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.
I’ve been lucky enough to spend a few weeks in the same beach house used by Russell Brand in the film (the Turtle Bay Resort in Hawaii) and I can confirm that although their receptionists were helpful and efficient, they were either men or more ‘traditionally Hawaiian’ in shape. In fact the reception shown in the film was a temporary and much smaller fake one plonked next to the hotel’s hugely overpriced jewellery store.
I wonder what Phil was doing there for ‘a few weeks’. Perhaps recovering from being dumped by Kristen Bell and wondering whether his puppet Dracula musical might get him any new ladies.
We always enjoy hearing the tricks deployed by food stylists – yacht varnish on the turkeys, ice cream made of mashed potato – so if any of you readers are food stylists, please apply your professional expertise to this question from Amy from York:
Is it true that in food adverts they place a steaming hot tampon behind the plate of food to make it look as if the food has just come out of the oven and is piping hot?
Many, many, many of you have written to find out whether Michael the archer from AMT186 made it into Team GB to do archery at the London 2012 Olympics.
It is with great disappointment I am writing to you to tell you that I have failed to make the GB archery team for this summer’s Olympic Games.
It was a close battle but even with the entertainment you gave me, I was only able to get 4th, just outside of the team of three. So I will be spending the summer as Olympic reserve and hoping none of my teammates “fall down any stairs”.
So answer me this: have I wasted my money, career, time and life in this endeavour? If I have, it does not feel like it to me 🙂
It is good you feel that way, and that you can still smile about it! To us – people who will never ever be anywhere close to qualifying for any reserve Olympic team (at least not until ‘eating the largest number of dim sum in one sitting’ or ‘scooting a swivel chair across an uncarpeted floor’ become official events) – your achievement is already very impressive.
We’re really, really sorry, but after listening to Answer Me This! Episode 215, there’s a strong chance you will have an LMFAO song stuck in your brain, and it will make you want to stick a straw in your ear, suck that brain out of your head then spit it down the drain. But, hopefully the rest of the podcast doesn’t have that effect on you.
Today we mention:
Annie Hall
Joey Barton
the future of pubic hairstyles
Jessie J vs. indifferent radio professionals eating dinner
Will.I.Am vs. Simon and Garfunkel
‘Party Rock Anthem’ vs. ‘The Birdie Song’ Quentin Crisp Olly’s uncle
frigid North Hertfordshire
the scary Dalai Lama
the sexual misuse of animals
and the man with the box on his head.
Plus: Olly theorises upon why footballers sport such ridiculous barnets; Helen does not like her toast done on one side; and sadly we don’t have video footage of Martin the Sound Man’s first ever viewing of ‘Sexy and I Know It‘, but if we did, it would be right up there in the video commentary canon alongside this.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a two-course feast of questions: firstly one from Hannah about currywurst, then for pudding a question from Sammy in Falkirk about pineapple. We hope this combination does not give your ears indigestion.
If you want more ear-food next week, please send us a QUESTION: deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
There’s a new hot trend amongst AMT listeners: broken legs! Lynne from Doncaster started it:
I broke my leg on the 4th of April 2012, well I actually broke my tibia and fibula clean in half. I had an operation to fix it where they inserted a metal rod down my tibia bone and fixed it into place with two screws at the bottom of my leg and two screws underneath my knee.
The physiotherapist sent me home with a leaflet, which says that part of my physio is to clench my buttocks together and release. Answer me this: how does clenching my bum cheeks together and releasing them, fix my terribly broken leg?
You can’t reasonably expect a buttock-clench to knit together broken bones! My guess would be that it is to keep those muscles from completely atrophying while your leg is out of action, and maybe also something to do with blood flow? If you are a physio reading this, please do enlighten us in the comments, for you are wise in the mysteries of recuperation.
Chiara should prepare to clench her buttocks for medical reasons too:
I am currently writing to you from my hospital bed – on Friday a car drove straight into my on my bike, snapping my tibia and fibula clean in two, puncturing the skin. Big owee.
When they operated on me on Friday they put a rod in my tibia, but no cast, so that I was standing on crutches 28 hours later – modern medicine is really quite miraculous!
Answer me this – What is the rod in my leg made of?
Doctors/surgeons/manufacturers of metal implants, please tell us of what Chiara is made. I believe she and Lynne are now technically cyborgs, so we have to answer their questions to keep them sweet, lest they rise from their convalescence couches and go all Terminator on us.
In case you were wondering how fares Kris from Durham from last week’s episode, he has written to update us on how his ex-girlfriend continues to take advantage of him:
Last week she said the animal rescue she worked for needed help with posters for an event as their graphic designer had dropped them last minute. Guess which bloody muggins went and did the work! ME. OK, it was for “Charidee” and it saves little dogs’ and cats’ lives, but you’re right – she’s being a twat.
She even said “This is really fucked up, isn’t it? That I keep asking you for advice on him and all that jazz?” I’m aware it’s beyond cretinous of me to think that this gentleman (who she’s already expressing concerns over, due to his lack of texting in between their dates) has no future and that realistically I can and should try to win her back?
I don’t want to get all Romeo and Juliet on things, but I genuinely love her, it was just a bumpy patch and long distance is a twat at the best of times. Truth be told, we’d discussed the future, and she was drunk.
I’ve genuinely no idea what to do?
We already told you what to do, Kris: CUT OUT THIS SELFISH BITCH. She’s happy to keep stringing you along while she’s exploring other options; she has already shown gross insensitivity in regaling you with tales of her sexual exploits with somebody else; and now she’s also taking advantage of your professional skills for free! Why why why why WHY would you want to win back this prize piece?
Tough love time, Kris – here’s what you have to do:
i) stop answering her calls and emails;
ii) give yourself some time to grieve for the relationship, without her popping up all the time to ruin your progress with learning to live without her;
iii) get some self-respect;
iv) send her an invoice for the posters.
has receptionists as attractive as actress Mila Kunis.
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