There are a lot of really weird stories in the news at the moment – cannibals, dismembered bodies, Octomom doing a porno – but fortunately this week, AMT218 is a largely horror-free zone:
Today we talk of:
marriage licences
the Pitcher and Piano
expensive clothes
actors’ motivation Fifty Shades of Grey vs. The White Hotel vs. Wuthering Heights
Mario vs. Lazarus
moist Jo Whiley
Tinky Winky, live in Luxembourg
outlet stores
death by giant snail
and
#.
Plus: Olly doesn’t want to get married in Vegas; Helen doesn’t want to have to watch embarrassing bodies on Embarrassing Bodies; but Martin the Sound Man DOES want you to enter his science songwriting competition, so click here to find out how to enter before you dash off to your zither-room to compose.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) involves Claudia from Melbourne asking whether you can text the police rather than calling them. With all the cuts to public services, unfortunately the police have had to lay off their full-time team of interpreters waiting to figure out what you mean by HLP pls sum1 tryn2 mrdr me non-LOL srsly >:-O
If you still have proper command over vowels, send us a QUESTION for next week: deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Also, if you’re especially interested in what goes on around here, you can hear us being interviewed on the latest episode of Podcast Squared. We hope that the demystification of our Process doesn’t spoil AMT for you. If not, we’ll see you back here next Thursday.
Apropos of last week’s question about the water in Singin’ in the Rain, John writes in to tell us something which, in its own way, explains why the hosepipe ban might not pertain:
As a painter in theatre, I meet a lot of crew with many and varied stories about theatre, T.V. and rock stars. My friend Steve was a member of the crew of the touring version of Singin’ In The Rain which led directly to the West End revival; he is usually a reliable source, and tells me that one of the stars was such a massive cock that a part of the set-up in any new venue was for the amassed crew to meet in the fly tower to piss in the water tank.
The tour consisted of 64 dates of being pissed-on in the rain.
Readers, if you’re thinking of attending a watery stage show, do NOT sit near the front.
Do not get a job in the orchestra pit either; those poor guys are effectively working in a latrine.
Steve from Reading‘s eyes are bigger than his stomach:
I’m currently watching Man versus Food, an American show where a crazy man travels around the USA eating silly amounts of food or super spicy food and other such food based challenges set by restaurants.
My friends and I got to thinking, why have we never seen a challenge like “eat your entire weight in chicken wings and get on the wall of fame” over here in the UK? So answer me this: are there any such crazy eating-based challenges in the UK, and do you think you could complete them if there are?
In answer to the second question: no. Gluttonous as we are, we would be incapacitated by tears of shame well before we had cleared our plates.
As for the first question: readers, do you know of any competitive eating challenges in the UK? Go to the comments to inform us, then Steve can start on the rigorous training required for each.
There’s an ocean between us and Alexandra in Wisconsin. An ocean of yeast extract:
I’ve always been a fan of British culture, so I went to my local World Market (a speciality store that sells imported goods of all kinds) and bought the biggest jar of Marmite I could get my hands on.
I took it home, and toasted an (English) muffin in anticipation, mouth watering at the deliciousness that was to soon come my way. After all, England has given us so many wonderful things: David Bowie, to name just one.
OH MY DEAR SWEET GOD IT WAS THE WORST TASTING STUFF EVER. I tried it on bread, crackers, muffins… I tried dipping celery in it… to say this is an acquired taste is a huge understatement. How can you eat this stuff?
I’m Marmite-ambivalent, so if you need suggestions for how to eat your Marmite, I direct you to this three-course Marmite menu by Gary Rhodes (non-Brits wondering who he is: a spiky-haired celebrity chef, slightly less annoying than Guy Fieri). And here is a whole website devoted to Marmite cookery. Marmite Victoria sponge? Excuse me while I choke on my own vomit.
Also, a tip: you may be spreading it too thickly. Try a little less Marmite. If you still find it repugnant, try even less Marmite – ie zero Marmite. Problem solved.
On the subject of unfortunate postal dispatches as contemplated in AMT216, Garry from Sussex has a tale from which we learn to exercise caution when recycling stationery:
As an art student I agreed to be a nudey photo model for a fellow student. Soon after she gave me a sheet of contact prints in a large brown envelope.
Some time after that I was applying for a job – back in the days when they asked you to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to put your application form in.
I was at first a little nonplussed when I was sent an application form with a sheet of pictures of me with my knob out – how on earth did they get them? I thought.
Don’t seem to recall getting the job.
I’m surprised – I thought we were always being told to make our CVs and covering letters stand out! As it were.
This week, we face a big, big question: should Singin’ In The Rain be BANNED, for flouting the hosepipe ban as the rest of southern England shrivels under drought conditions? Start drafting your petitions whilst you listen to AMT217:
Today we talk of:
child beauty pageants
impressing Jeremy Paxman
reverse cat psychology
sunburnt tattoos
Prince Philip’s barbecue
theatre curtains
mortar boards
chinos for hipsters
milky special effects
and the managing director of Little Chef.
Plus: one of Olly’s early theatrical productions nearly brought the house down – literally, with fire; Helen recaps her late granny’s theory about what really happened to Princess Diana after that fateful night in Paris; and Martin the Sound Man is dissed by Olly for being a professional cleverclogs. Bullying doesn’t stop after school, you guys.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from Tony from Worksop about whether we’ve ever killed or maimed a celebrity. Look, Tony, the evidence is purely circumstantial. They’ll never be able to convict us on it.
While, as a precaution, we book our passage to Rio under false identities, you should get on with sending us your QUESTIONS: send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Before we go, here are a couple of other things for your entertainment: Helen just appeared on Charlie Brooker’s So Wrong It’s Right, with Graham Linehan and Matthew Crosby; and Olly’s cat Coco should imminently be appearing on Channel 5’s Live With Fern Britton. Click here to read the extraordinary correspondence which ensued after last week’s show. And since we’ve almost arrived at Jubilee weekend, treat yourself to the Answer Me This! Jubilee, which is better than the Jubilee proper because you don’t have to sit through a whole solo set by Gary Barlow or be jostled for eight hours whilst you wait on the banks of the Thames for a glimpse of the Queen on a boat. Which might be worthwhile, if she does this.
It’s time for home spa treatment tips from Mel in Melbourne:
You may have read on various blogs about softening the skin on the bottom of your feet with shaving cream and Listerine.
I haven’t, Mel, I haven’t! I must be reading the wrong blogs. Help me learn.
You cover your feet with shaving cream. Then mix half Listerine and half hot water, soak flannels in this liquid then wrap up your feet and relax for half an hour.
This sounded ridiculous but I gave it a try and to my astonishment it worked. So answer me this – why does this work?
Scientists of footskin and/or alternative uses for toiletries, please go to the comments and deliver your conclusions. I’d just expect one’s feet to be softer if you soak them in any warm liquid for half an hour. NB never try the soup round at my house.
We can infer that our next questioneer Paul was waiting so long for his doctor’s appointment, he finished all of the 8-year-old copies of You magazine and Gardeners’ Almanac, and had to occupy his mind with other concerns:
Whilst at the doctor’s today I heard a woman explain to her child (hope it was her child – otherwise she was a really posh kidnapper) that the waiting room we were in at Medical Suite 2 was called a suite because it was a collection of rooms and not because it was tasty to eat.
Answer me this: what has a collection of rooms or music got to do with a sugar-based confection? Why are sweets called ‘sweets’ and how does the word relate to ‘suite’, if indeed it does?
Indeed it does not, aside from being a homophone. ‘Sweet’ descended from the Old English ‘swete’, which came from the Latin ‘suavis’ meaning pleasant. Because sweets are pleasant to eat, right?
Meanwhile ‘suite’ is nicked from the French ‘suite’, which means a room or set of rooms. As to why that is the case, I’m sorry to say that etymology in French is far beyond my capabilities.
Just listening to AMT216 regarding receiving something meant for someone else. My wife and I bought a house just over a year ago. We paid for Royal Mail to redirect our post from the old place to the new one; however the people we bought the new place from didn’t.
As they had moved only a few streets over to a bigger house, and we are nice people, we dropped off the unwanted mail to them. Until last week when we received two brown envelopes that had not been sealed.
Out of these two envelopes dropped four DVDs with very explicit porn pictures on them.
Answer me this: should we i) casually post these discs without saying anything to them, ii) make a big song and dance about them because my 4-year-old son could have picked them up and it would have caused all kind of questions from him, or iii) as they were addressed to the husband, give them to the wife as he’s a sex-starved idiot who can’t cover his tracks and she might take the hint he has ‘specialist’ needs?
You forget iv) keep them for your own ‘specialist needs’.
I’d opt for the first solution of non-comment, because I don’t see the benefit to you of intruding further into the private life of a couple you barely know. After all, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation – LoveFilm may simply have got their order wrong.
Last week, Olly bemoaned the apparent bias towards the faces of ordinary boring children in the photoframe on the desk on Channel 5’s Live With…. And when Olly Mann bemoans, the world sits up with a start and pays attention! We were thrilled and astonished to receive the following email from The Live With… Team:
Thanks so much for mentioning Channel 5’s “Live with….” on the podcast last week.
Unfortunately you’re wrong that we only have babies as our face in the frame – we’ve had men and women of all ages, and a number of dogs. But we have never had a cat – so if you’d like to send us a photo of Coco, we’d be delighted for her to be the first.
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
We’ll find out which day you need to tune in to Live With… Fern Britton later this week to see the inaugural cat-in-the-frame moment.
This week, we wonder at the morals of fairy tales. You know, the stupid underlying ‘meaning’ that spoils the fun of a far-out fictional confection, and ensures that kiddies absorb some very dubious life lessons. There are probably some very dubious life lessons in AMT216, but at least we’re not pretending we have any morals.
Plus: Olly would like Aesop’s Fables to be more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book; Helen is the Sookie Stackhouse of AMT; and Martin the Sound Man gets quite emotional about the tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker. Thankfully he recovered sufficiently to launch a contest for under-18 songwriters, which you can find out about by clicking here.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from a couple of chaps on their way to Alton Towers. Cue a blast of Mann Rage directed at theme park rides that blatantly used to be other theme park rides. Oh God, why dost thou torment him thus?
What is not a torment is asking us a QUESTION! (Though reading some of them is a torment for us.) Send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave a voicemail on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
And assuming the elves will step in to finish off our chores, we will see you again next week for AMT217.
We get many questions about weddings; they are a mine of problems. Such as the one suffered by our next questioneer, who wishes to remain anonymous:
I have recently been invited to the wedding of a friend from university. We haven’t really spoken much over the last couple of years, for various reasons, but we were, previously, very close.
The wedding invitation came with a request that I bring with me some cake to add to their wedding supply, which I found odd, given the not-spoken-much thing, but never mind, I enjoy baking.
Answer me this: on the basis of the invitation, plus my expected assistance in supplying said wedding with cake, is it acceptable for me to reply asking that I get a plus one? (It should be possible as I know others who are turning down the invitation.) My friend has met my boyfriend a couple of times, briefly, so it wouldn’t be like I’d be bringing a stranger, but it would give me some sane back-up in yet another wedding.
Also, if I take cake, I’m excused from present-buying, right?
Before you make your official acceptance, call or email your friend asking whether you can bring your boyfriend. Though it may seem to you that your boyfriend can take the place of one of the non-attenders, your friend may have budgeted the wedding according to an expectation that a proportion of invitees would not be able to come.
Or, he might not have invited your boyfriend outright because, not having seen much of you recently, he might not have known whether you were still together, and didn’t want to stir up something painful if you weren’t.
Or maybe he just doesn’t like your boyfriend.
By the by, I think the cake thing is quite nice! It means you get to eat cakes that are much tastier than wedding cake, which is nobody’s idea of a tasty cake. But, if you really want to stir the pot, Cake Wrecks has plenty inspiration.
Answer Me This! Podcast 