleeping in parks
the not-circular Circle Line
silly cows
presidential perishables
gifts for Sophie Raworth
Dumbo vs. DUMBO
exes vs. economics
potplant-murder vs. potplant-suicide
the White House postal address cartoon crows
and
coffee in the loo.
Plus: young Olly wanted value even more than he wanted Disney cartoons; Helen is a lady; and you don’t want to be hot-desking at Martin the Sound Man’s office, you really don’t.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we feel the threat of the new Greatest Show On Earth: Radio 4’s Tweet of the Day.
If birdsong isn’t your thing, how about a month of free film/TV/games instead? Deprive yourself no longer; sign up to our free LoveFilm offer right now. You’d not only be delighting yourself with all the free entertainment of LoveFilm, you’d also be helping maintain the free entertainment of AMT, because we get money if you take up the trial.
There’s another way you can help keep this show going: send us your QUESTIONS! Leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
I’m guessing from this email that listener Kate won’t be inviting her sister to her 26th birthday party:
In just under a week it’s my 25th birthday. Apart from the inevitable mild existential crisis, this means I’m having a barbecue. I’ve invited friends and I’ve invited my sister. My sister has then invited my mum. Please help me think of a way to un-invite her. I just wanted a nice relaxing afternoon eating meat in my back garden with my friends. I do not want either of my parents there! And if my mum is coming then I am forced to invite my dad and his new wife.
How how HOW can I make sure there are no parents at my barbecue without causing a big family fuss?
Readers, go to the comments and help the lady out. Oh pleeeeeeese. It’s her birthday.
Thanks to Emma from Perth, Australia we can take an imaginary peek under holy skirts:
In episode 250 you had a conversation about whether the cardinals and the Pope wear any kind of underwear under those elaborate robes. Well, I just had to write in and tell you. I recently went on a Buddhist retreat, and the head abbot, a really funny guy with a great sense of humour named Ajahn Brahm, was asked this very question about Buddhist monks.
The questions were written anonymously on little bits of paper that he read out in front of a crowded hall. Some cheeky person asked him if they wear underpants, and if so, are they a special kind of holy underpants just for monks. Ajahn Brahm replied that the best thing about being a monk in Australia is that no, you don’t have to wear underwear beneath those robes and it’s really cool during the hot weather.
So there you go.
There we go, and there they go, swinging freely in the breeze.
Last Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest has left you with many questions (aside from WHY DIDN’T GREECE WIN?). For instance, this one from Orpon:
This year the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Malmö, Sweden. This happens to be my hometown and I barely made it out of this frenzy alive.
For several weeks every year nothing else matters but the ESC and since it was held in Sweden this year it was much, much worse. Even if our prime minister should be murdered (again) I don’t think it would make the news if it happened during the ESC craze.
Answer me this: when so many European nations succumb to the ESC madness, why don’t the British care at all about it? Are you too good to hang out with the rest of us? Don’t you like feather boas, confetti and crappy music?
Oh, we Brits do like those things – but only through a veil of sneering irony. And it’s inaccurate to say that we don’t care at all – we care very much that the Britain scores as close to nul points as possible.
On to a question from one of the scornful Brits, Paul from Northampton:
I’m watching Eurovision and all the awful acts that are desperately trying to win with this awful Europop. So answer me this: if Britain wants to win so badly, why haven’t they enter One Direction, as everyone seems to love them for some reason?
I take issue with Paul’s assertion that Britain wants to win so badly; see my statement above, along with every British entry since Katrina and the Waves – Daz Sampson? Scooch? Bin Man Andy? Jemini??? These are NOT the entries of a country with victory in the crosshairs.
Plus, I think One Direction are a bit too busy at the moment. But previous experience indicates that in ten years or so, they’ll probably need the gig.
Finally, a question about the scoring system from Rikki from Dunfermline:
Why is there no number 9 or 11 in the Eurovision Song Contest?
Those numbers have been banished from the Eurovisional points allocation since 1975. They got rid of them because Björn Ulvaeus said they were the least poppy numbers under 100. Or maybe there’s a solid mathematical reason, such as it helps avoid tied votes, or something.
Readers, do you have any idea? Go to the comments and inform us all. I lost a large part of my brain during this year’s contest, and it was the part that made me willing to google this sort of shit.
… What with the ‘second screen’ being very much the in thing of this year’s Eurovision, I have just remembered the following section from the Answer Me This book. I have reproduced it here without asking the publishers, but, hey, we wrote it, and this is the bloody internet. We based it on our experience of watching previous contests, so why not refer to it tonight and let’s see how many we get right.
Acatia from Bar Hill: Helen and Olly, Answer Me This: Are there actually any rules for Eurovision?
It might look like a disoragnised, outdated cheese-fest but actually Acatia, yes, the Ten Commandments of Eurovision are:
1. Contestants must all wave and smile to the camera at one point during their performance, whether their song is a singalong spectacular or a mournful ballad about the war tearing apart their homeland.
2. All hairstyles must be inspired by the 1984 production of Starlight Express.
3. All men must resemble either Ian McShane or H from Steps, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
4. Five points will be deducted from any song not containing the lyrics ‘la la la’, ‘yeah yeah yeah’, or ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’
5. Israel is in Europe.
6. Palestine is not in Europe.
7. The hosts of the award – one male, one female – must both be entirely without merit.
8. The videos between each act promoting the host country must contain one of the following images:
– a couple walking hand-in-hand by in a fruit market
– some ropey old men playing chess
– a little girl spinning around in a white lace dress
– a crane shot of a bell tower
– some ladies with nice boobs smiling as if caught off-guard
9. All countries must give their highest score to their closest neighbours, except for France and Ireland, who must snub Great Britain.
10. Extra points will be added for dance routines involving clapping, twirling, or removal of clothes. If all three are achieved at once this will be considered the greatest cultural feat of all time.
(If you enjoyed this extract, please do consider buying the book. It will pass some time before you die.)
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