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Plus: Olly finds the opposite of porn; Helen’s marriage motivation becomes apparent at long last; and Martin chats with the other Martin Austwick, who is a sword man not a sound man.
AMT413 will be out on Christmas Eve and halfway through the month, there’ll be an episode our new feature Answer Us Back in your podfeed, full of your contributions to AMT questions recent and ancient.
No Skip Christmas; Allusionist reading Xmas carol
Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or call 0208 123 5877 like the old days. 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 on Christmas Eve so if you have festive questions, send them in now, or hang on for another year.
Helen makes the entertainment podcast about language, The Allusionist, and also recently was a guest talking about the British Christmas pop music canon on Arnie ‘Hello from the Magic Tavern’ Niekamp’s new podcast No Skip Christmas. And, you can watch her read the whole of A Christmas Carol with musical accompaniment from Martin on the Allusionist YouTube channel.
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.
Thanks to Naked Wines for sponsoring AMT, and for providing bottles straight from world-class winemakers, cutting out the middleman, delivered to your door. Head to nakedwines.co.uk/answer to get a £30 voucher on your first 6 pack, including free delivery.
Plus: Olly remembers his dad’s Martian business plan*, that is still up for grabs if any of you want to do it; Helen has ‘Baby On Board!’ windscreen signs in the crosshairs; and Martin the Sound Man’s parents named him Martin hoping he’d take after one of the nice Martins, rather than Amis or Scorsese.
*If you do decide to give this a whirl – or you have a less doomed idea for a business – build the website using today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Tinker around during the free two-week trial, then you can have 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. You get a URL and loads of storage thrown in. AND Squarespace manages to make your site look nice on desktop, mobile and tablet, which is far more than most site hosts do (ahem ahem this one).
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) is a question from Kate about those metal bars that run around the bottom of bars. Bonus appearance from the town that plays Northern Exposure.
We’ll return on 20th August 2015 with AMT321. Be there. Or our hearts will yearn for you.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT320 Child-Friendly Rating: 34%. It opens with feedback regarding AMT319‘s dominatrix question, which, though heartwarming, may be riper than you feel your children should cope with. Some swears thereafter, but we suspect you’ll already have saved this for post-watershed listening. •••
PS Feast your eyes on LEAVENWORTH! The happiest place on earth (or at the very least, Washington State).
Plus: Olly is obedient to nobody and nothing, except cookbooks; getting-out-of-doing-the-housework schemes suck Helen right into a sub-dom situation; and we can all hope to see the return of the Martin the Sound Man On Ice show.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) renowned theatre- and Disney-adorer Olly rejects Disney on Ice for not being theatrical enough; but we may come up with an ice show that does satisfy him.
••• AMT319 Child-Friendly Rating: 28%. Some swears.
Martin refers to Marilyn Manson, whose very name corrupts the youth. If you switch it off half an hour in, you will spare your innocent children the final question about a relationship with a dominatrix, which entails discussion of BDSM, sex and Adult Situations. •••
Costume designer Anie’s proof of Ice Cinderella’s dress colour.
Our next question comes from a lady known only as A, who says:
I’m in a dilemma. I know this guy who I met at an event last year and he is way older than I am. We kept in touch but kinda lost touch for a few months. Then about a few months after that we bumped into each other and he and i got back in touch and started emailing each other. Those emails got quite intimate and personal.
We soon met up and had a quiet lunch in January. Then we kept emailing each other and pretty soon we both confessed that we want each other sexually but there’s a catch: he’s married and has a daughter and wants me the way it’s written in Fifty Shades of Grey. I am into that whole thing but just on paper and haven’t even tried that whole spanking and tying up bit.
He is heading abroad for a month and when he’s back we are planning to get busy. My gut is telling me not to do so, but my mind is saying something else as I have just started an awesome new job and have got my life in order.
What should I do? Should I just give into what he and I want or push him aside? We have been friends since day 1 so that seems to be out of the question.
It seems out of the question to you only because you’re so DISTRACTED BY THE YELLING OF YOUR LOINS.
I’m assuming from your penultimate paragraph that you’ve taken leave of your senses. You’ve just started an awesome job and got your life in order – so now would be the optimal time to mess everything up? For…karmic balance? Colour me baffled.
By all means go ahead and experiment with your BDSM fantasies, but choose somebody who is unattached with whom to do so. The Fifty Shades scenario is already one in which the man controls the woman; don’t tip it further to your disadvantage by enacting it with a married man, because you will have ever little dominion as time passes. And you should be especially cautious about enabling somebody else’s extra-marital funtime because you sound like you’ve already grown emotionally attached even before you’ve deployed the bondage kit.
Readers, if you have anything to say about A’s Fifty Shades of Folly, go to the comments and do so. But she’ll probably never read this post through her blindfold made of lust and neckties.
I’m completely bored of Fifty Shades of Grey, and I haven’t even read it. I’m even bored of all the humorous deconstruction of it, but our next questioneer Mike from Shropshire may have hit on a way to quell some of the public enthusiasm for the phapping phenomenon:
Many women I know are putting status updates on Facebook telling us all that they are reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Some of these people are also professional colleagues of mine.
In view of this new openness about reading of pornography, answer me this – is it now acceptable for me to tell the world on Facebook what porn videos I am watching?
Readers, what do you reckon? Tell us in the comments – if you’re not too busy being tied to your bedposts by an arrogant businessman, or whatever.
Answer Me This! Podcast 