If you take the plunge and purchase it, you’re not only funding the podcast, you also get one hour of all-new Christmas chat about such festive topics as:
✯ FOOD!✯
Audio is entirely calorie-free, so feast your ears on mince pies, trifle, Brussels sprouts, poisoned turkey, lutefisk, Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa Cake and what Christmas pudding can teach you about atomic physics (which is better than eating it).
✯ENTERTAINMENT!✯
Christmas titans Eric’n’Ernie face off against Mike Yarwood; Olly fails to be swept away by ‘Fairytale of New York’ (and don’t even get him started on ‘Christmas Wrapping’); and the Grinch stole Dr Seuss’s doctorate.
✯CUSTOMS!✯
How the Norse deities Frigga and Baldur got you to snog people under a bunch of a poisonous parasitic plant; why Rudolph’s got a red nose; how the first ever Christmas card managed to be offensive; why Kwanzaa was invented; and Santa on waterskiis.
✯CRISIS MANAGEMENT! ✯
How to salvage the situation if your partner’s bought you a brilliant present and you got them something shit; what to do if you dread staying at your in-laws’ house; how to uninvite people from your party; and why you’re more likely to end up getting a divorce at Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.
✯DECORATIONS! ✯
Let us deck the halls of your ears with Christmas jumpers, Christmas crackers, double beards, and paper hats, even though everyone looks like a dick in the paper hats. Especially because everyone looks like a dick in the paper hats.
The Answer Me This! Christmas Album is fun for all the family – no, it really is, because we don’t even swear. So Great-Grandma Gladys and Tiny Tim can listen happily together while you sneak off and neck the cooking brandy.
As Halloween approaches, in Answer Me This! Episode 276 we wonder how it is that in films, adorable little girls become UTTERLY TERRIFYING. See above. Then listen below:
We also consider:
Cineworld Stevenage Stars in their Eyes
the most tree-filled city in Europe
pound shops
Lisa Stansfield
working night shifts Freddo bars
Bon Jovi vs Dr Alban
Midlands canals vs Venetian canals
the Clee Hills vs the Urals
the Torquay Eye
Chinese restaurants
Stoptober, Movember and Dickember
and
balti.
Plus: Olly gets busy with the passover plate; you can sponsor Helen next time she’s buying posh chocolate; and Martin the Sound Man gets a whole question about his birthplace, Birmingham! Beware: the Brummie beast is unleashed…
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows) we tackle a question from Ali from Cambridge, who after her recent break-up is gripped by the urge to chop her hair off. Classic technique, Ali.
We do want your whelming facts about Birmingham, or even your own hometown, but most of all we want 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
AMT276 Child-Friendly Rating: 87%. A couple of swears, though the strongest are quoting a child, Regan in The Exorcist.
Trolls have been in the news a lot lately – the online tormentor kind, but not the toys that used to be so popular. Why is that? Did people finally take a clear-eyed look at those dinky little plastic haemorrhoids and realise that they disobeyed William Morris’s dictum regarding beauty/usefulness? Has there been a worldwide shortage of neon hair?
No. Find out the true reason for trolls’ recent retirement from the limelight in Answer Me This! Episode 269:
In which we also learn about:
wicker furniture
family holidays
murder houses
Ray Winstone vs. June Whitfield
indoor-outdoor space
the Lindbergh baby
the seven generic top-level domains
pianists’ page-turners Thomas Dam
and
Yoshi.
Plus: Olly gets to talk about cats, and their glands, and their necks, and their cheeks, and their adorable bums; if Helen were the subject of a Thomas Harris novel, it’d be The Silence of the Chairs; and Martin the Sound Man is indignant at the idea of a male dinosaur laying an egg through his urethra.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App features a humdinger of a tale: Olly has alphabeticised his spice rack. For reals! Hear all about it, and how Helen has organised her spice rack, on your iDevice or Android.
Also, if you want to have a holiday that is more enjoyable than questioneer Pat from Canada’s, try the AMT Holiday album – no family rows or screaming kids, just one hour of us jabbering on into your ear. What could be more paradisial and relaxing than that?
Don’t be so relaxed that you forget to send us your QUESTIONS, though. 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
AMT269 Child-Friendly Rating: 78%. Some swearing, one attributable to Olly channelling Ray Winstone. References to feline sexual delight. Detraction of possibly beloved-by-children Troll dolls.
PS Oh, HERE’s where all the Trolls disappeared to. (Aside from all the ones that have been hiding out here.)
This week, we learn a few very important lessons about sheep: not to underestimate them intellectually and emotionally; what they have in common with Margaret Thatcher; and what they also have in common with Helen’s mum. Discover these things right now in Answer Me This! Episode 261:
In which we also learn about:
emogothpunk style Casper the Suicidal Ghost
small-talk with accountants
the losers’ cafe in The Apprentice
BHS Dr Martens
free sunglasses
pony-drawn rollers
the Cabinet vs. the Divine Right of Kings
iced coffee vs. cold coffee Olly’s face vs. Richard Gere’s face
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
hair-blindness
and
advice from Paul Ross.
Plus: Olly had to go cold turkey on the brown, by which we mean Mr Brown drinks, not heroin; Helen sounds and looks and smells like an old fart; and Martin the Sound Man’s emotional needs are not going to be met by sheep. Let’s not even contemplate whether they can meet his sexual needs, please. But you can meet Martin’s needs by going to his website or YouTube to watch his spectacular new music video (/visual evidence of his nervous breakdown).
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Helen expresses her ever-unrealised desire for unusual-coloured hair. She may have wimped out of having an experimental phase in her teens, but when she’s a geriatric she WILL go full-bore Marge Simpson. Promise.
Promise us to send us your QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We’ll be back with AMT262 on 11th July, so please join us then; in the meantime, check back here for our imminent album, the Answer Me This! Holiday, our all-new follow-up to our Top 20 (no really!) albums Jubilee and Sports Day, available for your delectation at answermethispodcast.com/albums.
Byeeee!
Helen & Olly
AMT261 Child-Friendly Rating: 90%.
References to hiding pornographic magazines; very mild profanity.
Plus: Olly wonders why the Black Eyed Peas are so keen to shut things down; Helen hates children who have far better business sense than she has, or ever will have; and Martin the Sound Man thinks an ornamental fence is no obstacle to ardour.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we go more bananas for bananas, except for bananas that are a year old.
We go bananas for your QUESTIONS, so email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
We hope you enjoyed the Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part I last week. If you did, you’ll also enjoy The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II, and if you didn’t, maybe you’ll prefer The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II. Either way, you should listen to The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 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)
Wherein we meet again our auld acquaintances:
Phantom of the Opera
Hamlet Hamlet
Prince Philip’s bladder Killer Net
Angela Lansbury fantasies
R Kelly’s fancy parties
the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
Devon vs Cornwall scone wars
sex Jenga
the Owl and the Pussycat
the 21st-century Sweeney Todd
Olly’s solo sex tape
Helen taking an off-brand fruit into the Apple store
and
Charlie’s Angles.
And there are more previously unheard bits of AMT, which you can have more of every week if you posess the AMT App, available for iDevices and Android – on which you also get our Best Of episodes from the past five years, if you trawl through diligently enough.
Please be generous with your QUESTIONS for AMT in 2013: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
We’ll be back on 10th January 2013, but you can still hear plenty of us before then:
• We’ll be running through the year’s biggest online events on Saturday Edition, BBC 5 Live 8pm 29th December or available shortly after as the Let’s Talk About Tech podcast.
• Olly will be Manning the microphone on LBC 97.3 FM, 1-4am most nights from Xmas Eve to Jan 3rd – check lbc.co.uk for the schedule, and rouse yourself from your festive stupor to give him a call and keep him company.
• Helen will crop up on BBC 5 Live’s Radio Review of 2012, hosted by Jane Garvey and Mike Sweeney, which will be broadcast on at 11pm on Christmas Eve, repeated 4pm on Christmas Day, or, if you want to listen at a more sensible time, it’ll be available on the 5 Live website straight after.
• You can hear us discussing Christmas gadgets and songs on Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2 on 20th December. UPDATE: Here’s the link to the item on iPlayer.
• And we wrote some bits for the Celebrity Juice Christmas Specials; part one is already on ITV Player and part two will follow on tonight.
We hope you have very happy festivities, and we’ll see you next year!
Helen & Olly
PS if you need more noise to drown out the sound of sleighbells and Wizzard, direct yourself to our Jubilee and Sports Day albums, as well as AMT1-120.
Hey guys! Remember when we…? And that time when…? And that thing where…? Ah, good times. So many good times! Please join us in reliving half of them in The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part I:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 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)
In which we reacquaint ourselves with such beloved old friends as:
The Elves and the Shoemaker
Fabio and Fabio
Hong King Disney
nurse fantasies
the Elgin Marbles
PATP
the seawater cure
Will.I.Am’s nursery rhymes
Pink Lady apples
sexy snowgirls
mad neighbours
bloody Big Bird and dead Kes
Helen’s childhood crush on Inspector Morse
Olly’s kidney
and
Martin the Sound Man’s blue girlfriend.
Plus: drunk callers! Parping! D*ve from Sm*thw*ck!!! And if you enjoyed the assemblage of previously unheard material, ie the blooper reel, you can hear more of that sort of thing every week if you obtain the AMT app for your iDevices and Android.
Join us again next Thursday for the second half of our annual retrospective, and do also supply us with QUESTIONS for AMT 2013. Email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
Brace yourselves, listeners: in Answer Me This! Episode 240, those two titans of the Northern Hemisphere, Russia and Canada, face off for the bout you’ve all been waiting for. KABOOM!!!!
Sort of.
This week we speak of:
Andy Warhol’s wig
podcatchers
Russell Brand’s dad
penis pasta
Guinness World Record adjudicators
mean mean mother-in-law
pleasing your partner’s parents
the death of Borders
holidays with Paul Daniels
and
poutine vs. Putin.
Plus: you may be surprised to hear that Olly is a one-doughnut Mann; Helen’s ex-boyfriend moved the earth for her, literally; and Martin the Sound Man unleashes his inner Sarah Palin. Watch out, world.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Sam about Gems TV, that 24/7 diamond of entertainment.
Next week is the first half of the Best of Answer Me This! 2012, but for your chance to appear in the Best of Answer Me This! 2013, send us QUESTIONS for the new year. Email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
Also please do try out our other weekly podcasting exploit The Joy of Tech from BBC 5 Live, in which we talk about the week’s internet events alongside experts in tech, cars, gaming and other highlights of modern existence.
With just days to go until Hallowe’en, many of you have been writing to ask what costume you should opt for. Here’s our one-size-fits-all solution:
1. Wrap yourself in a duvet;
2. Go to bed until November 1st.
While you’re there, drown out the sound of trick or treaters ringing your doorbell by listening to Answer Me This! Episode 234:
Today we consider:
Citizen Kane
the classic Charlie’s Angels remake Green Jelly (nee Jello)
doughnuts vs. douchebags
strumpets vs. crumpets
Brian May’s badger sanctuary
William of Orange’s pet pugs
tribute bands
hipster combovers
psychoanalysis of Agatha Christie
Fratzos: matzos for frat boys
Leonardo DiCaprio lookalikes
the hard lives of fake Posh’n’Becks
Ann Widdecombe
the mystery of the Rolling Stones’ hair
and
The Mystery of Hercule Poirot’s Pants.
Plus: Olly finally finds a TV show to enjoy when he’s alone in business hotels; Helen does not think this is cute, at all; and Martin the Sound Man won’t think much of Django Reinhardt impersonators unless they burn off their fingers.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Olly digs up a big mistake Universal made, back in the day when Mickey Mouse was still just a rabbit, and Norman Bates was still just a motelier.
Make no mistake: we want your QUESTIONS so we can make more episodes of AMT. So email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
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.
When you woke up this morning, listeners, did you realise this would be the day that Olly revealed how he is in possession of the local equivalent of one of John Wayne Gacy’s prison paintings?
Well, it is that day. Assuming you go ahead and listen to Answer Me This! Episode 225 rather than choose to continue living in ignorance:
Wherein we contemplate:
Danny Boyle
morality in musicals
shouting at children
Ramadan for Olympians
masks
hippie housemates
Maroon 5 vs. pole vaulters
Chicago vs. Bury St Edmunds
Outer Mongolia vs. Darkest Peru Mrs Lovett vs. Wagamama
the Phantom of the Opera vs. The Collector
Timbuktu
what Mein Kampf is missing (aside from a GSOH of course)
ostentatious eccentricity nooks and crannies Coinstar
Hitler’s watercolours
and
Sesame Snaps.
Plus: climbing upon Nelson’s Column, Olly almost exposes his own column; Helen misses the cupboard in which she hid from childhood; and Martin the Sound Man discovers his spirit flower.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available on iDevices and Android) includes the next episode in the series begun by Lauren from Brooklyn in AMT224, ‘Is it OK to steal?’ In today’s thrilling installment, Mike from Crofton Park asks whether he’s allowed to steal his broadband package. How can it be stealing when you can’t even SEE it, right?
If, like Mike and Lauren, you’re tussling with your moral compass – or any other query is bothering you – allow us to solve your problems for you: send your QUESTIONS as voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
You should click here if you’re in the market for a hippie-proof AMT mug, which must be nigh indestructable if it’s survived five years in our company. If you want to survive 59 minutes 33 seconds more of our company, please invest in the AMT Sports Day too, because on the eve of the Olympics, it would be impolite not to.
We’re as surprised as you to discover that Answer Me This! Episode 221 opens with a heated discussion upon the topic, ‘What is art?’ Check us out with our high brows!
Naturally our brows don’t stay high for long; in decreasing order of highfalutingness, we talk about:
Edward Lear
double-ended ice cream
Tracey Emin Jeremy Deller‘s teenage parties
the Marquis de Sade
firefighters
bridesmaids
pole dancing
Charlie Chaplin drowning horribly
the pull-out method
and Annabel Chong.
Plus: Olly is horrified to discover that there’s a boarding school-style communal wanking game that he’d never heard of; Helen knows how to make anything unsexy, using ham; and Martin the Sound Man would like to remind you that you only have a couple of weeks left to enter his Science Songwriter of the Future competition, so make the old man happy because he’s got a bad ear this week.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App Helen gives you a great tip for making new friends on late-night public transport, based on her recent encounter with a stranger’s pelvis on the Victoria Line. That stranger’s pelvis could be all yours, if you avail yourself of the app on iDevices or Android! Don’t worry if you’re married; the pelvis won’t be worrying about that either.
We don’t want your pelvises, but we do want your QUESTIONS, so thrust them our way by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). As a reward, you may watch the video below of Eleanor from Norwich’s pole dancing team going about their totally sexless business.
Answer Me This! Podcast 