In honour of the Answer Me This! book being officially (well, close) declared ‘one of the greatest pieces of toilet literature of all time‘, we’ve got an accidental toilet-reading theme running through Answer Me This! Episode 157. What does Jack Bauer read on the bog? Is Timmy Mallett’s How to be Utterly Brilliant or Kenny Everett’s Ultimate Loo Book the biggest star in the loobrary firmament? Why does Martin the Sound Man dream sweet dreams of lavatories? Find out all:
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)
This week, we amuse ourselves with:
the Mann Booker prize
Nightmare on Hygiene Street The Piano: The Musical
Gibson vs. Fender T3 vs. 3T
tarts vs. tarts
salesmanship vs. psoriasis
The Guardian Bedside Reader
martini-making machines
Autoglym
David McAlmont and Michael Nyman
the Nissan of the guitar world
the Captain Corelli’s Mandolin-branded backgammon set
hairy oil spills
No More Nails
bezoar
nut hamper
the Alcor Life Extension Foundation
parallel parking
and
the Strawberry Strumpet.
Plus: Olly has some dodgy plans for death row prisoners; Helen revolutionises bridal traditions with the help of Stilton; and Martin the Sound Man sold off his glorious ponytail for far less than its current market value. This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Jack, the 21-year-old undertaker in Uckfield, who feels uncomfortable with atheism in front of mourners and wanking in front of his cat. What a shy soul!
Now, if you’ve got time this evening (that is, Thursday 18th November), please do pop along to see us read bits from our book at Waterstone’s Gower Street. We kick off at 6pm sharp, but if you can’t make that, how about a rerun at noon on 26th November at Rough Trade East, huh? Come and have a little pre-lunch fun with us. There are some excellent bagel-shops a mere gherkin’s throw away.
Sam from Bournemouth has managed to email us a question at the same time as doing a big belm:
The other day a friend and mine were chatting, when I made a comment about dodos for whatever reason. She replied “Oh yeah, I love dodos, I saw one when I was 10.”
Yeah…she actually thought she saw a dodo when she was 10. Probing her to see if she had any other hilarious comments, she revealed that she thought the Swiss came from Wales because she once bought a Swiss roll there.
So, answer me this; have you ever been in a situation where someone says something so mind-numbingly retarded, that can’t even think of a way to reply?
I must admit, I was a touch dumbfounded when Olly said he didn’t know where the Pacific Ocean is. Bear in mind he had spent a recent holiday driving up the Pacific Coast Highway.
Everyone else: betray the brainfarts of your dear friends in the comments.
Calling all psychologists! Can you advise Dave in Bolton? He says:
I’m getting worried about my son Matt.
When eating, he insists on going through his meal in alphabetical order – Fish, Chips and Peas will be eaten as (C)hips, (F)ish and finally (P)eas. Curries and Risottos are divided into their sub component parts before consumption.
Is this normal teenage behaviour or the first signs of OCD?
You can test for OCD by pureeing all his meals to the extent that the various elements are indivisible. Teenage boys tend to be perennially hungry, so he’ll probably glug it down without a fuss; however if he sends it off to a lab to be chromatographically separated into its original constituents and then to the library for realphabeticising, he has a bit of a problem.
From your email, we can’t say for sure that Matt has OCD; It sounds like he might just be taking the fun of Alphabetti* and translating it to his other meals.
*But would that be filed under A for Alphabetti, or P for pasta? Blimey, this OCD business is hard.
I imagine quite a few of you have the same problem as Emily from Essex in the current Dark Economic Times. She writes:
I am currently one of the bazillions of university graduates who are unemployed at the moment. To make matters worse for myself, I stupidly decided to do a subject I enjoyed…English, renowned for its inability to get you a job. I’ve been trying to get into publishing but, seeing as the British Heart Foundation’s electrical shop recently rejected me, I don’t hold out much hope.
Because of my lack of money and the fact that I had to move back in with my parents after university, my social life has also taken a battering. I’m very bored and fed up and I can’t even ask for sympathy because it’s happening to lots of other people too.
So answer me this: What can I do to stop myself going mental and flipping out? I’ve already contemplated getting an addiction just for something to do. I had around twelve cups of tea yesterday. It’s a slippery slope.
Emily could take a tip from HM Prisons Service, who try to stop their inmates flipping out by making them do useful tasks such as the laundry, the cooking, the mailbag-stitching etc. You could become the foremost mailbag-stitcher of your generation, which would give you something of an income on Etsy.
Anyone else who has a decent plan for Emily instead of twiddling her thumbs until they drop off, tell us it in the comments.
Thanks to everyone who has already bought our book and/or reviewed it on Amazon. And thanks to all of you in advance for listening to Answer Me This! Episode 156:
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)
Amongst many other things, we consider:
the Augean stables
Green Shield Stamps
Miami Fried Chicken Gavin Bryars
home economics vs. cookery class
cowardice vs. gullibility
Sperm Wars
Littlewoods Index
Cerberus
The Shadows
peppermint creams
Gauls
Take your Child To Work Day
Jerry Yang and David Filo
scaredy chickens Hercules played by Mel Gibson
Richard Tompkins
Jules Leotard
Sarah Harding
and
heaven on Earth in Canada.
If that’s not enough, this week’s nugget of bonus content on the app, we marvel at the young Olly Mann’s love of theatrical PR. A wickle Cameron Mackintosh, how cuuuute! His parents must have been so proudconfused.
You know what would make us happy? YOUR QUESTIONS! Deliver them to us via the Question Line (0208 123 5877), Skype (our handle is answermethis), or email (answermethispodcast@googlemail.com). You know what else would make us happy? If you can pop along to one of our forthcoming book events, the first of which is 6pm Thursday 18th November at Waterstone’s Gower Street. You know what else would make us happy? A nice cup of tea. We’ll sort that out, while you work on the other two happiness-makers.
I just finished listening to episode 155 and have a story in response to Olly’s ‘Paedophile coach’ story.
In our School, we were on our way to our City Hall on a Coach. The Coach in question was stuck in traffic, and we found a sheet of paper. And an idea formed in our hormone-driven minds….
We decided to write ‘Hostage Situation’ on the paper, and tape it to the back window of the coach. To add effect, we made one unfortunate student place his bag over his head, making him look like a captive, making him face the drivers behind us, who in all seriousness looked a little bit shocked.
Just thought I’d share this with you, only because to us, it was fucking hilarious.
Thanks for sharing, James. Although we’re not sure a schoolbag over the head gives a suitably convincing ‘Abu Ghraib’ effect.
Cate in Glasgow has worked herself up into a bit of a tizzy:
I have just been asked on a date by a very nice boy, who is lovely, but not attractive. I have accepted because he was really nervous and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But if he asks me to be his permanent girlfriend, how can I tell him ‘no’, without hurting him, and still stay friends with him? Also, what if the date is really really awkward? What should I do? Also what were your first dates like?
So many questions! Firstly: it might be better to wriggle out of the date beforehand, as you going on it might raise his expectations unfairly and make your subsequent romantic rejection all the more painful.
Secondly, if you don’t want to be asked to be his permanent girlfriend, try to behave like a complete arsehole on the date and then he won’t want to ask. He won’t want to stay friends either, but such is the pickle you’ve got yourself into.
Thirdly: since you don’t want to go on it, of course the date will be really really awkward. So don’t go on it. See my above point.
Fourthly: mine involved a trip to the cinema with a boy called John to see Naked Gun 2 1/2. Readers, tell us in the comments what yours were like!
I have a job. It’s maternity cover, but I might be offered a permanent position even if the formerly-pregnant woman comes back. I don’t know for sure, so I’ve been looking into other jobs. If I get an interview for a job, how can I take the day off work, without anyone finding out it’s for an interview?
Tell them you’ve got a doctor’s appointment? That you’re going to a funeral (also explaining away your uncharacteristically smart attire)?
I’m not well-placed to answer this since it’s been many, many years since I had a job where anyone would have noticed my absence. So readers, step in and tell Phil in the comments how to dodge office scrutiny in this matter.
We are delighted to announce that our book is out TODAY. As is, similarly delightfully, Answer Me This! Episode 155:
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)
This week we mention such things as:
premature poppies
‘Barwick Green’
Abi Titmuss Essential Modern Classics – The Phantom Tollbooth
Banana Skins Slippage Committee
herrings
the edible Fleshlight
hostess trolleys
spinning cakestands
marrowfat peas
ten pin bowling, North London Jew-style
British population density vs. Canadian population density
and
Vince Neil’s eggy crotch.
Plus: Olly laughs and laughs and laughs at poor dead squirrels, because he is a Bad Mann; Helen wishes she still had the rushes of her unofficial audiobook of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret; and Marti(a)n the Sound Man lays down the law about lasers, which is roughly the same law that Perseus observed when taking on the Gorgons.
This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Becky from Westerham about the TP button in her car. What the blazes is the TP button? Toilet paper? Telepathic powers? Total paralysis? Find out only on the app! (Or your own car.)
If you require a bigger dose of our voices than today’s episode provides, then you can hear us on the Guardian’s Media Talk podcast on Friday 5th, the Shaun Keaveny Show on BBC 6 Music at 9am on Monday 8th, and the Late Show with Ian Collins on TalkSPORT at midnight on Tuesday 9th. That enough for you? Hmmm?
There are only fifty shopping days until Christmas*, and seven more shopping days until next week’s episode, so hesitate not to pose your QUESTIONS, by leaving a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or by firing off an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. We look forward to them immensely.
See you next week!
Helen and Olly
*but you don’t even need those, because the Answer Me This! book is the perfect gift for everyone in your life! So thanks to us, you’ve a spare seven weeks to fill with hobbycrafts or waterskiing rather than schlepping round John Lewis. You’re welcome. Don’t say we never do anything nice for you.
…we’ve turned the podcast into a book, and it is out TODAY!
And lo, we have made our own advert for it:
Answer Me This! The Book is now available from allsome good bookshops, as well as online emporiae – click HERE for links to those, and to read a few sample pages.
In summation:
if you have accrued any affection for us at all over the past almost-four years of podcast, pleeeeeeeease buy a copy!
Don your mufti, gather your packed lunches and board the coach for a question from Andrew from Leeds:
My sister (13), has just come back from a school trip to lean about water usage and recycling – to a sewage works. Yes – it was as unpleasant and foul-smelling as it sounds, and after lunch, over half the kids refused to get off the coach. I think the smell was worse then my school trip to a Camembert factory a few years back.
You’re forgetting, Andrew, that school trips aren’t supposed to be fun. Even the ones that are supposed to be fun are not fun, because you’re there to learn, which of course is mutually exclusive to fun. Hence during my school trip to Chessington World of Adventures, we were forbidden to go on any rides because we had to fill in a questionnaire about wildlife. What did I learn from that? Some useful facts about wildlife? NO; we learnt the more important lesson that adults are cruel and life isn’t all fun and games, just as your sister learnt that life can be a big vat of shit.
So, answer me this – what’s the worst school trip you’ve been on when at school?
Readers, we sense you’ve suffered far worse than us during our adventures to the power stations and wildfowl centres of southern England. Take a trip to the comments to tell us about your dumbest, dreariest, or downright dangerous school trips. Best one gets to sit up front next to Teacher on the ride home.
Esau was a hairy man. Jacob was a smooth man. And Michael from Leeds can’t decide whether he’s an Esau or a Jacob:
I am a very keen cyclist, and am a member of one of the local cycling clubs. On our weekly club ride a lot of cyclist from various local clubs take part, and they all have shaved legs. I know this is a common practice among cyclists, but I am unsure whether to take part in it my myself. My wife is especially against it.
So answer me this: should I shave my legs to fit in with the rest of the group, or should I keep my hairy legs as they are?
Well, cyclists obviously aren’t a vain bunch. Hence their ready acceptance of patches of arse-sweat, their willingness to wear cameltoe-inducing shiny leggings, and their adoption of helmets that make them look like Willem Dafoe in Spider-Man. All these fashion no-nos are milestones upon the road to optimal aerodynamics, as is the leg-shaving. All that air resistance dragging against your leg-hair could add ruinous numbers of milliseconds to your ride-time.
Plus, all those bald-legged cyclists will mock you if you don’t join in their depilation games. You’ll look much better when wearing fishnet tights. And if leg-shaving’s good enough for David Beckham…
On the other hand, if you do decide to depilate, it’ll add ruinous minutes to your shower-time. Cactus-like prickliness will characterise your shins. Does it stop at the legs, or are you supposed to deforest your body from top floor to basement? Your non-cyclist friends will mock you, and your wife will be angry at you for clogging up her Ladyshave. And if David Beckham jumped off a cliff, would you?
There’s so much compelling evidence on both sides that we’re throwing this dilemma out to you lot.
; and Marti(a)n the Sound Man lays down the law about lasers, which is roughly the same law that Perseus observed when taking on the Gorgons.
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