In which you will find us visiting: • Brighton seafront, where the rain poured, and so did the tea. • Twinings on the Strand in London, a veritable embassy of tea. • Braunston in Rutland, England’s smallest county. A big paper plate of cakes and two cups of tea for £1.50? That, friends, is why Britain is still great. • Emma Bridgewater, Stoke-on-Trent, where we were instructed that tea can get you laid. If only it were that simple. • Tregothnan tea plantation, Cornwall, where they are considering building a tea theme park. Please, Tregothnan. MAKE THIS HAPPEN. • Grasmere in the Lake District, home of Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread, a legendary snack with a secret recipe. I guess Sarah Nelson is the English equivalent of Colonel Sanders. • The Balmoral hotel, Edinburgh. Apparently having tea here features in one of those ‘1000 things to do before you die’ lists, so we’re now one step closer to the End.
Let’s raise a cup of char to the people who helped us along the way:
Stephen Twining and Matthew Rice – we’d like to see them face off against other in a duel to determine who is the quintessential English gent; Marion, who showed us around the Emma Bridgewater factory and taught us the full birthing cycle of their beautiful ceramics – almost as demanding as the human one; Neil Bennett, head gardener at the Tregothnan estate, who had a heavy cold and should probably have been safely tucked up indoors rather than traipsing around the huge estate with us; Joanne Wilson from Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread, a woman who can wrap a stack of gingerbread in paper at the speed of light. You might not think this exciting, but, like the teapot-knobbing, when you see it live you could watch it for hours; Harry Fernandes at the Balmoral hotel, for letting us have a big fancy tea, climb up onto the roof, and pretending that we weren’t just a pair of overgrown five-year-olds;
and an extra portion of Jammy Dodgers goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
Please return next Tuesday for the final installment of Great British Questions, which is all about Great British Bathrooms; and below are some photos from our tea tour.
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If, like Olly, you are delightfully innocent and pure-minded, listen with care to Answer Me This! Episode 144; for, like him, you will probably be SHOCKED TO THE VERY CORE to understand what the heck that mucky broad Britney Spears was on about in her ‘If You Seek Amy’ ditty. We don’t know which was more shocking: the blatant sauce of the double meaning, or the topsy-turvy grammar of the single meaning.
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)
Delicious Miss Dahl’s dirty martinis
skate’s dirty parts
Sea Pebbles
citric acid
‘Scotland the Brave’ vs. ‘Greensleeves’
the MTV Cribs diet
carbonated champagne
matzo meal
Clamato
kosher fish
those child-hating bastards Cybercandy
strawberries
the spoon trick
Hatch End
fizzy cola bottle inequity
and
modern marginalia.
Plus: Olly compares his pioneeringderanged snacking habits to Heston Blumenthal; Helen ruins Olly’s favourite delicacy, tipple, and high school sing-song tv series; and Martin the Sound Man does a rap, gives insight into the dairy consumption of tramps, and otherwise disgraces himself.
We also peer beneath the frilly underskirts of Great British Questions Episode 3: Romance, exposing some mild disappointment in the world’s biggest coloured pencil, and wondering whether the Cerne Abbas giant has been slacking on his fatherly duties thus far. Meanwhile, over on the fair shores of the AMT app, we speak of marginal things we like. Nothing pervy, unless you are aroused by the shoes of elderly Jews.
Now it’s time to give us your QUESTIONS; please bestow them upon is in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. How thrilled we shall be to receive them!
See you next Thursday for Episode 145, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Four of Great British Questions, in which we glug down sufficient tea to rehydrate the Kalahari.
In order of appearance, here’s where we go during our Great British love-in (in which we play a couple FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY):
• the Cerne Abbas giant, Dorset – the earliest known NSFW field in Britain! • Brighton, to hang out with drunkards. It’s a pretty sexy place – after all, George IV built his amazing personal shag-palace there. • The Assembly Rooms in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Didn’t score ourselves any husbands, though; the only man there was the old chap superintending the Saturday afternoon book sale. • The Heartwood School of Woodcarving in Port Talbot, Wales. If you want to carve your own spoon of love, or get someone else to do it for you, you can email spoon-carver extraordinaire Sharon LittleyHERE, or find out more about the traditional Welsh lovespoons in her book. • Boat trip up the River Thames, a very pleasant way to travel through central London if you’re not in a hurry. • Picnic at Penrith Castle, Cumbria – an unlikely thing to find in the middle of an ordinary-looking housing estate! • The Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick, Cumbria. Don’t go there if your pencil collection has an inferiority complex already. • The Museum of Surgery in Edinburgh, after which you’ll see we didn’t walk up Arthur’s Seat. • Punting in Oxford, thanks to the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse – who also very kindly lent us hats with which to accessorise this beautiful scene. • Grasmere in the Lake District. William Wordsworth’s signature restaurant can be found here. Apparently they only serve daffodils. • The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, where they hold the annual Mr Darcy Wet Shirt Contest. Ok, well we maintain that they should. • Chesil Beach, Dorset out of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares. • The Eden Project, Cornwall, inspiration for Nelly’s hit ‘Hot in Herre’. • The London-Edinburgh sleeper train, which is a bit like North By Northwest only with a complimentary sponge-bag rather than Eva Marie Saint. • Glastonbury, Somerset, where we met the marvellous Jacqui Winn of the Witchcraft Emporium, approximately a cross between a herbalist’s and a branch of Ann Summers. If you’re keen to follow Jacqui’s advice, damiana is the herb you’re after, although we have yet to try it so can’t vouch for its effectiveness. Still, it’s a lot cheaper than fake Viagra off the internet! • And finally, we wind up in the Westmoreland Hotel, Cumbria, which is the first motorway services hotel we’ve ever been to where you could even contemplate having a romantic night.
We also need to bestow affection upon: Chay Allen for propelling our punt, because we sure as hell couldn’t have done it ourselves without injury; Jill Collinge, for showing us Stamford then standing politely by as Helen did stupid impressions of Beyonce;
and the loves of our lives, Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain. If you love the UK as much as VisitBritain do, join the online love-in at their Facebook page at facebook.com/LoveUK.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Four: Tea; and for more scenes from our romantic mini-break, peruse the photos below.
In the olden days when I was a youngster we used to go on family driving holidays through Scotland and England. We had a board game that we played all the time whilst on the move. It involved following a track round the board, either country, town or motorway roads.
To move forward you had to see the object on the square where your piece resided. Once it was seen you could then move to the next. The idea of the game was to get from the start of your journey to the end by spotting all the objects.
Now I’m a parent I want to inflict this game upon my children but can’t remember the name of it. Can you ask your loyal listeners if they know of this game and if I can get it from somewhere?
That game was real? And not just something your parents invented to quell your refrain of “Arewenearlythereyetarewenearlythereyet Ineedthetoilet mumI’mbored!”? If so, readers, put Jonny out of his misery (and his children into theirs) by trotting to the comments and telling him what this tortuous entertainment is. But in case he doesn’t end up finding it so has to resort to different vehicular distractions, you might also mention your favourite childhood car game. We Zaltzmen used to play ‘Count the milk tankers’. The rules were simple; it wasn’t that good, but was probably still more amusing than Jonny’s fondly remembered ‘Spot the objects’.
“I’ve been scouring the internets for new stuff that I don’t need,” Sheree in Peterborough tells us, which is how we get most of our custom. Today, however, her online trawlings have led her to quite a different catch:
This has to be the weirdest book title I’ve ever seen, and I would buy it except that it seems to be a New Age self help book with absolutely no awareness of its own ridiculousness (and it’s about £15 and I’m broke).
So answer me this – what’s the weirdest book title you’ve ever come across? And what exactly is an angry vagina?
Over to you, readers: hie to the comments, and either tell us what is an angry vagina, or, preferably, the weirdest book title you’ve ever seen. Best one wins a copy of Overcoming an Angry Vagina*!
* Actually, you won’t, because were I to buy a copy for you, whenever I would log in to Amazon thereafter I would retch at the sight of my ‘Recommended Products For You’ page.
Thanks for sticking with us, considering that, as one of you has pointed out, Vanity Fair is encroaching on our turf. As is National Rail Enquiries! You can ask their question-bot anything, but she is far too judgemental in her responses. So we’re continuing regular service for now (unlike the East Coast Main Line, ber-boom), with Answer Me This! Episode 143:
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 speak of:
casual voyeurism
John Mayer vs. Stevie Ray Vaughan
AMT party vs. Elton John
spermaceti
moisturisers for men
English Heritage
John P. Charlton
Mr T in pieces
aloe vera
saucy postcards
Camille Pissarro
whaling
fake blue plaques
Boris Karloff’s bedroom
and
Buddhists’ favourite film (NB it’s not Multiplicity).
Plus: Olly reluctantly glows; Helen’s bitesize history revision is for far too big a mouth; and Harry Potter almost prevented Martin the Sound Man from achieving his doctorate. You think Voldemort’s a bastard? You do not want to get in the way of Martin with four years’ hard quantum physics in his hands. Thwarted on the very brink of escape, the man’s wrath could melt trees.
We also reminisce about the public humiliation which attended almost every step of Great British Questions Episode Two: Film, which you can see HERE. Meanwhile, over on the app, this week’s bonus noise concerns how we’d use our spare time if trapped in a Groundhog Day-style situation (clue: heroin, and serial killing).
Videos and apps notwithstanding, we still want your QUESTIONS. So please sate us with a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday for Episode 144, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Three of Great British Questions, in which we get all romantical. It’s ACTING, alright? Bleugh! The very idea.
In response to last week’s question about walloping someone, Mark from Glasgow advises:
Hi guys 😀
I do lots of martial arts and just to let you know, the best place to hit someone is the chorotic nerve. It’s situated on the left hand side of the neck behind the ‘big muscly, tendon thingy’.
Thanks, Mark, for both the lessons in violence and in anatomical terminology.
• Princes Street, Edinburgh, where in 1995 the iconic opening sequence to Trainspotting was filmed, and in 2010 our iconic looking-like-total-dicks sequence was filmed. • Crystal Palace Park – come for the Victorian dinosaurs and the biggest maze in London; stay for the swimming pool which is 20cm too short to be used in the Olympics. • Stonehenge, where the banshees live and they do live well. • Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, where Sir Anthony Hopkins lived in Remains of the Day – before he got into chewing off human faces. • Antony House, Cornwall. Too bad that, blinded by giant plastic mushrooms, we missed its ‘national collection of daylilies’. • Burghley House, Lincolnshire – home to a herd of deer, the horse trials, and Queen Victoria’s marital bed. • The Cars of the Stars Museum, Keswick – not the average Lake District attraction. • Carnforth station, Lancashire. They play Brief Encounter on a loop in the waiting room, which would be a pleasant distraction when your train is running 40 minutes late because there’s a cow on the tracks. • Oxford, including Christ Church College and the Bodleian Library. Not including kebab vans or getting run over by drunk students on bikes. • London, playing multiple roles:
• Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross;
• Postman’s Park out of Closer. The Julia Roberts’n’Jude Law film, not the telly thing starring Kyra Sedgwick.
• The church of St Bartholomew the Great – oy, no need to brag, Bartholomew!
• Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, which star on the BBC Parliament channel all day, every day.
• also, nominated for the award for best supporting location: St Paul’s Cathedral, the O2 Arena, the London Underground, Notting Hill, County Hall, and Tower Bridge (out of that Fergie video about a different bridge entirely).
But let’s not forget all the behind-the-scenes crew: the cinematographer, the craft services, the key grip…OK, it was just me and Olly with two camcorders. But we couldn’t have made this film without the invaluable assistance of: Jill Collinge – if ever you want to spend a very entertaining and interesting afternoon looking around the beautiful historic town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, Jill is your woman. Philip Gompertz, for showing us around Burghley House. It’s really not too shabby. Chay Allen, for allowing Olly to nestle his head in his crotch. Shalini Jadeja, for risking life and limb running backwards with a camera through Edinburgh – and before breakfast, too!
And the Weinsteins of this operation: Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked at VisitBritain.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Three: Romance.
For more VisitBritain finery, join their Facebook page; and for more of our tomfoolery, peruse the photos below.
Breaking up is hard to do, particularly when the emotional pain is coupled by the threat of modern technology. Rhiane writes to us:
I am in quite a pickle.
I broke up with my boyfriend of 4 years last week, 3 of those years our relationship was long distance while we were both at university, and he has several pictures of me which are of an intimate nature.
The pictures are on his phone and computer, so if I ask him to delete them he could just lie and tell me they have been deleted and I wouldn’t know! He’s not the type of guy to show them to all of his friends (which is the main reason I agreed to send him the pictures!), but I’m a bit worried he might put them on Facebook or something in a rage (as I was the one who broke up with him).
So answer me this: should I just leave it and hope that he keeps them to himself? Or ask him to delete them when he could just lie about it?
We’ve all had to try to persuade our exes to burn the charcoal portraits they did of us sans cardigans, haven’t we? Guys?
Alright then, none of us have actually suffered a break-up since the advent of Facebook, so our qualifications are out of date upon this matter. But you people seem a saucy bunch, so please repair to the comments to advise Rhiane of the most tactful means of ensuring her naked parts are not disseminated around cyberspace at this already sensitive time.
Nearly a year has passed since we gave advice to Ahmed from Leicester, but at last we’ve heard the outcome:
Hi! Way back in episode 108, you helped me decide if I should let my flaky friend Rav be joint best man at my wedding.
Well, I’m pleased to let you know that I got married a couple of weeks ago and Rav did his job admirably! I think that his public humiliation made him step up his game a notch, and “New Rav” has been (relatively) reliable ever since.
I did, however, start my speech by thanking “My best men – Darren, Joe and to a lesser extent Rav”, which everyone in on the joke enjoyed.
A person redeemed, a friendship saved, and a happy ending at a wedding! How pleasing.
Are we harbouring some pent-up aggression or something? Because Answer Me This! Episode 142 is quite the pugnacious little beast, as we parry questions on how to sock someone in the face, and how to have a good old bloody battle. Bam! Splat! Wallop! Here it is:
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)
In between blows, we talk about:
comediennes
Byker Grove vs. Pin Oak Court, Melbourne Dreamgirls vs. Showgirls
Nicole Lawrence out of the X Factor The Killer Inside Me
Eldorado
pocket watches
the YMCA
semicolons
Paul Robinson: panto villain
Michel Gondry
that little pocket in jeans
a famous mouse
and
rheum.
Furthermore: Olly disobeys all the Village People’s instructions; Helen tells you all you need to do to become a Somerset celebrity; and Martin the Sound Man cheers up a military history lesson with a burst of Tim Rice.
We also give the behind-the-scenes commentary on our latest video adventure, Great British Questions Episode One: Cheese; if you haven’t already, please take a look at it HERE. Meanwhile, over on the app, this week’s bonus snippet is some incredible insight into those soap opera characters who are written out just as you’re getting used to them. Like Guy Pearce in Home and Away, who knocked up a teenager, promptly died in a car crash, then turned up in Memento denying all knowledge. DID SOPHIE MEAN NOTHING TO YOU, GUY???
As always we yearn for your QUESTIONS with every particle of our being, so submit them to us in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday for Episode 143, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Two of Great British Questions, starring Tower Bridge, James Bond’s big dome, and the Flintstones’ car. YES. Contain your excitement, please; you’ll damage yourselves!
While recently checking through the Internet history on my 12-year-old son’s laptop, I found he had been searching for “willy in pussy” and other various lewd entries…
He has completed his sex education class at school, so as a responsible father do I need to go through the whole “birds and the bees” malarky again? Also how old were you when you found about how babies are made and did your parents bring up the subject?
Determined listeners may, if they so wish, piece together the history of our sex education through the podcasts; so instead, readers, please tell us instead about your own enlightenment in the comments. Perhaps Dave in Doncaster can borrow some of your parents’ chosen techniques when he gets round to giving his son a birds’n’bees refresher course, because he’s not ready to be a grandfather just yet.
by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares.
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