It’s harvest time! Which means it’s the start of the new educational year. Which means it is time for this question from Lauren from Kidderminster:
I managed to get into the university of my choice, but now I am panicking about Freshers Week.
A week of non-stop partying sounds like hell. I am very shy, hate dancing and don’t see the point in spending all my money on getting drunk and making a fool of myself on the dancefloor.
I’m not an anti-social person, it’s just that partying isn’t really my idea of fun.
Please help, how did you survive Freshers week at your university?
As a non-drinking square? I kept a massive supply of crumpets in my room, so rather than submitting myself to the full clubbing experience, instead made friends with people once they returned from their night at the fleshpots and were hungry for toasted snacks. (Also I had three essays to write in the first week, so couldn’t have gone out even if I had wanted to.)
But readers, I’m sure you have crumpet-free techniques which Lauren could adapt. Go forth to the comments and share.
AMT returns tomorrow, but a couple of matters are left over from the end of the last series. Firstly, Richard writes:
Apropos of the AMT228 reference to Polo Ralph Lauren.
The cheaper branded clothing has small ponies, the more expensive has the large ponies and sometimes even a polo team.
While this may be of no interest to your listeners, I feel I need to tell you so that should we pass in the street and I’m wearing my normal “uniform” of polo shirt/Levi combo you don’t think I’m a skank.
As if we would! What could be posher than somebody walking around covered in an entire polo team?
Next, Shelley from Richmond, Virginia:
I can tell you in no uncertain terms that your interpretation of R. Kelly’s Remix to Ignition song is badly, horribly, hilariously wrong.
When he says, “It’s like Murder She Wrote, once I get you out them clothes,” he’s saying something much more violently sexual than “my sex game is so mysterious.”
What he’s saying is: “I am going to kill that pussy.”
Murder that vagina. Commit homicide upon that genital region until it is worn out and useless and sweaty and sore. There is no use denying this will happen, because the murder has already been written as soon as your clothes come off. Once you have become naked, say goodbye to your genitals. Vaginal death is imminent and unavoidable.
And when he says, “food everywhere, as if the party was catered,” it’s because his music is FOR the lower middle class. That’s who is supposed to hear these lyrics and think to themselves, “Hey, I can relate to R. Kelly. I know that feel, bro. I, too, can throw a party with food. Everyone will be very impressed and the panties will drop. I, myself, will destroy genitalia! This music is my life.”
Hmm. I’m not sure I fully agree with this hypothesis, but it certainly is a very spirited argument.
We all know that listening to Answer Me This! is life-changing for the worse. We started the podcast because we wanted to Make A Difference that did not benefit the world in any way. And lo, we have! Nick writes:
In a recent podcast you discussed eating the crumbs from a packet of crisps with the choice of either tilting the packet directly into the mouth or pouring into the hand and eating from there. All my life I have gone for the pour-straight-from-the-packet option, but after your arguments now pour into the hand.
Answer Me This: have any other listeners changed something they do as a result of listening to your podcast?
Listeners, step into the comments and tell us!
We already know that, thanks to AMT4, some of you no longer feel you are allowed to wipe your bottoms standing up. As we said, truly life-changing.
To tell you the truth, friends, we’re taking a working holiday from the podcast, and tomorrow we have a big job: Helen and Olly’s Required Listening on BBC 5 Live, a three-hour radio extravaganza all about podcasts, unusual radio stations, and other varied and curious sounds to put into your ears.
UPDATE: the aforementioned ‘tomorrow’ has passed, and the live transmission with it; so click here to hear Required Listening via BBC iPlayer.
And that’s not all: the Arseblogger will be kicking off versus Phil Cornwell from The Spurs Show; the Indie Travel Podcasters will stay still long enough to talk about their six-years-and-counting world tour; we’ll take in the sounds of the sewers with Resonance FM and eat brains with We’re Alive.
The time has come, dear listeners, for us to pack up our microphones for a month and head off on holiday. But before we go, we tackle some very important questions indeed:
• Should one allow one’s allergies interrupt the loss of one’s virginity?
• What counts as a museum, once and for all?
• What IS R Kelly on about?
Discover those answers and more in Answer Me This! Episode 228:
Plus: Olly explains a ‘reverse American Pie‘, and no, you won’t find it in More! Magazine’s ‘Position of the Fortnight’ archives; Helen’s toilet is like Kanye West, and not because he has a pottymouth; and Martin the Sound Man had just about recovered from the disappointment that was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when Prometheus came along and crushed his expectations all over again.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Jennifer from Pittsburgh about whether being struck by lightning affects your ability to use technology; assuming the after-effects of that old lightning strike allow it, use your iDevices and Android to peruse the app.
Until we return on Thursday 20th September, here are some means of busying yourself:
1. Listen to us on BBC 5 Live, 1-4pm on Monday 27th August, talking about all sorts of fun and diverse listening materials in our special bank holiday show Required Listening. 2. Tune in to Olly on LBC, 20th-24th August between 1-4am. That’s right, am. Unless you live in a different time zone and it’s a perfectly civilised hour there. 3.Vote for Helen to go to SXSW next year, on a podcasting panel with Jesse Thorn and Roman Mars. 4. Listen to Martin’s music. It is much less obscene than him talking. 5. Have a go on our albums, our first 120 episodes, and some other nice podcasts. 6. Concoct QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Have a delightful month, and we look forward to reuniting on 20th September.
Helen & Olly
PS Sadly, the Cars of the Stars museum in Keswick closed down last year. But it still lives forever here:
Here’s a question of gender identity from Stuart, living in Lyon but from Newcastle:
I am working in a call centre for the summer. However the problem I seem to have is no matter how gruff I try to sound, I get mistaken for a woman so much that I have assumed Judith as my female alter ego in the office.
While this is great when someone complains about ‘Judith’, it leaves me asking whether I should really be correcting the customers (going against the mantra of ‘the customer is always right’) and trying to reestablish my masculine credentials.
You sound like you are already quite comfortable with your masculine credentials, if you’ve allowed Judith to be brought to life, rather than just announcing yourself as ‘Mister Stuart’ at the start of every phone conversation. Instead of killing her off, why not use this opportunity to explore the myriad other female identities lurking within you? Come into work wearing Judith’s sensible shoes and box-pleated skirts. If you’re doing a late shift, change into something slinkier and conduct your phone calls as sexy Sarah. When you get bored of her, no doubt the varied costumes and accents of Brigitta, Haruko and Svetlana will keep you fresh.
Hold on – it has just dawned on me that you might not be working in the type of call centre that deals with customer complaints or tech support. If in fact your summer job is answering the phone at 0898-HOT-BABES, this problem you’re experiencing is far less surprising.
Two milky questions this morning, the first from Freddie in Edinburgh:
My friend Fergus is utterly convinced that if a man gently rubs his nipple almost constantly for around three months, he will begin to lactate. Like a lady-boob.
So answer me this: can this be done?
Apparently it can! Thanks to unusual hormones or excessive stimulation – and I think three months of continuous rubbing would count as excessive – men can experience galactorrhoea, as spontaneous lactaction is known. It was also very common amongst men released from prisoner of war camps at the end of World War Two, but no doubt was not their most pressing health problem at that point.
Anyway, if any of you gents manage to produce enough milk for a glassful, perhaps you could experiment to help Mark from Telford with his question:
I was eating breakfast today and came across a difficult conundrum. I got the milk out of the fridge and my box of strawberry Nesquik and was just about to pour the milk into the glass when I asked myself, should I put the powder in first or the milk?
I mean, you can pour the milk in first and then stir in the powder, or put the powder in first and then pour the milk on top, but in years of drinking strawberry milk at breakfast, I still cannot fathom which way gives the optimum strawberry milk experience. So answer me this, which way IS the best way to make strawberry milk?
You’ve conducted a TEN YEAR study and you still have not managed to draw a conclusion? We’re not going to help you because you could solve this yourself in the course of two mornings.
In AMT226 we speculated upon the next phase of Gordon Ramsay’s career, and whether it would entail one of those odd-couple road trips that are perennially popular amongst TV commissioners. Andy emailed us to say:
I was taking in my daily fix of MTV news, when I saw that Gordon Ramsay was apparently planning a Harley Davidson tour with….David Beckham.
Suspicions confirmed! Unless they’re doing that just as a mates’ holiday, and not actually televising it…no, impossible! What would be the point of that?
For a bit of fun, readers, go to the comments and pitch a non-culinary show for Gordon Ramsay’s career reboot.
I’m emailing Channel 4 now to suggest a mountaineering challenge series called Gordon’s Craggy Faces.
In the past two episodes we’ve had questions about a dead laptop and a saucy home video, and now those two tropes combine in this question from Matt from Brownhills:
I work in the exciting field of IT repair for a big public organisation, and often do freebies repairing people’s personal computers when they break.
This week I was given a laptop that simply would not turn on. The laptop was knackered, and they just wanted all the files back.
Whilst getting these files, I noticed there were lots of videos of this person and I presume their partner “together”. (Yes, shagging.)
Answer me this: do I give her these files back on disk, thus making it awkward for the rest of our lives with her knowing I know about them, or do I pretend I never found them, giving her everything else but live with knowing she might have really wanted them but was too afraid to say?
OK Matt, answer yourself this – what do you think is MORE incriminating: returning all her files, with no suggestion that you looked at any of them; or returning only those files which you have personally filtered for acceptability?
I assume you’ve also fully perused her photo folders, combed her Word documents carefully in case she’s been writing erotica in her spare time, and thoroughly checked her Excel spreadsheets on the offchance you can convert the data into a titillating scatter graph. And backed up all her files to your own external hard drive, y’know, just in case she ever has computer trouble again or something…
Of course we love hearing about your lives; also when you sendusstuff. But this may have gone too far in Answer Me This! Episode 227:
Wherein we consider:
Zooey Deschanel
holiday money
Worcestershire Sauce
wanking off vs. jacking off
Olympics vs. Eurovision
Baron Pierre de Coubertin
the sporty Vatican
flying horses
pasta sauce
and
a table covered in ice cream.
Plus: Olly doesn’t like the look of Joey Potter’s chalice nowadays, but back in the 90s he did get a bit Dawson Leary (Dawson Leery, more like); Helen was a financially responsible child – yet another way in which she peaked too early; and Martin the Sound Man recommends keeping your pasta carbonara minimalist, even if you really need a little nipper of booze to get you through.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the AppiDevices and Android is a question from Joss which reveals Olly’s Napoleon Complex. This is concerning trees, not height, seeing as Olly is 6’3″ when he stands up straight.
Next week is our last episode before we take a month-long hiatus, so hurry and send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
For months now this is a question that has been bothering me profoundly.
We all love Haribo, kids and grown ups alike. It says so in the song. And as is tradition with jelly-type sweets of the Haribo kind, they often come in the shape of something, eg a heart, a Coke bottle, cherries etc.
But there is always one in the bag that I just can’t fathom as to what it is:
Some of my friends agree with me in my bemusement, while others seem to think it’s a baby’s dummy. But what sort of freaking dummy looks like that?!
What kind of heart, Lottie, is made of red and white gunk? What kind of bear is translucent and green? One must suspend some disbelief when eating sweets. However if you crave realism coated in citric acid, then reconcile yourself to the contentious curiosity being a jelly rendering of one of the following:
1. a key
2. an ankh
3. the little plastic thing you blow bubbles through
4. a blackhead remover
5. a noose
6. a magnifying glass
7. an absinthe spoon.
Sports nutritionists and environmentalists, please go to the comments to offer a more useful response than I can to this question from Charlotte:
As a professional circus artist I’ve always heard that I should eat bananas to avoid muscle cramps, apparently because the potassium in the bananas does some electrolyte magic on my muscles.
I perform a handbalance act that includes balancing en pointe (on my toes) on little tiny platforms, so getting cramps in the arches of my feet is a definite problem. But I’m trying to eat in an environmentally responsible way, buying fruits and vegetables that are grown close to wherever I am, which is usually in North America or Western Europe and definitely very far away from wherever bananas come from.
So answer me this: does eating bananas actually prevent me getting cramps in my feet? Is there something else (with less of a carbon footprint) that I could eat instead?
Since you’re travelling around, I can’t gauge the potential carbon footprint of every item you might eat whilst on two continents. Bear in mind that pumpkin and sunflower seeds, cocoa, paprika, chervil, avocados, nuts, salmon, orange juice, potato skin, beans, spinach, dried apricots and whelks are potasstic, so mix them all together into a delicious paste and carry it wherever you go for a portable potassium banquet.
As a 
Answer Me This! Podcast 