We’ve had a couple of bits of feedback on some slightly older episodes of AMT. Firstly, Stevie-Rhiannon and Tyler in Calgary pipe up:
During episode 207 you answered a question about the fountains in Trafalgar Square.
The pennies thrown into the water at “Its a Small World” in Walt Disney World are donated to the Make a Wish foundation and are cleaned out every six months. We both worked at EPCOT last year and have heard that the last amount gathered was over $1,000,000.
That is a very impressive and heart-warming fact! What a rare combo. However, Disney must somewhat benefit from the Make a Wish foundation, seeing as almost all the wishes are to go to Disney. I bet Disney also have stakes in a swimming-with-dolphins centre, just so they make a clean sweep.
Jessica from Launceston has a comment upon a longer-ago episode:
Do you remember episode 193 when you talked about “I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter”? Anyway, I was browsing the interwebs and found this:
I hope you find this significantly diverting.
Diverting indeed! I’m very taken by the idea of Schrödinger’s butter, although I’d worry that when I opened lid I’d find a dead cat inside.
There’s been a lot of talk of Mexican food lately on Answer Me This!. We make no apologies for this. It is a magnificent cuisine. Episode 213 continues the theme, as we chomp on the history of nachos; click below to chomp on the episode:
Plus: Olly apparently spends a lot of time looking at horses’ privates; Helen concocts an unusual analogy for Oliver Cromwell and the, er, Roundheads; and Martin the Sound Man somehow enjoys the company of this dickhead, who is likely to be cited as the co-respondent when Helen files the divorce papers.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from Harriet in York, concerning the self-replicating Magnum Infinity. Soon to be rebranded the Magnum Metaphor after an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority.
There is additional noise for you to enjoy this week courtesy of Martin and the FIFTIETH episode of his Sound of the Ladies podcast. It’s a song about bears or Creation Records or something – click here to check it out.
Then, formulate a QUESTION and send it to us, as a voicemail to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
I have a female friend that has a boyfriend, but things with him are not going very well and they surely will break up soon. I really like my friend but I don’t want to look like I’m just waiting for her to break up to ask her out.
So answer me this: how can I confess to this girl without looking that I was with her all this time just waiting for her to break up with this boyfriend?
Does it actually matter that it looks that way? Surely the greater problem is the fact that she is still with her boyfriend. While you may be confident that they are on the rocks, that does not mean she is actually single, and/or open to new offers.
However, you’re clearly going to steam in and proposition her anyway, so I have no counsel for you. Readers, if you would be so kind in my stead, please go to the comments and coach Juan for this moment.
Wedding planning! So fraught. What if the band doesn’t match the chair-bows? Who has to sit next to racist Aunty Denise? And now Ross faces a problem that Queen Victoria didn’t have to consider prior to her nuptuals. He says:
I’m getting married in December and my girlfriend (we don’t use the ‘f’ word) and I both want quite a relaxed, non-traditional wedding that’s fun for us and our friends. However, I think some of her plans might have gone too far that route so please answer me this: should I let her book the bouncy castle that she wants for our reception?
I’m firmly in the ‘no’ camp because the men will be in suits, the women in dresses, they’ll all be hammered and I don’t want to have to clear vomit off a bouncy castle.
Also it’ll be December, and anyone who has ever bounced on a bouncy castle covered in rain and icicles knows THAT IS WHEN BROKEN NECKS HAPPEN.
Now, I’m all in favour of fun at weddings – everyone at mine thought that sitting mock Maths A-Level papers between the dinner and the dancing was a neat idea! – but I agree with Ross’s qualms about how this might not be the optimal type of fun. For a bunch of adults. Formally dressed. Who have been drinking for six hours already.
Instead I’d recommend diverting the bouncy castle funds towards the cheeseboard. The cheeseboard at my wedding was EPIC. Ask anybody who was there (apart from the two vegans).
In the interests of democracy, however, I invite you readers to vote:
Ishbel from Kinross-shire is able to shed some light upon last week’s question about why Agas are so miraculous:
I grew up with an Aga. I realise that makes it sound like throughout my childhood it loved and fed me like a mother. This is accurate. There’s two hot plates and two ovens. Top oven is cooking central, bottom oven is cooler and heats plates, slow cooks meringues, dries kindling. You name it.
What you probably wouldn’t name is this next story. My friend’s grandpa was born at home, as was the wont of people a century ago. He was premature and seemed to be stillborn. The doctor had to tend to his dying mother and gave the dead baby to his granny to dispose of. She was ever the Victorian optimist and fed the baby brandy, wrapped him in cloths and put him in the bottom oven of their Aga, WITH THE DOOR CLOSED and looked after him there for A WEEK. When the doctor returned to check on the mother, the granny showed him the surviving baby in the oven and the doctor fainted. Said baby went on to live to nearly one hundred years old.
I believe that the young Australian lady will agree that this story quashes any reservations that she had about how boring Agas are. Maybe now she can ask her friends if they intend to use theirs to nurse back to life undead babies.
Gosh! Now I’d like to venture forth a new theory: that Jesus Christ was not laid to rest in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, but in the warming oven of an Aga. Of course the gospels changed ‘cast iron enamel door’ to a large stone, just to make it sound a bit more Biblical.
You recall David from AMT212, the man who I advised against sending his crush a fake drunken text confessing his emotions? Here’s the next installment of his story:
In the end I didn’t send a soberly-made drunk text that I later regretted, mostly in part due to Helen’s accurate accusation that that would make me a dickhead. No. Instead I managed to send an actual drunk text in which I managed to simultaneously remind him that he was smarting from a recent breakup and also that I am apparently a bit of a loser.
He took it remarkably well, which only made it worse when I managed to send him a second drunk text not two nights ago saying almost exactly the same thing, except this time he didn’t reply. So basically…shit.
Answer me this: what should I do now? Pursue him one more time? Or learn to know when I’m beaten (albeit by my own idle thumbs)?
Secondly, send him a brief SOBER email apologising for the drunk texts, explaining that you were nervous because you really like him, and then ask him out. On a date. A date for coffee or ice-cream or ANYTHING WITHOUT BOOZE IN IT. At this point you appear to have nothing to lose, so you might as well be honest about your feelings, and in doing so hopefully make some amends.
If he still does not respond, then you’re going to have to deploy your radar to find a new stealth gay. Unless readers have any better ideas? Go to the comments and help out David, and please, do not type whilst under the influence.
The unofficial theme of Answer Me This! Episode 212 is arousal. The arousal of certain men (it is usually men) by Viagra. The arousal of certain women (it is usually women) by Agas. The arousal of passers-by by joggers’ firm buttocks. Prepare for frissons aplenty:
Plus: Olly pretends he’s glad he spent his teenage years yearning after girls rather than actually getting to touch one; Helen manages to draw parallels between School of Rock and Before Sunrise; and after hearing the Aga was invented by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Martin the Sound Man sharpens his pencil and begins designing the next aspirational kitchen machine. Start saving up for his £3000 cast iron dishwasher, available soon in a range of Boden-compatible colours.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) concerns the distinction between The Hunger Games and Man Versus Food. It’s pretty simple, really: Adam Richman is Katniss Everdeen, and the giant burritos and twenty-egg omelettes represent the tributes from the other districts. It’s all very deep and meaningful, actually.
Don’t neglect to send us all your deep and/or meaningful QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and emails at answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Here’s a carefully-worded question from Jill from Atlanta, Georgia:
My granny hates the word “guts”. When I used to say it in front of her she screwed up her face into a big frown and made a groan of displeasure. I was surprised that hearing the simple word “guts” would produce such a strong reaction in anyone.
Helen, please answer me this: what words, if any, gross you out like “guts” grosses out my granny?
Sit down, Jill; this is going to take AGES. ‘Thang’. ‘Peeps’ (as slang for ‘people’, not the third person singular form of the verb ‘to peep’). ‘Slither’ when someone means ‘slither’. ‘Trendy’. ‘On trend’, for being just as bad as ‘trendy’ but with pretensions of seriousness. ‘Narnia’. I’m going to have to stop here as all these are inciting a visceral reaction of horror; but readers, head for the comments and bravely tell us the words that make you swallow back the brain-bile.
Often it is hard to strike up a conversation with somebody you don’t know very well, but not so when you meet Kieran from Bedford:
My dad is a gynecologist and most people seem to know this!
Answer me this: what should I say to someone when they tell me my dad delivered them?
Furthermore! What should I say to women who say they’ve been to see my dad?! The most recent was a dinner lady at school (just as you imagine!), which is not an image I want to imagine!
I’ve found myself in many an awkward situation due to this!
Yes – on your back with your pants off and your feet in stirrups, Kieran! Ho ho ho.
Readers, go to the comments, please, and give Kieran an all-purpose rejoinder with which he can deflect anybody who is keen to discuss how his father has stared up their intimate passages.
Anyway, Kieran, you should be proud of your father – he must be doing a great job, considering how eager these people are to talk about these matters upon which they would usually be so coy.
You don’t win a prize if you go to the comments to help answer this question from Jane from London, but she stands to win a job AND a wig. So help her out, please. She says:
I am a law student and am trying to qualify as a barrister. In order for this to happen I have to fill in lots of horrible application forms and attend lots of interviews in the hope that at the end of it someone will give me a wig, gown and a job. Most of the application forms are pretty standard and not a problem. But one or two of them have ‘joke’ questions, which frankly I don’t know how to go about answering.
For example, one says “If you were on Mastermind, what would your specialist subject be and why?” Answer me this: what the fuck are they looking for when they ask this question? As I don’t believe I’m located anywhere on the autistic spectrum, I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the wing-spans of birds, or of the Arsenal Football team 1976-1984, or similar! I’m a normal person with normal levels of interests and I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of anything!
So what do I do? Do I make up something that I think lawyer-y types would find impressive (and risk them asking me about it at interview). Do I just tell the truth? Or do I just have a stab at something I quite like, like ‘the works of Radiohead’ and leave it at that?
You are asking the wrong person, Jane: my Mastermind subject would be “How to poison job applications so you definitely won’t make it through to the interview stage”. Which, now I think upon it, is a sad waste of all that education I received. I should have been able to opt for “Anglo-Saxon pronouns” or “mid-period Henry James novels”, but you have to go for where your real strengths lie.
Plus: with his usual acumen, Olly proposes how to transform a psychotic neighbour problem into a business opportunity; Helen’s parents are being very thrifty with the internet, so that the IP addresses don’t all run out on their account; and we should clarify that Martin the Sound Man’s former job, which he describes as ‘making a man with a tube up his penis laugh’, was in the field of medical physics, not stand-up comedy for catheter fetishists.
Because one pot is never enough, there’s also more about Müller Yogurt on this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android), including their contribution to West Midlands athleticism, and their retrograde marketing wheezes. They might be 116 years old, but they’ve still got it.
If you haven’t already, please do take a punt on our Top 20 (!!) album, The Answer Me This! Jubilee, comprised of fifty-seven minutes of all-new material in anticipation of the Queen’s jubblies. You can also hear us on the latest episode of Ewan Spence’s ESC Insight podcast – no, that’s not ESC as in the Electrical Safety Council or the Essex Skating Club, but the Eurovision Song Contest. Click here to listen, and hear how we rated some of the songs vying for Eurovisionary Glory this year.
After all that, do remember to send us your QUESTIONS with which we will fuel this new series of AMT: aim voicemails at the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and emails at answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Time for a laugh/”I don’t get it. Oh! Ha” thanks to Tom in Glasgow:
When I was around eight years old, I overheard my mum telling her pal a quirky little joke that made them snigger a lot. The joke was:
Q: what do you do if an elephant comes through your window?
A: Swim.
I didn’t get the joke at all, but I always remembered it, and even told it to other people several times!
I am now in my thirties and actually have children of my own. I am ashamed to say that I have just reminisced in my brain about that puzzling day when I was eight and have just ‘GOT THE JOKE’ (hehehe snigger).
Answer me this: have you ever heard a joke and taken a long, or as in my case, a very fucking long time to get the punchline?
Oh, plenty! But luckily, in the podcast we can edit out the twenty-year pause.
Readers, please give us all a chuckle today by going to the comments and telling us a joke that we might not get for a couple of decades, or unless our mums explain it to us.
Answer Me This! Podcast 