Posts Tagged ‘awkward workplace conversations’

AMT408:  deeeep squats

July 31, 2025

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If you found us thanks to the lobster face-piss that featured in the last episode, welcome! There is no crustacean face-piss in AMT408, but there is:

Willy Wonka’s factory but for stock cubes
airport massage chair hogs
business meetings with your spouse
what the art industry has in common with podcasts
Deely Boppers Bobbers
King Charles’s mucky gloves
tiara rules
private investigators
the Spy Store
and
the downside of being Lil Nas X.

Plus: Olly just needs either his father-in-law to allow him a nightlight, or to buy night vision goggles (prescription obv); Helen will go to the Tower before claiming King Charles is well dressed; and if you see Martin advancing towards you in your airport chair, preemptively get up and RUN.

Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you. Next new episode will land in your podfeed Thursday 28 August 2025.

Paying patrons hear from us before then, though: not only will you receive a compilation of Bonus Bits halfway through the month, and an ad-free version of the episode, but you also get to join us for our live video question-answering featurette Petty Problems on 23rd August at 22:00 UK time (check your timezone). The previous edition was a very fun hangout, and we all got to weigh in on some not so serious problems – good neighbours, bad neighbours, a veterinarian finding some perhaps incriminating items inside a pet…

That video is still available to watch, and you should join us for the next one, by becoming an AMT donor at patreon.com/answermethis.

Check out our other work:

Helen and Martin just had a one-off piece on BBC Radio 4: Souvenirs, a tragicomic factual essay/musical thing, which you can listen to via BBC sounds if you’re in the UK, and if you’re not in the UK, here. You can also hang out with them IRL on the beach in Vancouver on 13 August at the Allusionist meetup. And, the latest in the Allusionist’s Four Letter Word season is a collab with Hannah McGregor about the word dino.

Olly handily lists most of his work at ollymann.com, where as well as checking out the many podcasts he makes and stars in, you can peruse the guest appearances he does, most recently a walking tour around Letchworth Garden City with The Story Pilgrim.

This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.

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EPISODE 364: intimate scrubbing

August 2, 2018

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Apologies for the unscheduled absence of a fresh episode in July, listeners: Helen’s neck had other plans for the past few weeks. But hooray, Helen is out of hospital and all new Answer Me This! Episode 364 is here! WARNING: there’s a bit of Medical Stuff in the first few minutes of this episode, so if you’re sensitive to that, skip to the 4-minute mark, after which you can hear about:

Paw Patrol vs the football World Cup
post-swim communal shower etiquette
cosmetology
Cast Away
jesters’ staffs
cranberry farming
lost birthday presents
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
and
an inflated bladder on a stick.

There is more cranberry-chat in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices. We discover a previous, more ferocious name for the fruit, and reminisce about The Delia Effect (not a euphemism for a UTI or the soothing thereof with cranberry juice).

Check in with our other work: Olly hosts The Modern Mann; and Helen and Martin are performing the Allusionist live show on stages in the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada this autumn – check where and when at theallusionist.org/events.

Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show, and for making it so easy to set up a good-looking website for your projects. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.

The Bluffers’ Guides are back! Rapidly become passingly well-informed in subjects from cats to fishing to social media to wine at bluffers.com.

Send us your QUESTIONS: any time, deliver a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You can still use the old ways of calling the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, but a lot of those messages haven’t been reaching us lately. So emailing a voice memo is the safer bet.

Be our interfriend at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis.

We’ll be back with AMT365 on 6 September 2018, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 23 August.

Helen & Olly

••• AMT364 Child-Friendly Rating: 71%. No smut, but quite a few swears. •••

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Posted in PODCASTS | 2 Comments »

wedding plus one problems

June 24, 2015

A solution of sorts

A solution of sorts

••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT316 •••

Jake in London concurs with Olly’s advice in the last episode about the lineup in wedding photos:

Following the discussions in AMT316 about having couples in the official wedding photos who broke up shortly after, I thought I’d share the now comical story of the latter happening at my dad’s wedding a few years ago.

At the wedding me and my brother were asked to be joint best men, which we were pretty pleased with. Our girlfriends were also invited along: I will point out here that whilst me and my partner had been together for several years (and still are), my brother and his girlfriend had only been together a couple of months.

As they have loads of photos taken on the day, me and my brother were naturally in the majority of them. Some of the nicest ones were taken right outside the wedding venue, with my dad and his wife, me and my girlfriend and my brother and his girlfriend. As my brother’s girlfriend was the smallest person in this group of six she was naturally placed front and centre, she was also placed front and centre in all photographs she was in on the day – fucking loads!!!

Within a couple days of the wedding, my dad and his wife had decided on the photos that they liked the best and that they were going to get enlarged portraits of, the biggest of which being one of the photos of the six of us. In the time in between them ordering this blowup and getting it back, my brother and his girlfriend split up. As she was front and centre there was no way of cropping her out and there were no photos of just the 4 or 5 of us. As a result, the massive canvas print hangs proudly on my dads sitting room wall, with all six of us smiling out.

The final irony of this is that my brother has subsequently been in a long-term relationship for the past few years, and his new girlfriend has regularly frequented my dad’s house, meaning she’s always greeted with the smiling face of his ex-girlfriend eyeballing her in the sitting room.

The lesson is, if you are going to have people’s new partners come to your wedding, make sure they’re on the fringes of the photographs and not front and centre.

Also on the wedding tip, an anonymous lady from London writes:

I was just listening to AMT316 and I feel compelled to provide an alternative view on behalf of myself and other ‘expensive randoms’ who plague the existence of listeners like Elizabeth.

I am facing a summer of successive weddings with my boyfriend and I have barely met ANY of the couples whose nuptials I have been invited to celebrate. I do appreciate being thought of, but I haven’t really been given the option to turn the invites down (one of them my mother-out-law RSPVed to on my behalf before I was given the invitation, which doesn’t even have my last name on it because neither of the marriers knows who I am).

So answer me this: what can I do to entertain myself in a hotel in the middle of nowhere all day before I am required to turn up at these numerous receptions at 8pm (after my boyfriend and everyone else involved has spent all day drinking)?

Readers, can you go to the comments and give her some suggestions? Try to come up with something more ingenious than ‘masturbation’, ‘minibar’ and ‘reruns of Columbo‘, even though those are all decent ways to while away her time.

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Well, that’s one way to achieve a work-life balance

January 27, 2010
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Breaking News! Charlie from London, the adventurous chap who asked about swinging with his wife and colleague in Episode 123, has provided us with an update on three points:

The conversations I’ve had with my wife were not awkward for either of us as we have a very strong relationship and talk about everything without fear of upsetting each other. It turns out my wife Kim had been thinking about similar things for a while, so she has enthusiastically agreed. As for your last point: if I would have a problem with my wife sleeping with other men, I would never even have suggested swinging. Obviously.

Fair enough, and congrats to Charlie and Kim for embarking on this exciting new era in their relationship. We certainly make no moral judgements about sexual proclivities here, or else we could scarcely look Martin the Sound Man in the eye…

However, even if their marriage is as stable as Charlie claims, we’re yet to be convinced this will pan out well at Charlie’s workplace. How, exactly, are those ‘watercooler moments’ going to go? “Did you see Dancing On Ice last night?… Where were you thinking of having lunch today?… Do you fancy fisting this weekend?”

It’s fascinating territory and one that, thank the Lord, has never been broached at AMT! Towers. But, Charlie – keep us up to date.

In the meantime, here’s Bing Crosby singing about swinging. He certainly makes it sound lovely!


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