Whatever happened to aerobics on morning telly, the corpse of Henry VIII, and cummerbunds? In Answer Me This! Episode 372, we crack these mysteries and more, including:
the Pete Best of the Spice Girls the Magic Castle dress code
fish death
taxi radio
Mr Motivator
‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at the football Man of La Mancha
books as gifts
mummified monarchs
borrowing clothes from Switched On Pop
and
cummerbunds.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – our conversation about kings’ corpses turns to a surprisingly thoughtful contemplation of burial and shivah. And then away from that to Scooby-Doo.
Prepare yourselves, New Zealand and Australia, for an influx of Helen and Martin: the Allusionist live tour is coming to you. Check theallusionist.org/events for shows in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide; more dates will be added soon.
Also! Listen to Olly’s new series about diets and body image, Tip the Scales, and it’s ready and waiting for you if you’re an Audible subscriber in the UK and a handful of other countries (commiserations, USA). You AMT listeners in the UK can get a free trial of Audible for a month at answermethispodcast.com/audible – or, if you’ve had such a thing before, you can get a spell of half price membership! And remember: 1. for each of you that takes up the trial, Audible gives us a little bit of money, even when you cancel without paying a thing; 2. you can keep your free audiobooks forever. Hear a sample of Tip the Scales HERE, then get your free Audible trial HERE then hear the whole series HERE.
Sing along to Martin the Sound Man’s gap year diary of songs: his new 40-track mega album The Year of the Bird, complete with illustrations and diaries about each song, is being released at palebirdmusic.com.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, with which you can easily and quickly set up a good-looking website for your projects eg your Oscar-nominated documentary. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Today we learn why all those people believe Elvis to be alive, whereas they don’t feign such confidence over the likes of, say, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, Mozart… Put on your white jumpsuit and conspiracy theorising hat, and get stuck into Answer Me This! Episode 271:
In which we also ponder:
office nemeses
servants
panpipes
table tennis bats
cupcake wars (interpersonal ones, not the tv show of the same name) Red Or Black vs Ant Or Dec
the parliamentary mace vs Geoff Hoon
The Flaming Et Cetera
and
the National Enquirer.
Furthermore! Of course Olly loves the sound of his own voice, but only in solitude; sure, Helen can bake, but it’s nothing really (on the other hand, talking shit every week is high art); and Martin the Sound Man posits that not only is Elvis not alive now, he was also not alive during most of his life. You still following?
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) Helen wonders how a duck foetus ends up in a glass of champagne on a tasting menu – and moreover why anybody would think that is a suitable first date drink.
Also not suitable for a first date, but perfectly suitable for most other times, is sending us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT271 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. Opens with an email about Consenting Adults’ Bedsports, but other than that, very clean, even swear-wise.
It is the 75th birthday of Maltesers, so in Answer Me This! Episode 209 we’re celebrating by berating their current advertising campaign for being sexist. Although we similarly spent Grandad’s 75th birthday party berating him for his unreconstructed chauvinism. Can’t trust these septuagenarians to say the right things.
On the agenda this week:
Trojans
buskers
aerated foods
Debra Winger
Stephen Fry’s cab
organ donation
pink newspapers
Boots
Christian barbecues Arne Jacobsen‘s arse
and
hearses.
Plus: Olly lets yet another brilliant enterprise go to waste, but there’s nothing stopping any one of you future billionaires taking it onto Dragon’s Den; Helen finds the world’s best busker – catch him before he goes up in flames; and Martin the Sound Man may be a science whiz, but even he can’t get his macaro(o)ns to work.
It’s quite a literal Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) this week, as we address a question from Volker from Germany who likes to enjoy himself in the workplace lavvies after lights out. And if this, plus the final question of the episode about WCs, has ramped up your curiosity about matters lavatorial, our video masterwork upon the subject can be viewed at the bottom of this post.
We’re also moonlighting on episode 7 of Ian Collins Wants a Word , the new podcast by star of AMT149 Ian Collins. Click here to get a dose of it.
Next week will be our last episode before we go on a little holiday, so hurry to send in your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. We’ve got a bit of a treat for you while we’re on our break, though, so be sure to join us for AMT210 to discover what that is. A packet of Maltesers each? NO. Not until those tasty little bastards start treating us all as EQUALS.