Listeners, how terribly remiss of us to make it through three quarters of 2016 without marking the fact that it has been designated by the UN as the International Year of Pulses. But thankfully there’s still three months of it in which to celebrate, starting with a pulverised pea party in Answer Me This! Episode 340. We also speak of:
Plus: Olly finally unsubscribed from his ‘Paying for a gym is just as productive as attending a gym’ fitness plan; Helen advises on her specialist subject: avoiding social interaction; and Martin the Sound Man is all umami and no trousers.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available on iThings, Android and Windows devices – an anonymous questioneer has a dilemma about free wine. Well, it’s not really free. Someone always pays. Just, in this case, not him. (But possibly Martin, twice, because he is SUCH a good citizen.)
If you want to spend your wine budget on more AMT, head to answermethisstore.com to stock up on our albums and our first 200 episodes. You can also generate FREE MONEY for us and a FREE AUDIOBOOK for you at answermethispodcast.com/audible.
All hail the greatest Middleton sibling – not the one that begat the next generation of royals; not the one with 2011’s favourite bottom; the Marshmallow King!
He appears in Answer Me This! Episode 339, alongside such topics as:
Plus: Olly would happily forgo the best thing about Dalmatians, the wally; Helen ponders making an augmented reality patchwork quilt; and Martin the Sound Man needs praise ASAP – it’s an emergency!
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available on iThings, Android and Windows devices – sees Helen trying to get in on the Pippa Middleton party book business.
Today’s episode was sponsored by the whacking great text adventure game Fallen London, which you can play in browser or app; but you’ll get some in-game freebies if you sign up at failbettergames.com/answers.
With Olly’s baby poised to make his entrance into this world, Answer Me This! Episode 331 is our last episode before our three-month paternity leave, while Olly adjusts to fatherhood and Helen adjusts to going outside occasionally. Savour answers about:
lads’ mags
cereal toys
spotting the stars of tomorrow as they toil at the Disney parks
‘For He’s as dead as a herring a Jolly Good Fellow’
swimming rabbits
cafes vs brasseries vs bistros
Jane Eyre vs Thelma and Louise
The Lord of the Rings road trips
Jo Guest Tutti Frutti in 3D
ceramic babies
blue rinses
Bulgarian food
Skyrim
Kevin Costner
and
Titcoin.
A question from AMT Love went astray and ended up as today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices). It’s from long-time AMT listener Ace: if you’re young, poor and in Oxford, and you want to go on a Tinder date but you don’t want it to be “Drink?” or “Coffee?”, what do you do instead? Why, you date AMT-style of course! Meet you by the singing cockroaches.
During our three months off, why not amuse yourself by starting a podcast/online store/website using today’s sponsor Squarespace.com? You can have 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year, plus a free domain thrown in, if you invoke the code ANSWER at checkout.
We will return in May, but keep in touch in the meantime at twitter.com/helenandolly and facebook.com/answermethis – which is where we will let you know the due date of AMT332 a couple of weeks ahead of time, AND where we will also post news of Baby Mann once he appears (and has been through hair and makeup, had a spray tan, and undergone intensive media training).
All together now: “For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good herring…WHICH NOBODY CAN DENY.”
Helen & Olly
••• AMT331 Child-Friendly Rating: 42%
Some swears, but pretty clean until the last ten minutes, when there’s a question about lads’ mags and top shelf publications. YOU KNOW THE ONES WE MEAN. The ones your kids are too short to reach/don’t need to reach because they can view all the proclivities of humanity on your phone that they swiped from you. •••
The album features a whole hour of love, sex, dating and genitals, and it’s all completely new AMT material that has never appeared on the podcast. Such as:
♥ Is it appropriate to buy sexy clothes for your mum? ♥ How do you make putting on a condom fun? ♥ Just what is in that liquid squirting out of your girlfriend? ♥ When you’ve lost your engagement ring, how best to style it out? ♥ Is your partner’s schoolgirl fetish something you should worry about? It’s not like he’s a teacher – oh, he is? Oh. ♥ How do you set up a blind date when you’re a blind dater? ♥ How can anyone feel horny at the prospect of a vagina bristling with sharp, spiky horns? ♥ What’s the best point of a wedding ceremony to call it off? ♥ How do they come up with all those lines on Take Me Out? ♥ What is your exhibitionist housemate really trying to show you? ♥ How many holes should there be in a penis?
Here’s a little preview:
Any further questions?
♥ Is this album suitable for me if I’m not at all in the mood for love, sex, or interacting with humanity at all? YES. If all these people were having such a great time, they wouldn’t be writing to us, would they?
♥ Is this album child-friendly? HELL NO.
♥ Will this album teach me what it’s like to have the Olly Mann Valentine’s Experience? YES.
♥ Will Helen say the word ‘urethra’ so many times, I will feel a bit sick? MAYBE.
You can get it from iTunes and Amazon, but if you want all of your money to go to us and none to Megacorp, buy it directly from the AMT Store.
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 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)
Join us for a jaunt through The Best of Answer Me This! 2015, where we revisit such bright spots from the year as:
And, as every year, there are the Previously Unheard Bits of AMT, plus our favourite: the Melancholy Voicemail Parade.
Haven’t heard the Best Of AMT collections from previous years? Get them at answermethisstore.com/best. All the hits, none of the shits!
Also while you’re at the AMT store, you can buy our classic episodes, albums and apps. By doing so, you’re supporting the show – and obliterating the howling silence, right?
As a chaser to the last post about dog-sitting, let’s check in on Carlee from Wellington who appeared in AMT316 to ask, as she had taken care of her flatmate’s cats for the majority of the previous nine months, how she could propel her flatmate to bequeath her (Carlee) the cats in the event of her (the flatmate’s) death during a business trip. Carlee writes:
Since AMT316, nobody has died, but I have moved out, and am enjoying a lifestyle that does not involve being woken up by someone else’s cats every night.
When I visited her recently the cats gave not one shit about me – didn’t show any sign of recognising me, let alone welcoming me back, so I retract my earlier intentions towards them.
Regardless of what that tells you about the emotional capacity of someone who can dispassionately and self-servingly contemplate the death of a flatmate, it certainly illustrates my suspicion that cats are sociopaths to whom all that human love is utterly meaningless. Olly, just try to prove otherwise.
The dangers of selfie sticks (and donkeys) are illustrated in this email from Wayne:
I’m listening to AMT322 where you talk about people with their wands of Narcissus taking photos of themselves with animals.
This reminded me of a recent trip to the New Forest, where we saw a young girl get done over by a juvenile donkey she was trying to take a selfie with. She got the poor animal in a headlock to take the photo, at which point the cute and cuddly equid head-butted her and then kicked her for good measure.
All three of us in the car (myself, my wife and my 8 year old son in the back) all said the same: “Well that serves her right.”
It amused us for the journey back to the camp site.
Have you ever had a dangerous close encounter with a wild beast? Or with an idiot who is having a close encounter with a wild beast? If it was non-fatal to all involved, step cautiously into the comments to tell us about it.
PS Here are some of the warning signs I saw around the geysers at Yellowstone National Park. THINK SAFETY, PEOPLE. Or, at the very least, think more than not at all.
Here’s some relief for questioneers from the past couple of episodes.
E-J writes:
In AMT313 you had a letter from a vet student who is allergic to animals and is concerned about whether or not she should continue training.
I’ve been a registered veterinary Nurse for over 10 years and have worked with many vets who are allergic to animals – it is a very common problem and they just take antihistamines daily and are ok. One vet I worked with was so allergic he had to wear gloves all the time as well, but he was an extreme case.
I have also worked with vets who are phobic about certain animals, and we have had to lock them in their consulting rooms until the animal of their phobia has left the building so it can’t get to them!
Seems like an imprudent choice of profession for an animal-phobe, but maybe they were trying immersion therapy.
Jon writes:
For the lady in AMT314 who encouraged her colleague to join her in training for a cycling event what she should do use a tip used by runners with a similar challenge.
Both (or more) cyclists start from the same point on an agreed route. After a set amount of time, they all turn around wherever they are on the route and head back to the start point. Assuming an even pace, all participants should finish at the start point at the same time. The challenge for participants is to cycle further on the outward leg and still win the return leg.
If done correctly, the final stages of the training session will always be exciting for all participants.
Exciting? To zoom back from the halfway point only to be stuck behind all the slowpokes for the triumphal final straight? Blood will be spilt.
Have you ever nicked a little something to remind you of a holiday? We’ve got a nice china cup pinched from a plane and YOU’LL NEVER TAKE US ALIVE, BRITISH AIRWAYS. What’s yours? One listener’s stolen souvenir came with fond memories and twenty years of guilt. Find out what and why in Answer Me This! Episode 314:
Today we tackle:
tinfoil hats
dumping your training-buddy
same-sex kisses
concierges Kendal Mint Cake vs transubstantiation royal tins of travel sweets vs the unstoppable march of time
stealing from castles vs pissing in a stream
the silent film Wings
a Milton Keynes-themed bar
heritage crime The Grand Budapest Hotel IRL
mummy and daddy
1995
and
giraffe heads.
Plus: though Olly prefers men to machines, he would prefer men to act like machines; Helen wouldn’t tune into a livestream of Princess Middleton giving birth; and Martin the Sound Man doesn’t have high hopes for his fellow academics on the ski slopes, unless the hopes are for a mild sprain rather than a broken arm.
As an addendum to the question about same sex kisses in films, today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) concerns the lost lesbians of Love Actually. Yes, they actually left material OUT of that sprawling collage of human emotions.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. Generous!
We’ll return on 28th May 2015 with AMT315, prepare your tinfoil headphones.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT314 Child-Friendly Rating: 85%. Content clean. Swearing inventory: 2x ‘fuck’, 1x ‘shit’. 5% is deducted for each. •••
Martin the Sound Man sports a tinfoil hat at AMT100
Trying times today, as a questioneer faces a choice between her dream job as a vet, and her debilitating allergy to animals. What to do? Listen to Answer Me This! Episode 313, of course!
In which we discuss:
food that is older than you
political posters
cleaning with booze
yearning Boudin Bakery bread bacteria
Olly’s mum’s rack – spice rack, that is!
photographic memory Jill Price
escalator speed
tortoise vets
licorice root
and
poogatory.
Plus: young Olly’s wish was to become Billy Baldwin in Sliver; Helen is desperate for someone – ANYone! – to invent a hoverbag; and Martin the Sound Man headbutted an escalator whilst still in utero, setting a precedent for a lifetime of clumsiness.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, there’s a question from Christine in Philadelphia whose Fitbit is bullying her into physical exertion. March on the spot as you listen via your iThings, Android and Windows phones.
Overshadowed by a special guest appearance from Missy Elliott*, here’s Answer Me This! Episode 307:
*Not really. She refuses to respond to our postcards.
On today’s question-answering slate:
female strippers
male strippers
drupes
Grumpy Cat beckoning cats Cats Lil Bub: the Chris Martin of cats
Ben Lashes
fast food delivery
wedding diplomacy
Happy Meal toys
Ronald McDonald vs Carol Vorderman
human beatboxing
coconuts
and
Femidoms.
Plus: Olly’s brain or his wang can be stimulated, but never at the same time; Helen could have been the late-90s Beanie Baby trading magnate of Tunbridge Wells; and Martin the Sound Man exercises uncharacteristic restraint in the face of a question about beatboxing. Though he still manages to sound like he’s polishing a window with his own spit.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App contains further contemplation of memes and cats and the internet’s favourite/Helen’s least favourite, cat memes. Hear on your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. Use it use it use it!
With every fibre of our being, we yearn for your QUESTIONS. Leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Happy Thanksgiving to AMT’s American pals! Today’s episode is thematically appropriate for you, since it involves a question about Disney’s turkey legs; so don your turkey boxer shorts and turkey tops, strap on your turkey watch, inhale the delicious scent of turkey, plug in your turkey headphones and listen to Answer Me This! Episode 303*:
We also speak of such non-turkey topics as:
mirrors in the gym
sexy cheese
a pat from Paul Daniels
the Dewey Decimal System
Meville Dewey vs Melvil Dui
McDonald’s bagels
wanking into bagels
ripping off Starbucks
hidden Mickeys Fifty Shades of Grey-based pranks
and
cat scat chat.
Plus: Olly favours almond milk over animal milk (maybe the question about cheesy handjobs put him off); size matters to Helen, when it comes to shelving second-hand books; and Martin the Sound Man is never going to be a serial TV quiz contestant
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets) is stuffed full of praise for the bountiful foods of Manchester. If you like the sound of the Answer Me This! Christmas – and even Scrooge can get behind it – then you can buy it and episodes 1-170 as an early prezzie for yourself at answermethisstore.com. You’re funding the future of AMT with your purchases, so Thank You from the future!
We’ll be back with AMT304 on 11th December 2014; stay out of trouble in the meantime,
Helen & Olly
••• AMT303 Child-Friendly Rating: 30%. Sweary from the off. Obscene question about cheese ten minutes in, followed by a Fifty Shades of Grey-based prank, then the possibly non-consensual and definitely unprotected sex in Phantom of the Opera. Overall, not an episode to listen to on the school run. •••
* And here is Helen sporting one of your traditional Thanksgiving hats:
Answer Me This! Podcast 