November 2, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 154 **
We thought that anything goes in the Netherlands, but Bo from the Netherlands debunks that national stereotype:
I turned 21 a few days ago and my aunt decided to take me to the sauna for my birthday. Now this was clearly more an excuse for her to visit the sauna because if she knows me at all, she would have known that I wouldn’t find any joy in a sauna.
But not wanting to be rude I got over my fear of sweaty wrinkles and accepted the present gracefully.
When I was in the sauna I tried not to look at people to much and I was doing fine, until I heard my Literature professor saying my name!!!
And there he was… more naked than I thought possible… With EVERYTHING just hanging out… It was awful, I was naked… he was naked… my aunt was naked.. And the man sat down next to me and talked to me for 10 minutes, all the while looking me over…
It was horrible and I really don’t want to go back to that class…so what the fuck do I do ?
It’s always upsetting to realise that the authority figures in your life are actual humans, with actual human genitals and everything. Try to put his danglers out of your mind by concentrating on the literature; and the next time you find yourself going to the sauna, protect your modesty with a towel and protect your academic overlords by wearing a blindfold.
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in extracurricular questions | Leave a Comment »
October 28, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
Hello pals,
Happy halloween to you! Here’s not-at-all-reflective-of-the-festival Episode 154, but you can decide where it falls on the Trick Or Treat spectrum, 1 being a nice lollipop and 10 being a dog turd through your letterbox. Squelch! DAMN YOU PESKY KIDS.
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)
Today, we contemplate subjects including:
Scream IV
Ken Kirzinger
Rentokil
Ebenezer Howard
Robert De Niro’s patchwork face
Nigella’s fishy keyboard
the amazing voice of Red Pepper
Welwyn Garden City vs. Letchworth Garden City
Don LaFontaine vs. Alfred Hitchcock
Shutter Island
vegetable oil fountains
sweetcorn fajitas
wigs
Strictly Come Dancing demystified
and
a brief history of refrigeration.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Emma about whether lentils can kill. If they can, the Ban Lentils campaign starts right here!
Elsewhere: Olly recoils at the idea of dunking fruit into a festive torrent of vegetable oil, despite his total lack of qualms about smearing absolutely everything in mayonnaise which is effectively the same thing; Helen reinterprets the Pied Piper as a cautionary tale preaching socialism; and Martin the Sound Man is uncharacteristically restrained during an entire discussion based around the word ‘shuttlecock’. We think he was sidetracked by a piece of junk mail he’d received in the post from a chocolate company, trying to sell him half-price nut hampers. Fnarrr!
While Martin sniggers like a man half his age, you can get on with sending us QUESTIONS! Leave a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com; and if you had your question answered in this week’s show, email us your address that we may dispatch your free copy of the Answer Me This! book. Next week there are no free books, but you will be able to get a not-free copy from a bookshop or The Internet, because the delightful volume will be available for sale from November 4th. As will next week’s podcast, so we’ll see you back here then! Toodles.
Helen and Olly
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Tags: Alan Yentob, amen, badminton, books, Bride of Frankenstein, Canary Islands, chocolate, cold drinks, confectionery, cruise, cynical ploys, Delia Smith, Edvard Munch, eggs, fakes, Felicity Kendal, films, Flaubert, food, freezers, Germany, Hamelin, Helena Bonham Carter, holidays, horror, horror films, ice, jackalope, Jamie Oliver, Jason Voorhees, Jools Oliver, Kenneth Branagh, Madame Bovary, marketing, Marnie, Mary Shelley, movies, myth, new towns, olden days, pests, Pied Piper, prayer, rabbits, rats, religion, Robert Englund, Scream, sex mystery, Shuttlecock in the Tits, shuttlecocks, sorbet, Strictly Come Dancing, telly, town planning, trailers, vacation, weddings, Welwyn Garden City
Posted in PODCASTS | Leave a Comment »
October 27, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 153 **
Tom from Brighton only looks at those mags for the articles and only watches those films for the dialogue:
As a man, and a hideous looking one at that, I am no stranger too the delights of internet naked lady fun.
In one of these recent naughty adventures I came across a particularly clunky piece of dialogue. The female protagonist (who has known the man she is about to sleep with since birth), upon seeing his no doubt extended penis, exclaims:
“Your cock certainly has grown into that of a man’s cock!”
So my question is: what is the likelihood this line was scripted and, if not, have you every come across a worse example of improvisation?
Yes. Every single improvised comedy show I saw at university. You know what’s good for a performance? SCRIPTS. Suffice to say, I have blocked out every line; but readers, if you’ve got a good one, quote it to us in the comments. Even better, if you were the screenwriter on this particular cinematic masterpiece, please inform us whether this line was honed by you, or a genuine reaction by an actress so deeply in character that her sentence structure becomes distinctly obtuse.
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Tags: prawn
Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | Leave a Comment »
October 27, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 153 **
Unlike any of us here at AMT, Ciorstan has the luxury of dumping someone over a completely spurious difference of opinion:
I recently stopped seeing someone after he told me he hadn’t read all the Harry Potter books because they were boring. Some of my friends think this was the right decision, others say I’m an idiot.
Answer me this: do you think this was a good reason to break up with someone?
Erm – no. Although if you’re willing to give someone the heave-ho over that, then you really weren’t in it for the long term anyway.
And what is the strangest reason any of you have ever dumped someone?
Um – because we didn’t love them any more? Because the prospect of spending any more time with them was unappealing? MADNESS.
But readers, go forth to the comments and tell us all about your arbitrary reasons for ending a relationship. You cruel, cruel people.
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 11 Comments »
October 26, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 153 **
A seasonal question now from David from Dagenham, a man who might have inspired this, and definitely finds untimely death a hoot!
With halloween coming up I was thinking of costume ideas and was talking to some guys at work about it, as we are encouraged to dress up for the event every year.
This got me reminiscing about my first Halloween at my current job. I’d only been in the job a couple of months and went in dressed as Steve Irwin complete with stingray barb sticking out of my chest. This was only a month or 2 after he’d died and there were a lot of complaints about me.
Answer me this: what has been your best or worst costume idea?
Readers. You strike me as a bunch with truly spectacular records in fancy dress, and probably with similarly lax taste boundaries as David from Dagenham. So make haste to the comments and tell us – preferably including links to photographic evidence – of your zenith and/or nadir of novelty costuming. Can any of you compete with this guy?
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 3 Comments »
October 21, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
Greetings!
To follow the mood of this week, we must announce that we’ve decided to cut Answer Me This! Episode 153 by eight per cent. However we reassure you that we will be freezing the length of this episode at 27 minutes 37 seconds for the next two years, or until the apocalypse, whichever is sooner. Here you go:
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)
Today’s time-of-austerity topics include:
non-alcoholic beer
Jim Henson’s fake rats
shadduck
Michael Apted
Lidl
Johnny Depp vs. Danny Dyer
Center Stage
Olly’s favourite condoms (surprisingly not these ones)
The Witches
Stephen Jones, milliner
isopropanol
Rowan Atkinson’s ‘early’ work
Bonnie Prince Billy’s hometown
Nicolas Roeg
identical twins
Michael Palin in drag
and
losing your virginity to a chair.
Plus: Olly has been repelled from his favourite snack by Gok Wan; Helen suggests a high school Joseph Mengele; and Martin the Sound Man plays off Gene Wilder and Spike Milligan against each other. WHO WILL WIN? We will, alas, never know.
What we do know is that next week is the last episode in which we’ll be handing out free books to questioneers, so send us your most brilliant QUESTIONS right now! Leave a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, to which you should send your postal address if you are one of this week’s featured questioneers and want to claim your freebie.
If you want to claim your not-quite-free-but-really-not-too-pricey copy of Answer Me This!: Collected Juvenilia, then investigate answermethispodcast.com/book, whereat you will find not only links to a few online bookshops, but also some sample pages to induce you to preorder itmake you decide to order Booky Wook 2 instead.
Helen and Olly
PS Forgot to mention: this week’s bonus bit on the app is Olly’s account of his recent debut trip to a branch of Hooters. It was all in the name of post-feminist irony, alright?
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ • Episodes
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Tags: 7-Up, Activia, adoption, Anjelica Huston, bananas, beef, Bette Davis, Bitty McLean, booze, branding, car crash, cereal, chairs, Cher, Cilla daiquiri, citrus, clowns, comedy, condoms, contraceptives, Elliott Smith, embarrassment, family, film adaptations, fluids, food, fruit, furniture, gay, Gok Wan, grapefruit, grapes, homosexuality, hygiene, hymens, inebriation, josie long, marketing, melon, Miami Seaquarium, mice, movies, Nicholas Hytner, orange, Oxo, parents, pink, pratfalls, rats, Roald Dahl, selling out, sex, sexism, shame, siblings, slapstick, Snackajacks, soft drinks, Special K, telly, Tim Burton, twins, virginity, yoghurt, yuk
Posted in PODCASTS | Leave a Comment »
October 20, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 152 **
Tsch, women! Bloody women! I say that on behalf of Tom, who has emailed us with some girl trouble of the unromantic kind:
Basic Summary – I’ve known a girl for about 4 years and we have been pretty close friends. Going to the cinema and for meals together (don’t worry this isn’t some silly teenage romance question).
The summer holidays have finished and she is at a new school and she has met up with another group of people. I don’t have a problem with this but she is having a pool party around her house (she’s rich) and after 4 years of being very close friends she hasn’t invited me, but all these people she has just met are invited as well as some people who we both used to hang about together with, so this isn’t just for new people. Admittedly I’m not the biggest party person but I have a good time, I don’t go over the top or anything or cause a problem.
I was talking to some of her friends who I’m close to and who have been invited. They say she only has a certain amount of people that can come, but that’s complete shit her house is massive and it’s only one more person. These friends think its ridiculous I’m not invited but I don’t even care anymore (as you can tell from this angry email).
I want to know what I should do????
Confront her? Ignore her? Try to maintain a friendship (not that I particularly want to now). I’m so confused.
Understandably so, Tom. Even if she ever gives you an explanation, it’s unlikely to be one which makes you any happier; so we recommend you cut your losses and fraternise with rather more inclusive friends. Even if they don’t have their own pools.
But readers, what would you recommend? Tell Tom your comforts or conspiracy theories in the comments.
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 9 Comments »
October 20, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 152 **
Chris has something to say about Episode 151:
You mentioned the performance of King Lear with Ian Holm in it. It was many years ago when I was doing my A Levels and happened to be studying King Lear. I went to see it! My friend Adam wangled the prized tickets off his parents.
As film fans, Adam and I rated Holm for his performance in Alien rather than The Borrowers, yet neither of us were expecting to see Ian Holm get his tadger out. Which he did to great effect whilst going mad because his daughters had given him the cold shoulder or whatever. It’s Lear’s own fault it was a bloody stupid idea in the first place (as I wrote in my A level).
Much later, whenever Lord of the Rings would come into a conversation, we would both state, ‘I’ve seen Bilbo’s knob’.
So my question is simply this:
Have any of the AMT team ever seen a famous member? And a smutty film or on the internet doesn’t count! It has to be in real life!
Olly saw Daniel Radcliffe’s wang when he was in Equus, but by extension of your rules, Chris, I don’t think theatrical cock-spots should be permitted either. Now that we’ve established the guidelines, readers, unleash your inner Pamela Des Barres and the comments and tell us about your encounters with famous members.
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | 14 Comments »
October 20, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 152 **
Richard from yumblog is not satisfied with Olly’s choice of musical beat-off material:
I have just listened to episode 151 and was amazed that you (and in particular Olly) were unable to name a single porno musical.
Just a cursory glance at my DVD collection reveals the family favourite Clitty Titty Gang Bang, the 1961 naval lark All hands on Dick, Julie Andrews’ hilarious portrayal of an aging twenties flapper in Thoroughly Modern Milf, Bob Fosse’s messy All That Jizz, the sharp-shooting Wild West fun of Annie up the Bum, George Gershwin’s saucy tale of incest Porking Aunt Bess, Peter Sellers and Goldie Horn in the British-made les-fest There’s a Girl on Girl in my Soup, the Busby Berkeley-choreographed Tea Baggers of 1933, James Cagney in Yank My Doodle Dandy, the double penetration classic Two Gentlemen do Veronica, the Tony Award-winning tale of Arthurian legend and bukakke Came a Lot, er, Anal Q, Oklahomo…
I could go on (but had better get back to work).
‘All That Jizz’ was on the shortlist of names for this podcast before we came up with ‘Answer Me This’. No kidding. Damn you Fosse for getting there first! (However we’re pleased to tell you that our other podcast ‘Porking Aunt Bess’ is still going strong.)
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine | 2 Comments »
October 14, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
Hello!
Of course, you’re already used to getting good advice from us. (Shut up!) But this week, we have some even better advice from broadcasting stalwart Paul Ross, which was instrumental in making Olly Mann the broadcasting stalwart he himself is today. Hear what it was here and here only, in Answer Me This! Episode 152:
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 address subjects including:
90s collars
Benson & Hedges
The Saturdays
butterbear
Carr’s water biscuits
yuppie kids
evil spirits
Ciro Citterio
the Queen vs. Pixie Lott
Batman’s wedding
Hong Kong tailors
trangias
Terry’s Chocolate Lemons
ligatures
Warhorse
Ben Stiller’s workwear
the musical cleft
Luciano Pavarotti outstaying his welcome
ball-handlers
the Isle of Arran
and
&.
Furthermore: Olly is a staunch conservative when it comes to the appropriate composition of orange-flavoured foodstuffs; Helen’s innate scruffiness has dashed her telemarketing dreams; and Martin the Sound Man stands up for Tom Stoppard. Meanwhile, over on the app, Gaz from Jedburgh has a question about a problem we’re sure is common to a great many of you: nepotism in the forestry business.
Everyone who got a question answered in today’s episode needs to email us their postal address sharpish, so we can send along a free copy of the Answer Me This! book; everyone else needs to send us a QUESTION to be in with a chance to win a free book, along with an answer, of course. You know what to do: leave a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next week!
Helen and Olly
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Tags: 1990s, actors, advertising, ampersand, Arcadia, balls, Bentleys, beverages, Big Ben, Black Eyed Peas, book, brides, camping, cars, children, chocolate, chocolate oranges, cigarettes, Cilla Black, citrus, clocks, clothes, confectionery, curtain calls, customs, dapperness, delicacies, Disney, drinks, Duchy Originals, encores, fashion, festivals, Florida, fonts, food, fruit, funerals, Gamu, gigs, gloves, Guns N'Roses, hands, Harry Hill, Harry Potter, holidays, Hong Kong, horses, Houses of Parliament, kids, linguistics, Little Britain, Lotto, malapropisms, marketing, Marmite, marriage, Melanie Blatt, Mickey Mouse, monarchy, music, music festivals, National Lottery, nepotism, Oedipus, oranges, Pixie Lott, Prince Charles, prison, prom, punctuation, Queen, Ralph Lauren, royal family, royalty, sartoria, school, Scotland, sexism, showmanship, Slash, smoking, style, suit, superstition, telly, the Queen, theatre, theatricality, theme parks, Tommy Hilfiger, tradition, type, typeface, veils, weddings, X Factor, yuk
Posted in PODCASTS | 1 Comment »
October 13, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 151 **
Help a lover out, readers: apply yourselves to this problem from Anonymous Girl:
I’ve been seeing this lovely guy for about five months. He’s very affectionate and sweet and caring, but he’s never told me he loves me.
I’m too scared to say I love him and risk some terrible knockback, and for all I know he might feel the same way. Or maybe he just doesn’t love me, yet. Or maybe he never will!
What should I do? What’s the normal time to tell someone you love them?
When you’re drunk.
Any other suggestions? To the comments, people!
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | 9 Comments »
October 13, 2010 by Helen Zaltzman
** Click here for Episode 151 **
Judge-a-book-by-its-cover Corner now, thanks to this email from Helen in Hertford:
My friend’s mum is always telling her to never trust a man whose eyes are too close together. So answer me this: is there any truth in this, or is she just a bit prejudiced against people who aren’t making full use of the space on their face?
Physiognomists, go to the comments and tell us whether there is indeed any evidence to back up this (clearly absurd) theory; everyone else, go there to tell us about your own ludicrous stereotyping. For instance, my friend Al never trusts someone whose surname can also be a first name. Madness, I know! OK, your turn.
Subscribe with iTunes • Book • Question Archive • FAQ
• App • Facebook • Twitter • Merch Superstore • YouTube Channel •
Posted in extracurricular questions, User-generated answers | Leave a Comment »
Answer Me This! Podcast 