Our NEW SERIES starts on 26th May.
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Episode 175 feels like a lifetime ago to us, but stirring in the depths of memory is something to do with partwork magazines and who the hell buys them and at what lifetime outlay etc etc…you remember, right? Well, anonymous newsagent has been in touch to confirm the financial and emotional devastation they wreak:
I work in a newsagent’s, and the tragic fact about those partwork magazines is that some people do genuinely buy all of them. One man has bought more than 120 of The Pocket Watch Collection (£7.99 fortnightly), with no sign of the end of the collection as yet. The poor old man can’t stop buying them, as he wants the whole set, and has spent about a grand on them altogether so far! Poverty befalls all who purchase, but he does have a rather large collection of watches now, if that’s any consolation.
With some, they extend the initial run half way through, so will cost way more than originally expected and run for even longer than the 80 or so expected, or just stop making them a few issues in if they’re not making enough money.
Now I have betrayed the secrets of my trade, I am prepared to be clapped in irons and slung out of the print media selling community.
Don’t worry, you still have chewing gum and jazzmags to fall back on. As it were.
Our new series starts on 26th May.
Click HERE for some lovely free audiobooks
and click HERE to catch up on episodes of Answer Me This!
Watch your step with this email from Sam from Preston:
ive attached a photocopy of the X-ray I had done yesterday after I managed to fall over and stand on a bag of wool and get a crochet hook rammed into my heel.
that's gotta hurt
Eurgh! All my crafting accidents have been the result of reckless scissor-handling or freehand scalpel-work; I never realised a wealth of danger lurked at the head of a crochet hook. Sam continues:
Please answer me this: what’s the stupidest/most embarrassing thing you have done that required medical treatment?
I think we’re all familiar with Olly’s not-even-doing-any-skiing skiing accident (if not, revise AMT173). Everyone else may go to the comments and tell us of their own non-fatal stupid accidents, because it’s entirely fine to exploit other people’s pain for our entertainment.
Essentially, though, the only real use for balloon modelling is for entertaining children at parties, which I’m pretty sure I’d loathe with a passion!
So answer me this: which skills have you learnt and become good at, but which at the end of the day are completely and utterly pointless?
Erm, ALL of them? For example, a few years ago I made a giant inflatable Boggle set. It was a real feat of engineering, but to what end? I can also touch-type pretty fast, but nobody ever asks me to.
Readers, make us feel not so alone in our uselessness: in the comments, boast of your mad skills which are at the same time magnificent and lacking in any proper purpose. Learning for learning’s sake is nothing to be ashamed of. (Unless you spent twelve years of your adult life learning to juggle matchsticks, which would prove no solace when your marriage collapses and your children refuse to speak to you.)
Our NEW SERIES starts on 26th May.
Click HERE for some lovely free audiobooks
and click HERE to catch up on episodes of Answer Me This!
We’ve only gone and bloody done it.
After years of being the Sony Awards’ equivalent of Todd Martin, last night we were properly sodding thrilled to win the GOLD Radio Academy Award for Best Internet Programme.
Well, I was thrilled. Helen and Martin were still on honeymoon, driving through Montana. Martin had food poisoning from eating some bison, apparently. But then they heard the news. And they were thrilled too.
Here I am getting the award from renowned podcast fanatic Kelly Hoppen. Rumour has it she once listened to Stephen Fry’s Podgrams, and thought it was adequate.
You can sometimes tell if you’ve won by assessing how far your table is from the stage (there are actually ALCOVES UNDER THE STAIRS for real losers). This year we were about two-thirds of the way back, so no clues there. We were seated with some very lovely people from Central FM Scotland, and they won a Gold Station of the Year award, so there was a lot of champagne flowing.
What with us producing the show in the Zaltzwick sitting room – and thus not having a Station Manager, Event Co-Ordinator, Publicist and that kind of thing – I was sitting with my girlfriend, mum, dad and grandma. I think I am the only person to ever bring my family to the Sony’s, apart from Ashley Tabor. (That’s a radio industry joke, hark at me!)
I don’t remember much about going to collect the award from Kelly and Chris Evans, because it was all over very quickly indeed. Helen had written me a speech to read out on her behalf, which she’d sealed in an envelope on the day of her wedding. The idea of opening it on stage for the first time petrified me, because obviously I assumed she would casually employ a clever word I would fail to pronounce or understand, so I couldn’t help but open it at home yesterday afternoon. It simply said, ‘IS NOW A GOOD TIME TO TELL YOU I HAVEN’T GOT YOU A BIRTHDAY PRESENT?’.
Yes, Helen. Now is a very good time.
Here’s what I actually said:
The Judges statement said: “The presenters of this podcast demonstrate a strong rapport that sometimes traditional radio struggles to replicate. The judges found this podcast engaging, warm and funny; with creative imaging and a strong connection to the community of listeners.” Which was jolly nice of them.
There are, I think, two groups of amazing people we need to thank.
First: our hugely talented group of friends who have supplied us with brilliant jingles, idents and sketches over the years (that would be the ‘creative imaging’ the Judges are referring to).
And Second? YOU. More than almost any other show I can think of, Answer Me This! is all about our listeners, and the incredible feedback and questions you supply us which makes up our content. If it weren’t for people like you, downloading our show every week, telling your friends and spreading the word, we’d have given up long ago.
So, thanks so much for sticking with us for the past four years. This Award is dedicated to you.
A conundrum of fittitute now from Josh from Washington DC:
Is it better for your ex’s new boy/girlfriend to be:
Fitter than you or
Less fit than you?
If they’re fitter than you, it’s depressing because they’ve moved up in the world. If they’re less fit than you, it suggests that they have low standards, which in turn reflects badly on your own fitness.
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All the single ladies, all the single ladies – put your hands UP woah-oh-oh if you think you might like to go on a date with Tom, who writes:
During one inebriated night, I foolishly joined a dating agency which required a fairly reasonable, though still a little hefty, 6-month subscription fee.
I am not in any sort of situation, emotionally or practically, to be in a relationship, casual or otherwise, and have to put this random act down to drunken tomfoolery.
I currently haven’t got a steady job, am pretty much broke, need to lose two stone, live with my mum and I am 35.
I do plan on sorting myself out soonish, but don’t really want another girlfriend yet and given my situation and immature tendencies don’t think that any lady in her right mind would be interested. However, I also don’t want to waste the money I have spent signing up to this stupid dating site.
So answer me this – should I lie like a (storm) trooper on my character profile to see if I can get a nibble and hopefully, by the time it comes to meet up with them, some of the lies would be true? Or should I concentrate on sorting my life out before getting back out there on the desperate dater’s scene (and make sure my credit card, laptop and whiskey are never in the same room again)?
It’s possible that a little lady-fun would give you the impetus to start sorting out your situation, Tom. But readers, what do you think? Go to the comments to sort out Tom’s live – its romantic side, of course, but also professional, domestic and pastoral. And don’t mince your words, because he needs the fillip.
I’ve been waiting to blog about it because I was waiting for the right photos. These beauties were taken by Rick, Helen’s brother, and only emailed to me today. He was lugging around a camera the size of a labrador at the wedding, so I’d suspected they would be worth waiting for.
Aw.
It was a really charming event, perhaps the loveliest wedding I’ve ever been to, and VERY Helen and Martin. They were super-relaxed – greeting guests as we arrived at the service, rather than making a grand entrance, and cracking jokes throughout – and the grub was a slap-up home-made afternoon tea, washed down with a LOT of pink champagne (they’re not drinkers). Oh, and a fish and chip van at 11pm. And a cheeseboard. Awesome.
The ceremony was al fresco, in a beautiful park in Kent (alongside a craft fair and fete – and even a meet-and-greet with celebrity porkchop PEPPA PIG!), but luckily the rain held back for the ceremony, despite hilarious and dramatic thunderclaps as the happy couple made their way down the aisle. Well, if you are going to have a resolutely secular wedding at Easter time, God will make His feelings known…
Back at the Zaltzman family pile, there were cracking tributes by various folks including friends-of-the-podcast Alex Thomas and Andy Zaltzman, but, it must be said, Helen and Martin’s dads pulled off the funniest speeches of the night.
Helen and Martin are now on honeymoon somewhere in the States, no doubt listening to discordantly intellectual audiobooks as they speed down the highway, stopping frequently to photograph funny road signs, or further snapshots of Martin sucking yet another ice lolly that looks a bit like a penis. They claim not to yet know what their new surname will be, but for me – as for all true AMT! fans – they will be Forever Zaltzwick.
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Here’s an unusual question from Ben from Geelong:
How do I stop my son from saying “fork”?
I don’t want to slow his development. He is 18 months old and this is one of his first words,and when he says it, it sounds like “FUCK”. And he says it A LOT!!!!! In shopping centres, down the street, in the park…………..I’m getting strange and disapproving looks. Any ideas?
Aside from stuffing a sock into his mouth to silence him (but not curb the disapproving looks from passers-by)? No! I have no idea how to make a child do anything. Their dominion mystifies and intimidates me in equal measure.
If you are less pathetic than I in the field of child discipline and language-cleaning, please go to the comments and help Ben silence that little non-pottymouth.
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We’ve got weddings on the brain this week, so let’s have a look at this question from Mark from St Neots:
On the anti-clockwise M25 just before you get to the M1 (Junction 21) there is a bridge where someone has painted onto it:
“Louise. I love you. Marry me. Bob”
Did Louise say yes, and is this a romantic way to propose or not?
ATTENTION TEAM AMT! Answer us these*:
Is one of you Louise?
Is Bob among your number?
Or do you know Bob and/or Louise?
If the answer to any of the above questions is ‘yes’, tell us: are Louise’n’Bob married? To each other? Happily? Or has Louise never forgiven him for proposing on a slab of concrete?
And do graffiti and the M25 say romance?
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Josh from Yorkshire seems to have found himself in an early Neil LaBute film, or one of those Shakespeare plays without any of the unfunny comedy scenes in it. Read the rest of this entry »
Remember AMT175? Nor do we! But fortunately Nick from Tadley does:
Helen questioned how you would start learning parkour. Olly suggested starting on small walls or some other thing, which is partly true. However, recently, there are actual sessions in gyms which dedicate themselves to this. How else would people learn how to kick the moon or corkscrew? Also, it’s great fun just chucking yourself from a high platform into a foam pit and landing like some kind of ninja!
Excellent! If Olly ever feels like dislocating his other shoulder, we’ll sign him up.
Our most recent podcast also provoked Cat from London to write in:
You asked whether you should tell someone if their fly was undone. I was on the tube once, getting off at Kings Cross, and for ages I agonised over this question: to my side I could see right into a lady’s top (not that I wanted to, I am a straight female).
When I finally decided that she probably would appreciate the sisterhood of telling her about it, I said, “Excuse me, your…” only to realise her earphones were in and I had to repeat myself (without embarrassing her in front of the man near us).
So I just gestured to my own bust area with a panicked look on my face, and pointed at her button. Luckily she smiled and laughed in embarrassment and did it up, and that was that. Job well done.
A crisis averted – with mime! If only they were all so easily solved.
