Ten years. Ten years! TEN. YEARS. Ten years we’ve been doing this show. TEN.
In that time, technologies have waxed and waned; world leaders have come and gone; yet here we still are, answering the questions that you supply, just as we did in episode 1 all the way back in January 2007, and in every episode in between.
To celebrate the show’s birthday, in Answer Me This! Episode 346 we provide a thrilling glimpse into the AMT Process, receive a gift from a musical hero, and tackle a question on Olly’s favourite third favourite subject. We also discuss:
Mickey Mouse
sentimental dehydrators
rubber fetishes
grown-up purchases
Helen’s lost engagement ring vs Helen’s lost copy of Heathers
Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans vs Campbell’s actual soup cans
graphic design vs fine art vs graphic design
file-in-cake-based prison breaks
British bears
British beavers
and
why you should never lend things to friends if you ever want to get those things back.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we consider another problem for a Mickey Mouse reboot: the voice. Disney, if you’re listening, we have a suggestion for who should play Mickey. Go on, give it a go…
You should give our album AMT Love a go, if you want to hear an hour of us talking about sex and relationships. It’s available from the AMT store – you can also get it from iTunes and Amazon, if you prefer – along with our other albums and our classic episodes. We can’t pretend that listening back to the first episode today didn’t make us wince, but for just 79.9p it’s a good price for a wince.
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
Bigger thanks to YOU for listening and sending in questions and supplying kind messages and buying our stuff and generally supporting us during the past decade.
Ever worried that if you donate blood, someone might have it transfused into their body then incriminate you in their crime? No, us neither, but one questioneer is concerned. Hear his fear in Answer Me This! Episode 343, as well as:
Plus: Olly concocts a brilliant/ridiculous Jonathan Creek plot;
Helen misses working as a barmaidbartender, even if she was effectively a parody of the role; and Martin the Sound Man would like you to bring him flowers, please.
The Mann family firearm features in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App. Get the app for your iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
What do you do when your friend has fallen for a pathological liar? Do you a) confront the fibber with evidence of their deceit, or b) write to a comedy podcast? It’s fairly easy for you to find out: just listen to Answer Me This! Episode 342, in which we also discuss:
dining with babies
dining with strangers’ shitty babies
the Oscars Curse Jenny Beavan’s red carpet look
supergroups on superyachts
gregarious egregious Gregs
and
the advantage of the cupcake
Plus: Olly betrayed his former self by not doing his wedding dance to ‘The Snooker Song‘ from The Hunting of the Snark; Helen is giving away a dead good podcast idea; and Dave Stewart is not welcome to shit up Martin the Sound Man’s supergroup.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App is about a bit of crap on a lot of kitchen worktops: spiralisers, the existence of which is irking Gemma from Cannock (yes, yes, Martin; the town in the West Midlands to which 80s popstar Tiffany moved after her heyday). Get the app for your iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
We’re open for business at answermethisstore.com if you want to buy our first 200 episodes or our albums. You can also give us money without having to give us any of your own money if you get yourself a FREE AUDIOBOOK for you at answermethispodcast.com/audible.
Good morning, you lazy bastards! One listener called Martin has been up and at ’em since earlytimes, because before this post even went up, he tweeted us with a solution to one of the problems discussed in Answer Me This! Episode 267: Josh, who is trying to watch racy HBO shows on his iPad at the gym without feeling ashamed, needs to get one of these. Wallop! Problem solved.* And what have you done lately, eh?
Don’t worry, you don’t really need to do very much at all, except listen to the episode, of course:
We also consider:
spiders Victor David Brenner
SculptureShop
Thomas Jefferson vs. Mariah Carey
Olly’s dad vs. DVDs
corrupt bakers
Theresa May: monarchical midwife À la recherche du temps perdu
madeleines
Farter’s Day
the definition of virginity
and
Richard Nixon.
Plus, each of us is ready for combat this week: Olly provokes a rematch of the Battle of Agincourt, but this time over French cakes versus English cakes; Helen wages war against cliché; and Martin the Sound Man takes a shoot-to-kill policy on spiders and whelks.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, learn how to decorate your home in the Olly Mann style: with squashed moths. Or, if you prefer slightly less morbid things on your walls, you could get the AMT clock that he mentions in the show. That’s right: Olly Mann’s clockface is his own face. We’re still working on turning Helen’s face into a sundial.
While we do that, you should work on sending us your QUESTIONS. It’s easy: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Bam. Job done.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT267 Child-Friendly Rating: 50%. Just a couple of swears. Question about sex scenes in HBO shows. Graphic mental image of Jack Straw staring up a royal birth canal. Question about virginity at the end of the show with, naturally, references to sexual practices, albeit thoughtful rather than lairy in tone.
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.
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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