Hello pets! This month is the British Podcast Awards, and you can vote for AMT in the Listeners’ Choice category, you know, if you choose to. Click here to do it. If you need to remember why you love us, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 362. Today we consider:
Meghan Markle’s citizenship post-marriage
My Dad Ate A Pringle
baked bean hummus
celebs in specs
labyrinths vs mazes
atheism vs romance
God Save The Queen vs My Country ‘Tis Of Thee vs every other bloody country’s anthem with the same tune
dangerous beans King Minos’s palace Princess Michael’s brooch El Parador (try the broad bean paste!)
and
a life-sized cutout of Kylie Minogue.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we continue our Beanchat, and learn about keeping deer out of your flowerbeds, deflating a swollen scrotum, and this predicament that Helen’s eyelid got itself into.
Check in with our other work: Helen and Martin are on stage in the next few weeks, with Radiotopia in the eastern USA, the Bugle in the western USA, and the Allusionist in Australia in June. You can check where and when and how at theallusionist.org/events. Hear the modern Olly Mann on The Modern Mann at modernmann.co.uk.
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; play around during the two-week free trial; then when you’re ready to buy your website or domain, you can have get 10% off your first purchase with the discount code ‘answer‘.
If you are in the UK, you can also get two free Audible audiobooks if you go to answermethispodcast.com/audible. Remember to set a calendar alert for 29 June so you get this done before the 30 June 2018 deadline!
There’s no deadline for sending 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.
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.
Today’s questioneers have family troubles: troubles with their parents’ TMI; troubles with being an egg-peeling mother; troubles with having spawned a kid who’s a bit of an arsehole. Oh, the truth hurts.
You know what else hurts? Being a chicken at an 18th century fairground. Find out why in Answer Me This! Episode 324, in which we also discuss:
Disney jail
clock memes
peanuts vs monkey nuts
coconut shy vs cock shy
lard Oreos
omelette stations
oversharing parents
Yankee Doodle vs Pretty Fly For A White Guy
historical hipsters The Eggstractor (approach with caution)
boners
and
BONGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!
Plus: Olly delivers TMI about both breakfast buffets and boners (separately, not together, although we wouldn’t put it past him); even after 30 years, Helen is still in the grip of the Brownies’ indoctrination; and Martin the Sound Man has a new podcast, and the whole first series is OUT NOW at songbysongpodcast.com, so go and listen to it (after you’ve finished AMT324 first, of course).
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iThings, Android and Windows devices – we wonder where all the diabolical pop covers of Yankee Doodle are. And before you say, “Careful what you wish for,” NB we are NOT wishing for this. Stand down, Pitbull. Zip it, Rednex.
However, there is no need to exercise such restraint when it comes to trying out today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Use the code ANSWER to get 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year, which include a URL, loads of storage and 24/7 support. Go on, stop talking about it and start making the website of your dreams.
We’ll return on 15th October 2015 with AMT325. BONGGGGGGGG!!!!!!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT324 Child-Friendly Rating: 70%. We weren’t being especially vigilant about swears, but nor were we being particularly sweary. There is talk of boners, but in an educational more than XXX manner. •••
Are you ready to hear who’s the winner of AMT295‘s beauty pageant in which the only entrants are the knee-to-ankle portions of Olly and Martin? You ARE? Then waste no time – listen to Answer Me This! Episode 296 (which some would argue IS wasting time. Those people can shut their damn cake-holes):
Today we discuss:
having a kip
Kendal Mint Cake The Great British Bake Off leftovers
Louis XIV
ballet vs gymnastics
Bill Callahan vs Barry Manilow
Catherine de Medici
Matthew Bourne Barnoon Cemetery Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery A Chorus Line‘s sweaty gussets
Mary Berry’s Lemon Curd Surge
extra nipples
and
Gromit.
Plus: Olly’s not taking trip advice from Tripadvisor; Helen admits to being a philistine about ballet; and Martin the Sound Man recommends a lovely holiday touring London’s most beautiful burial grounds.
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android or Windows gadgetry), we continue workshopping our Cynical Statistician Catches The Bride’s Bouquet film, with a little stop to revist Britney and Kevin: Chaotic. (Fun fact: they got married on the very same day as Helen’s brother Andy. Sadly, there’s no shitty reality show about Andy’s nuptuals.)
And finally, big thanks to this episode’s sponsors Squarespace.com, without whom website-building would be a far uglier business. For 10% off their services for a whole year, enter the code Answer.
We will return with AMT297 on 4th September, and we hope you do too.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT296 Child-Friendly Rating: 42%. Several swears. Intermission concerns waxen genitalia, but at least we use some long words in it. Saucy remarks about Mary Berry. •••
Why even bother listening to Answer Me This! Episode 274 when you can book PAT SHARP AND THE TWINS to come and do Fun House with you????
Once the disappointment has faded that they don’t actually bring the house with them, they just conjure it in words, then you might as well hear today’s episode:
In which we discuss:
Leonard Cohen’s party anthems
parliamentary mutterings
winking
Anne Robinson vs Doris Day
Bourbon biscuits vs Bourbon boozes Breaking Bad vs Streetmate
Bud Lite Platinum vs Old Speckled Hen Platinum Scandal
Justin Timberlake’s part-time jobs
spare American presidents
and six degradations of Kevin Bacon.
Plus: Olly is NOT a winker, whatever you’ve heard; Helen will waive all usual constitutional structure for Michelle Obama; and Martin the Sound Man is happier than you’ve ever heard him. Possibly happier than he’s ever been. Including his wedding day.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows) Olly worries about being out-butched by a baby. Accept what you cannot change, Olly.
You can change AMT by sending in your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And you could also change the education of young people by helping Martin raise funds for the charity Arts Emergency: they’ll receive all proceeds of his concept album with Mark Burrows, Kill It With Fire.
You can also give us a bit of money without actually giving us your own money: just take our free LoveFilm trial. With it, you can stream The Perks of Being a Wallflower (as well as thousands of other films and televisuals) then tell us whether you concur with our opinion voiced in AMT233.
Even if you can’t be arsed to do any of those fairly low-stress things, please join us again next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT274 Child-Friendly Rating: 95%. Bit of mid-level swearing right off the mark, but otherwise an episode largely free of ribaldry and profanity. Child-appropriate topics including Fun House, biscuits and Doris Day. The kids are fairly likely to zone out during the politics stuff.
Hello listeners! Refreshed by a month off, we return with an episode bursting with fresh new questions. Well, fresh except for the one about the Spice Girls, which we maintain IS fresh as long as you fell into a coma in the summer of 1996 and only just woke up. If that is your situation, we’ll help you catch up on what you missed. We hate to be the ones to break it to you, but Kate Moss and Johnny Depp split up. And things have been awfully quiet on the Meg Mathews front lately.
Everyone else, put Answer Me This! Episode 229 into your ears:
Plus: Olly is terrified of his own pubes (until they start paying rent for their residence upon his body); Helen’s attempt to trick the Tooth Fairy backfired right into her bank balance; and Martin the Sound Man dreams about how, in an alternate universe, Simon and Garfunkel would have replaced ‘The Sound of Silence’ with the sound of cartoon hammers.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Ginger Paul about toilet attendants, bog butlers, lavatory landlords, ablution assistants – whatever you want to call them, the principle is the same, but what’s with all the lollipops? Loo-lipops? Lolli-poops?
Our new series will be running all the way to Christmas, but only if you send us QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
You guys are probably already camping on the pavement outside the cinema waiting for Twilight IVa: They Finally Boff. However, if you have a little room left for things other than Bella’n’Edward, allow it to be filled by Answer Me This! Episode 196:
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)
There are no babies chewing their way out of wombs in the episode, but there is talk of:
Frozen Planet Riverdance
fun with magnesium
Scooby Doo: talk show host
Sammy Davis Jr vs. Jimmy Constable from 911
Akon vs. Shakespeare
flapjacks vs. fun cakes Scrappy Doo vs. Scampi
candles vs. ‘wax-filled tins’ Sophie Wilcox
scaring off the Mongol army The Works
Mario Balotelli
the scent of Jelly Belly
and
medical circumcision.
Plus: [Olly] Mann cannot live on raw cake-mix alone; Helen did not spend her childhood in the back of the wardrobe with Aslan; and Martin the Sound Man wishes the whole world was scented with synthetic rhubarb.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone, iPad or Android) is a treatise on Movember, starting with Martin’s recent facial deforestation, and ending up at Craig David’s current career choice, via Robert Mugabe and Halle Berry, because where else could such a discussion possibly go?
Next week’s episode is going nowhere without your QUESTIONS, so send them in: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis) or write emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Kaboom! Bangbangbang! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Sizzle! It’s Bonfire Night this Saturday, but we’re letting off a rocket a couple of days early, in the form of Answer Me This! Episode 195:
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)
Plus, in this week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, Olly recounts a bad-taste wedding-day prank with tragic consequences. So if you want to ruin an upcoming wedding, fire up your iPhone, iPad or Android device to learn how. At least you won’t have to sit through the bride and groom’s honeymoon photo slides, since they’ll never speak to you again.
We will never speak to YOU again if you don’t send us your QUESTIONS, so you had better leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Don’t make us send you to Coventry, OK?
This week, there’s no finer entertainment than the live footage of Charles Taylor’s trial at the Hague. But second in the chart, and hopefully less upsetting to Mia Farrow, is Answer Me This! Episode 145:
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)
Amongst the evidence we disclose are such exhibits as:
Bombalurina
kopi luwak
Brixton
Gwen Stefani’s stockings
sewer gas lamps vs. energy-saving lightbulbs
Nice biscuits vs. nice biscuits vs. no biscuits
Morrison’s sausages Inside Nature’s Giants
Ben de Lisi’s new gig
interspecies romance
crotch branding
steam power
and
the frozen pea goldfish detox
Plus: Olly teaches the etiquette demanded of an interaction with the police (1. curtsey; 2. hold your kid gloves in your left hand at all times; 3. turn widdershins only); Helen prioritises which side to expose to a wardfull of patients; and Martin the Sound Man takes a big bubbly bath in listener love for his new album (out now on iTunes, Amazon and in pretty physical form, Martyfans! Go on, make an old man very happy).
Now don’t just sit there, bursting with pent-up QUESTIONS; send them to us instead! We like them in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. They will come in really handy for Episode 146, which you can hear next Thursday; and on Tuesday, come back for the final episode of Great British Questions, in which we take toilet humour to new levels.
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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