Katy from south Wales wades in on the age-old quandary we considered in Episode 140:
I wanted to give you my insight to the question ‘Would you rather sleep with a swimmer or a trumpet player?’ I was rather, um, slaggish in uni and slept with a trumpet player AND a few swimmers (swimmers are rather slaggish too! Could have been why I joined the swim team) and I would definitely say that swimmers are much better. They have the hip action and are not as shy!
Informative, but a one-woman survey needs corroboration if we are to solve this question scientifically. So please, consider very carefully, then answer us this:
Liz from Aberdeenshire is about to take a step into a wider world. But what should she pack into her satchel before she does?
I’m heading off to University in three months’ time and I know I’ll need to start getting some stuff together reasonably soon and I have no idea what I need to get.
Answer me this: what is the one VERY important, cannot-attend-University-without item that I should get my hands on before I move? Thanks.
When we trotted off the Ira Glass Academy For Advanced Podcasting, we made sure we were equipped with such dull-but-useful items as extension leads, kettle, our own bedding, capsule collection of kitchen knives, vitamin pills, mugs, teapot, rudimentary first aid kit, bottle-opener, spare bottle-opener, respectable dressing gown for early-morning fire alarms, fourteen dictionaries, photo montage, camera, crumpets, toy moose’s head, washing powder, fairy lights, flashing neon clock and a poster for a film that was halfway between populist and obscure. But what was the one item that YOU insisted upon? Tell Liz in the comments, do.
Rowena from New Zealand is fully qualified to put to bed the turkey eggs question from Episode 139. Why? Because she grew up on a turkey farm, that’s why:
Turkey eggs are slightly larger than chicken eggs, their shells are a bit harder to break and their yolks are larger and more yellow than orange.
Ironically I don’t actually eat eggs so couldn’t tell you first hand what the taste is like, but I know my family prefer them to chicken eggs and when I asked my mum she said, “They’re more wholesome and heaps better for you because the turkeys are happy (I think she was just saying that because our turkeys are free range!) and the yolk is a little thicker and richer.” So that’s straight from the turkey farmer’s wife!
We don’t usually sell our eggs as we use them all for hatching more turkeys but do sell the cracked ones that we can’t incubate locally if people want them.
Thanks for assuming the yolk of responsibility, Rowena. I think we’ve finally cracked this mystery. We shell wonder no more. Etc.
Here it is folks, the final Answer Me This! of the second quarter – Episode 140:
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As we clear out our desks for the break, we give the following topics an airing:
Wills’n’Harry
eggnog
Anjou
the new Mentos + Coke
Duncan Goodhew vs. Dizzy Gillespie
Leonard Cohen vs. Magnetic Fields
Siberian husky dogs vs. Paula Radcliffe
wedding pyromania
hotel breakfast buffets
goat dowry
Freecycle surprise party
revolving restaurants
and
Narnia in Canada.
Plus: it turns out Olly can multitask after all, but only in hotel bathrooms; Helen manages to make prunes even more boring than you already thought they were; and Martin the Sound Man gives a line reading of The Human Centipede, which is as close as we ever want to get to actually seeing that film.
We hereby bid you adieu for a month, but we’ll be popping back here every week to post up some choice words – and to display the results of the Berocca Challenge that we set you this episode, should any of you choose to rise to it! You can also keep in touch with us via Twitter and Facebook, but more importantly by sending us your QUESTIONS – call 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Parting is such sweet sorrow. We’ll be back on 15th July. Have a smashing month!
Thanks everyone for sending in your tales of muck-day, to fill Olly in on what he missed at his happy hippy school. This one from Alice tickled us particularly:
The best school prank I have heard of was at a friend’s sister’s school: they stole 4 sheep and labeled them 1,2,3 and 5 and set them loose in the school, causing mayhem as the teachers tried to find the elusive sheep no. 4!
“What a hoot!” we thought.
Until we ploughed further through our inbox, and found the very same story from nigh a dozen different sources! And we know they’re not all regaling us about the same sheep jape, as the different versions were geographically diverse, took place at various points over the past decade, and sometimes starred goats rather than sheep. Further lighting the gaslamp of suspicion was the fact that none were first-hand accounts, all being as indirect as Alice’s friend’s sister. So:
HAVE ANY OF YOU ACTUALLY DONE THIS PRANK?
REALLY?
We’ll believe you only if you provide supplementary evidence. As Luke has:
I attended Christ’s Hospital school in the 80s – you know the one, where Gene Simmonds did the Rock School shit for Channel 4 some years ago, with the daft uniforms and grandiose architecture.
Here are some photographs of the final day of the year and the japes that were performed by leavers. Always unsanctioned, rarely punished, they were an early introduction into anarchy lite.
The Waller Bus pushed by leavers into the main quad, where these events usually occurred overnight, thus affording the entire school a view of the efforts as we marched (yes, marched) into breakfast.
Toilet doors removed and stacked elegantly.
Bread crates.
See? That is how you get us to believe in your pranks. Love your work with the toilet doors, Luke.
Cover your kiddies’ ears during Answer Me This! Episode 139. Not just because of the usual effing and blinding (although that can’t be wholesome for them, surely?), but because this week, we talk about [whisper] Where Babies Come From [/whisper]. Shudder!
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)
Aside from the role of birds in the human reproductive process, we speak of:
Sauron’s bird feeders
Billy Kennedy’s fluffy dice
posset
turkey farming
‘shimmering apricot mould’
bloodworm
Kia-Ora
the Virgin Mary vs. pelicans
Ted Heath vs. Hugh Grant
chum salmon vs. chambermates
Chambourcy Hippopotamousse
and
the correct classification of pasta salad.
Plus: Olly turns his fishbowl into a scene from Cannibal Holocaust; Helen busts out another member of her Nauseating Cookery Book collection; and Martin the Sound Man seems to know more than the average sound man about clinical trials, although he was born and raised in a petri dish in a GlaxoSmithKline laboratory…
Now don’t get upset, but after next week’s episode, we’ll be taking a month off to rest our voices. So get your QUESTIONS in, quick! Call 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. See you next Thursday, and we’ll make that precious time together count, ok?
As a good example of a multinational listener, Brett, 18, from Caithness but born in America, is well-placed to comment upon last week’s consideration of the term ‘continental breakfast’:
I was always taught that it was named as such because it was what George Washington’s army ate during the American Revolution. This army was called the continental army, and its popularity spread from there – at first as a patriotic thing, then as just a standard name for a meal.
Not sure how true this is, but its makes a lot of sense when you think that a continental breakfast consists of mostly cold food – heating food would require a fire, meaning tinder etc (which wasn’t always available in the season of the war), and would also result in being spotted by the enemy.
The cold food sounds about right, but we’re having trouble imagining George Washington’s army eating defrosted croissants, stewed prunes and toffee-flavoured yoghurt in the field. Anyone else with a suggestion? Oh, hello there, Vasco:
In your last episode you were talking about breakfasts, and funny enough you compared a Portuguese with a Danish one. Funny because I’m Portuguese and my girlfriend is Danish.
I can tell you first hand that the breakfasts of both countries do overlap quite a lot, just like the majority of continental Europe.
Both are based on fresh bread or pastry (croissant) with butter, cold meats, cheese, accompanied by fresh juices, some milk or yoghurt with cereal, and lots of coffee. The only distinct difference is that Danes also like to have liver pâté on their bread.
Aaah. Two nations, so different in geography, culture and climate, united by breakfast. No wonder it’s the most important meal of the day.
Here’s a lovely question from Ron in Albuquerque, for the craic:
I started listening to your podcast while visiting a friend and have since become a subscriber.
The friend that introduced me to your podcast, we’ll call him SuperGenius to protect his identity, is from Crumlin, Ireland and often makes reference to the “Irish Curse,” as a reference to Irish men having smaller than average penises.
My question is: Is this based on some study, or common knowledge from across the pond? Also, if this is true, is this why they drink so much?
Can’t say we’ve ever heard of the “Irish Curse” before, nor have we conducted our own proper scientific survey, travelling through Ireland detrousering the natives. But if any of you have, then by all means tell us the results in the comments.
My friend just got dumped by her slimeball of a boyfriend, and I have a friend who would be perfect for her. The only issue is, he has the most disgusting goatee in the world, which looks a lot like a limp, black, dead rodent hanging off his chin. He’s had it for years.
So, answer me this: how do I get a guy I don’t know that well to shave off his facial hair?
This is not only an etiquette puzzle – for what business of yours, Kat, is the appearance of this gentleman? – but also seems to necessitate the subtle employment of some reverse psychology. Nothing will make him cling more stubbornly to his facial adornment than the knowledge you wish it banished. So try to find a picture of someone undesirable who sports a similar look – perhaps a serial killer or a boyband member who has passed his peak – then leave your friend to join the dots, then shave.
But readers, if you have a cunning ruse to unleash the chin of this man, please describe it in the comments.
We thought it was really only women’s mags that took an interest in the matter, but according to listener Gareth, academia has scrutinised the wang-shoe ratio too:
Two science papers, researching the myth. First can’t read and too lazy to search, second says no correlation.
Dammit! I’m going to have to scratch those plans for my new business selling clown shoes to insecure gentlemen.
Confession time now, featuring the following revelation from Joe from New Hampshire:
I am one of the few who always ate Filet O’ Fish at McDonald’s. Even as a child I preferred the fish over burgers. In later years I worked at McD’s and only ate Filet (don’t you dare call it Fish!).
Don’t worry, I won’t! I fear Poseidon rising through my bathtaps to smite me down for insinuating that any of the inhabitants of His kingdom might be present in the substance that McDonalds terms ‘fish’.
One notable fact about the sandwich. During a normal lunch hour we would sell 2-3 Filet sandwiches. BUT, if it was raining you could count on selling at least 20! This happened virtually without fail and the enormity of the disparity baffled me.
I notice to this day that I, myself, crave fish when it rains. So, answer me this: do you wish for fish when it rains or have you noted this phenomenon for yourselves?
Can’t pretend I have; but readers, have you noticed your own stomachs associating water falling from the sky with a lunch of aquatic creatures? If enough of you have, we can probably get that quirk upgraded to a Syndrome, and Joe can lend his surname to it. Dare to dream.
We see a dark blot on the horizon. A dark, sports-shaped blot. Wimbledon AND the World Cup football in the next month? It’s too much for our sensibilities. We can’t stop it; we can’t pretend to like it; but we can prepare ourselves, so we try to limber up with a bit of tangentially sportif chitterchatter in Answer Me This! Episode 138:
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)
Don’t worry, the majority of the content is non-sportular, including:
Project Runway
Jacques Chirac G8 Fail
Hobbycraft
Wenlock and Mandeville vs. Banksy and David Shrigley
Ped Egg vs. fungal nail infection in the Battle of the Turned Stomachs
Yoshiaki Shiraishi
massage
sitting shivah
the obscure early life of Jools Holland
NASA entry requirements
and
bacon bras.
Plus: Olly finds the present day to be lagging behind in meeting targets set in The Terminator; Helen reveals the secret that made Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon; and Martin the Sound Man is quite quiet and well-behaved because he’s really thinking about getting back to playing Red Dead Redemption. A podcast cannot come between the man and his PS3. Harrumph.
We’re looking to you to keep our spirits up in these tryingly footbally times, so please send us QUESTIONS with which to distract ourselves, in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Ta for that.
; and Martin the Sound Man seems to know more than the average sound man about clinical trials, although he was born and raised in a petri dish in a GlaxoSmithKline laboratory…
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