My favourite jingle starts ‘I’m an Answer Me This! fan, I listen with my nan’.
I too want to be like Olly Mann – so answer me this Helen: is it true that you should never meet your heroes?
Perhaps you have had an encounter with someone you held in high esteem that was everything you expected it would be or was a crushing disappointment.
Well, if you should happen to meet Olly – perhaps browsing in John Lewis, or in the jacuzzi at a spa, or queuing at the local courthouse to contest a parking ticket – you definitely would not be disappointed (unless you have completely unrealistic expectations. He’s not really gold-plated, you know).
However, in all other cases, I counsel that you steer clear of these encounters. Even in the cases where your hero turns out to be just as delightful as you had hoped, you cannot escape the inequality of your situation: you know them, but they do not know you, and your only common ground for chitchat is how much you love them. This subject, by the way, will make for an awkward one-sided blithering conversation, which will make you cringe forever after – unless, of course, your celebrity crush is in fact very vain and adores talking about how amazing they are. In which case you might be able to indulge in a lengthy discourse, but it will result in the second scenario: disappointment, as you discover all too plainly that your idol is an arrogant twat.
So, in either case, you’re better off keeping your mental image of the person and not tarnishing it with horrible old reality. Our next questioneer Sophie did learn the hard way:
I recently went to a book signing, where I just quickly mumbled a question at Jarvis Cocker’s face. I now have a signed copy of his book, and a horrifically embarrassing memory to cherish.
To avoid such instances in the future, I was just wondering what is the correct etiquette for book signing events?
As aforementioned, there is no overcoming the fact that your relationship is unequal, and regardless of which well-chosen bon mots you deploy, you’re not going to emerge from the brief encounter as Jarvis Cocker’s new best friend. To minimise the awkwardness, prior preparation is essential: decide on ONE thing to praise out of Jarvis Cocker’s achievements – perhaps one of the less obvious highlights of his oeuvre? – and maybe throw in a compliment about his tie or suchlike. Give him a little guidance about what to inscribe in your book. Then LEAVE. Your dignity will thank you for eternity if you’re the one who breaks off the meeting (because you yourself are BUSY and IMPORTANT, and the world doesn’t stop turning just so everyone can worship you, JARVIS).
We will all be entertained if you, reader, would deign to share in the comments the tales of when you did not observe these guidelines and found yourself somewhere on the scale between mortified and slapped with a restraining order.
Andrew from Doncaster has a quandary about what to do in nine days’ time:
Last night I had a discussion with my other half about arrangements for New Year’s Eve, the problem being that he works in a pub and will be at work, and he wants me to sit and wait while he finishes, probably around 3am.
I can’t stand New Year’s Eve! So, answer me this: do I just go along with what he wants, so ending up bored and drunk sat waiting while he serves his customers, or do I just say that I will pick him up when he is finished?
The latter. If you go to his pub for the evening, he will be busy and ignoring you, while you prop up the bar with your simmering resentment.
But readers, what would YOU do? And, moreover, what WILL you be doing for New Year’s Eve? Climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge wearing a sequinned jumpsuit? Popping two Valium and sleeping right through it? Sitting in a prayer circle with your Mayan friends welcoming the end times? Let us know in the comments!
A few days ago we told you about Jason’s charity Christmas single, and as it turns out, another AMT listener is trying to raise funds with a song. Says Pete from Somerset:
A boy, Dave Hart, at my college recently committed suicide.
In memorial of him the “Do it For Dave” campaign was launched. His brother Steve Hart launched a song written by Dave for his GCSE music project, hoping to get it into the UK top 100. The song is titled “Home” and all profits are going to Papyrus UK, a charity that supports families of teenage suicides and also helps raise awareness in the hope that tragedies like this can become few and far between. The song is only 69p and will go towards a great cause. It is available on Amazon and iTunes.
What an eventful year 2011 has been. Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear terror! Sit-ins, protests, riots! So many revolutions, we can’t even choose a favourite! Charlie Sheen being a messed-up addict – but funny, so it’s fine! Osama Bin Laden’s dramatic exit! Pippa Middleton’s bottom!
Plenty has happened here at Answer Me This! too, so take a jaunt with us into the vale of the recent past: here is The Best of AMT2011, part 1.
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
What a lot we learnt this year! About such things as:
space tourism
coloured bathroom suites
William’n’Dorothy Wordsworth
celebrity cock-shots
ornamental jellyfish The Apprentice
Dodgy
‘Like a G6’
Dane Bowers’n’Jordan’s sex tape
John Travolta’s face vs. Nicolas Cage’s face
glass slippers
impulse bags
fake tan
undone flies Saturday Toilet
Olly’s lost night of Chico
doll hospital
phallic salad
phallic statues
phallic celebrity waxworks
phallic phalluses
and
Adult Milkybar.
There’s plenty more to come next week; but if you want plenty more AMT next year, then send us your QUESTIONS: deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
We have to say a huge thanks to everybody who has sent us something to celebrate our impending 5th birthday – we’ve already received many glorious cards, some rather exciting little presents, and enough sugary treats to push us over to the wrong side the Type 2 Diabetes fence! If you want to propel us into hyperglycaemic hyperdrive, or you want to show off your best penmanship, please dispatch a missive to:
Answer Me This!
PO Box 53587
London
SE19 9BQ
Thankyou for delighting us by post, listeners. You really are a tiptop bunch.
See you next Thursday, for the Best of AMT2011 part 2!
Young people today, they’re such hedonists! Check out the laaaaaaarge life of 22-year-old Chris from Basingstoke:
The Magic Faraway Tree is my favourite childhood book.
I mentioned this to my girlfriend (now fiancée) Sarah and I discovered that The Magic Faraway Tree was also her favourite childhood book! We spent all night talking about our love for all things Enid Blyton. One thing led to another… and I ended up reading it to her before we went to sleep that very night.
This has now turned into a regular occurrence for us, and I have been reading her Enid Blyton bedtime stories for over two years now.
So answer me this: is it weird for two adults to read children’s bedtime stories to each other before bed?
My oldest and dearest friend is a lady who(m) likes ladies. In fact, she likes a specific lady, and has for several years now – to the point that they have been planning children together for a while. It has been my pleasure to watch them get together and grow as a couple. For me, the warmth, generosity and acceptance they demonstrate is the epitome of a loving relationship, and something I have emulated since. Ever since they got together it’s struck me as unfair that they were unable to pursue the opportunities that other couples have been able to pursue, simply because they were hetero, such as marriage and a family.
About 4 years ago, they asked me how I might feel about helping them have a family by supplying some… man-seed. Given that I knew no couple better placed to raise a family, and that they were never going to be able to do it on their own, I agreed. We went through a long process of ensuring that all of us understood the nature of my role. Definitely not a father, or even father-like, figure and the importance of clear boundaries and roles, with mine being minimal and an “interested family friend” at most. Everyone understood that it’s best for everyone, not least the child, that I keep a well understood distance. Based on this, I made my… contributions, and they paid for the process of storage and eventually IVF. They have recently had the exciting news they were pregnant.
So here is my dilemma. I have since met a girl myself, and she is lovely. She has known about the situation since our second date, and was initially fine with it. However as our relationship has progressed – and we have moved in together recently – her attitude has changed. In fact, she’s had a few “meltdowns” about it. We have talked about being parents ourselves, and both of us are looking forward to it – though she has a keen awareness of her own biological clock.
Here is my question: in the above sentence, should I have used the pronoun “who” or “whom”? Also, is it unreasonable for me to expect my lass to see the situation as I do, and how might I help her understand that my feelings about my friend’s family bares no relation to whatever family we might have?
1) ‘Who’, of course, as it is the subject of the verb in that construction.
2) The child whose life you enabled is shortly to enter this world, and there’s nothing your girlfriend can do to stop it, short of infanticide. We cannot condone infanticide, so she has two legal choices: reconcile herself to the situation, or jump ship.
Readers, have you any ideas how she might go about reconciling herself, or how Steve can assure her that she is his number 1 lady and that their potential children will certainly survive having a half-sibling? Pray, go to the comments to help him out.
Wedding bells are ringing on three continents for Jo:
I’m an American living in Barcelona, teaching English, and next summer I’ll be marrying my Irish boyfriend. As most of my family live in Brazil or the States, we thought it would be a nice treat to have the wedding in Ireland to give people an excuse to travel and get to see a bit of this side of the world.
Since we’re not living in Ireland, we wanted to save ourselves the hassle of planning a big, fancy wedding from afar, and had originally planned on making it a really casual, simple affair: outdoors in someone’s backyard, fish and chips dinner, and out to a pub somewhere.
However, as more and more of our overseas friends/family have accepted invitations, my boyfriend has started to second-guess the plan. His feeling is that if people are going to travel from Brazil and California all the way to Belfast, they deserve a ‘proper wedding’ and not just some fish and chips from a pub. I see what he means, but am not sure about what type of etiquette should be followed in this situation…
So, answer me this:
Would it be in poor taste to ask people to travel halfway across the world to attend a casual wedding? Would either of you be annoyed if you flew to Brazil or California to a friend’s wedding only to find that you were only getting beans and rice or a burger for dinner?
Hells no! We’d assume we were being treated to ‘local colour’; even if we’d flown ten hours to be greeted by a buffet of frozen pizza, we’d suppose that to be the Uzbek wedding custom. What’s more, with a headful of jetlag we’d far prefer a simple knees-up to a debutante ball.
‘Poor taste’ doesn’t even come into it! Remember: the wedding is foremost for you and your husband-elect. Furthermore, you’re not forcing people to cross an ocean for the wedding; they are choosing to do so. Make it clear to them that they should expect a relaxed celebration, and they can decide for themselves whether or not that is worth their journey. From what we understand, a large proportion of Americans are in fact eager to rediscover the Irish roots they have decided they possess, so your family might even be using your nuptuals as an excuse for a genealogy field trip.
Throw the wedding you want, but make everybody happy by amping up the Irishness. As a safety net, force-feed everybody so much Guinness that they can’t even remember that you didn’t lay on a banquet of stuffed peacock and ruddy sugared almonds.
One question on last week’s episode struck a chord with Sam from Norfolk:
I am in almost exactly the same position as Matthew from the Wirral; I was with someone for 4 1/2 years, until she dumped me for another bloke in February of this year.
She was insistent that we stayed friends and so we gave it a go for a while. Although we have drifted apart over the last couple of months, I imagine that she may suggest meeting up, since we’ll both be at home for the festive period.
I am sorely tempted to ignore her to express my distaste for her actions but I don’t know if this is just acting childish and I should be able to be friends with her after 9 months.
I just wanted to show some solidarity with Matthew and perhaps gain some advice.
What more advice do you need, Sam, beyond Martin’s mum’s reverberating exhortation to “tell the drunken bitch where to go!”?
Unless you do feel genuinely friendly towards the infidel (and only friendly, with absolutely no traces of romantic yearning remaining), why bother? Meet up with some better friends over Christmas, ones who definitely didn’t want to be your friends just to assuage their guilt over ditching you for another chap.
Besides, all the successful ex-couples-who-are-now-friends of my acquaintance became so after a year or more of non-contact following the split; so if you really do want to be bezzie mates in the future, you’d do well this Christmas to barricade your door, screen your calls and do not listen to any Mud. Even though it is one of the best Christmas songs of all time.
Yeah! We’re celebrating big-style, because against all our expectations (and common sense), we bloody well made it to Answer Me This! Episode 200. As befits such a landmark, today’s podcast is a bumper edition, featuring some of our favourite people in the world. Hear:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
On the agenda of this special edition are subjects including:
World of Warcraft
bro code Toadie from Neighbours
glühwein
giant peppermills
Dean Martin: boob man
La Roux: lazy
Pamela Anderson the Beavis and Butthead reboot A Child Called It
AMTfans vs. puberty
paramedic studies vs. media studies
Lassie vs. Bagpuss
Olly’s junior business cards
Switzerland 4eva Armand Assante
Cadbury’s Chocolate Eclairs
Malibu’n’barbecue sauce The Three Musketeers panto
and
hot tubs.
Plus: Olly measures himself on the Frasier yardstick; Helen impeded her mother’s career (look, she never ASKED to be born, OK?); and at last we discover multitalented Martin the Sound Man’s weak spot – deficiency at Warhammer.
This week there’s an especially Big Bit of Crap on the App, wherein we learn: how to make a fake G&T; where dolls store their Christmas decorations; at what age you should not accept gifts of pants from your mother; what the hell DFS stands for; the benefits of child labour for a wedding reception; finding love at the kosher butcher’s; the perils of a brown rice diet; and seeing the PG Tips chimps live.
The app is available for iDevices or Android, but on this occasion, the Bonus Bit is available to all of you, smartphone or not; click here to download the MP3, or play this player:
There’s more! If you require some borderline-horrific visuals to accompany this episode, check out the Gallery of Munt.
We couldn’t have made it to 200 episodes without the affection and support of you listeners, so please give yourselves a pat on the back from us, especially if you are one of the legion who supplied us with QUESTIONS. If you aren’t, what are you waiting for? Send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
We’ll be back next week with the Best of AMT2011, part 1,
One of the problems which arose in interviewing our Special Guests for AMT200 is that those people were witness to our most hideous, embarrassing, shameful years. Worse, they have visual evidence.
AMT198‘s debate continues over what exactly qualifies a combination of carbohydrate and filling to be called ‘pie’. Robert from Bedford:
According to my old cookery teacher when I was 9-11 years old, a pie has a wet/moist filling and a pastry has a dry/non-runny filling.
I continue to be unenlightened. David complicates matters still further:
Just listened to your latest missive, and thought I would chip in with a definition of a pie. I fully agree with Rule 3 of the British Pie Awards:
“All Pies in all classes of the British Pie Awards must comply with being ‘a filling totally and wholly encased in pastry’. Entries which do not comply, e.g. lattice-topped, fruit-topped, potato-topped etc, will not be submitted for judging.”
I have nothing against Fish Pie or Shepherd’s “Pie” – tasty yes, Pie? No! Blackberry and Apple Crumble? Yum, Pie? No!
Oh, we won’t. We know that wars have been fought over the laws which govern Cornish Pasties.
ADDENDUM: when recording AMT200, Martin’s mum told us this interesting Pie Fact: that during the Second World War, fat was rationed so pie-lovers couldn’t make pastry. In its stead, they topped their pies with root vegetables, and in certain pies this habit stuck. Necessity is the mother of invention, as ever.
After last week’s discussion of dogs in church, listener Jennifer sent us a picture of the annual blessing of the animals at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in NYC on the feast of St Francis of Assisi:
And St Francis looks down from upon high and thinks, “Hmm…this wasn’t entirely what I expected.”
Answer Me This! Podcast 