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.
Readers, you may offer your advice in the comments to our next questioneer, A Confused Girl:
I have a close male friend who has recently started displaying signals that he wants to take our friendship to the next level, but I’m not interested because I don’t want to ruin the friendship with him.
I’ve tried to make it clear to him and he has definitely toned down the flirting lately, so that’s good, but he keeps buying me things!
I’ve been unemployed for many months now and he’s been a great friend in helping me out of financial jams, but now the things he’s paying for me are just becoming too much!
Honestly, I can’t say that I’m not enjoying his gifts but I feel really guilty!
How do I tell my friend that he’s becoming far too generous without suggesting that I think he’s trying to bribe me into bed with him?
Here’s an idea: STOP ACCEPTING HIS GIFTS. Uncomfortable feelings of obligation, over!
As an aside: when somebody says they don’t want to get together with somebody lest they ‘ruin the friendship’, they should be honest and revise that statement to ‘because really I don’t fancy him/her’. Right?
With the Great British Sports Day in full swing, we’ve had a record-breaking number of emails asking the same question, to whit:
Have you ever noticed that the London 2012 Olympics symbol looks like Maggie Simpson giving a blow job?
Actually, questioneers, in the five years since said logo was unveiled then plastered over every available surface in our home city, it has been noted.
Here’s a far more observant Olympics question from Maddy:
Why is John Inverdale so creepy?
It’s not a scientific answer, but I think it’s because something about the arrangement of his face suggests he’s a lost Gelfling from Dark Crystal.
Guys. Why are you bothering with the London Olympics, when you need to preserve your energy for the year’s most important contest? That’s right – the British Firework Championships are only days away! And at least one of Team AMT should be looking to start a new career there, as we discover in Answer Me This! Episode 226. Prepare to detonate:
Also going off in the episode:
Mass Market Muesli
clutch bags for the Third World
immersive theatre
psychic jurors
hipster aprons
teacher sadism by proxy
Routemaster buses
the Penguin Shwopping vs. consumerism
Captain Hook vs. Gordon Ramsay us vs. Bob Dylan
and
‘London’s Best Scare Experience 2008-2011’.
Plus: Olly has a damp stinky manbag; Helen errs by bringing actual fruit to the Apple store; and Martin the Sound Man recommends not trying to multitask during sexual activity if you’re a novice.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Kenny, about whether he was wrong to fuck over his work buddy in order to score a promotion. Is it a fair case of survival of the fittest, or survival of the fuckiest? Find out on iDevices and Android.
You can also find out a whole lot if you listen to the AMT Sports Day. Most of that lot will be about sport, but since the Olympics is currently in full swing, you’d only be having to listen to sports commentators rabbiting on anyway whenever you turn on the television. Us or them, US OR THEM???
It only remains for us to ask you to ask us something: send your QUESTIONS as voicemails to the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or as emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Readers, here is a question for you to chew on from David from Whitstable:
I love Pick’n’Mix. It is ace. My bag/tub always contains white mice, fizzy cola bottles, those prawn things, those white buttons with hundreds and thousands. Maybe a jelly snake.
Answer me this: What is your strategy at Pick’n’Mix? Do you go for variety, or quantity? Or do you always get the same ones?
Well obviously variety rather than a large quantity of one thing, which one could buy elsewhere for less money. But with experience, one learns not to dally with the rubbish ones – the coconut mushrooms, the rum balls, the fudge which is invariably disappointing. One hones one’s selection, and also cannily avoids the heavy ones, though personally I’ll make an exception for the chocolate Brazils.
Since Olly has already elaborated upon his tactics in the AMT book, it’s up to you to go to the comments and enlighten David upon your own Pick’n’Mixing strategy.
Something unlikely in last week’s episode stirred the neurones of George here:
Regarding your offhand comments regarding the propensity of nooks by comparison to crannies: I though that crannies were the raised spaces surrounded by nooks. Thus, a cranny is defined by the absence created by nooks.
Assuming that is correct, then the world at large is mostly crannies, due to the relatively few nooks.
So, please answer me this, how far wrong is my assumption?
So far wrong that you are the very opposite of right, George! Observe how the dictionary defines ‘cranny’:
A small out-of-the-way place or obscure corner; nook.
If it’s any comfort, there IS another sense of cranny. But the dictionary has yet to validate it:
Let us know whether that mug can survive a few rounds with the hippies, Sage. In fact, buy a range of different mugs, keep a spreadsheet of how each model fares over a few months in the squat, then in a few months try to get your findings published in an academic journal. I’m sure they’ve all been waiting for a comparative study of mugs versus hippies.
“Yikes! I think I just saw Gerard Butler skulking in the corner.”
Apparently if you’re born ugly, you’re allowed to act like a total dick! That’s what we have learnt from today’s lesson in classic French literature from Chris from Cardiff, Australia:
In AMT225, you discussed whether the Phantom is good or evil.
I can’t speak for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s intentions, but having read the original novel by Gaston Leroux I can say that his impression of Erik (the Phantom) is that he was a genius driven to a violent distrust of humanity resulting from being so hideously deformed from birth, and thus that his actions were the result of desperation. Erik’s actions were undoubtedly evil, but nevertheless he deserves to be pitied for the life he was forced to lead by society:
Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be “some one”, like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must needs pity the Opera Ghost.
Of course, it’s hardly surprising that he turned out evil… There aren’t many “good guys” who would build a vast underground forest out of iron in which people could hang themselves or be baked alive.
Good point, Chris, but we should also bear in mind that anybody who decides to spend considerable time and resources building a fancy subterrannean torture chamber is probably evil beforehand, rather than becoming so as a result of having access to such a place.
Unless the Phantom did have perfectly innocent reasons for building it. Perhaps he had expected the baking-hot room with the iron trees would be the perfect place in which to dry his laundry. Even ugly opera ghosts should have the right to wear underwear that isn’t damp!
As a 
Answer Me This! Podcast 