In Answer Me This! Episode 329, one questioneer wrestles with the ethics of breeding Christmas-truther children who ruin everything for the other kiddos; another introduces us to the Catalan Christmas tradition we now desperately need to appropriate. Listen to find out about those, and also these:
Plus: Olly rode the carousel we all dream of riding; at primary school, Helen reined in her Junior Richard Dawkins; and Martin the Sound Man manages to ruin Oral-B for everyone, thanks Martin.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, the talk of free coffee fraud turns to a far graver offence: Toys R Us fraud. To hear, fire up the app on your iThings, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks very much to today’s sponsor Squarespace.com, who’ll give you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you invoke the code ANSWER.
Thanks also to everyone who has supported the show by buying the Answer Me This! Christmas album. If you haven’t yet, this is really the time of year to do so. April, not so much. It’s available at answermethisstore.com, as well as some of the online retail behemoths – links and further details of the contents are available at answermethispodcast.com/christmas.
We’ll return with the Best of AMT 2015 on 24th December 2015.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT329 Child-Friendly Rating: 5%. Some swears; some bawdy references; and the greatest peril of all: THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS OF CHRISTMAS GIFTS IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN AND WE THINK YOU DO. So, beware! Also, Olly encourages your children to break the airport rules, which will probably get them tasered. •••
How do you tell your mum that she is a STUPID WOMAN who is RUINING CHRISTMAS by buying you the WRONG GIFT? Plus other polite and classy problems compose Answer Me This! Episode 328, in which we contemplate:
Plus: Olly plans never to get married, but maybe he’ll change his mind purely to have the themed wedding of his Jennifer Connelly-starring dreams; Helen turns her profound laziness into creative tips; and Martin the Sound Man puts the beats into his favourite Christmas carol.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, available for iThings, Android and Windows devices, Olly reveals the surprise hair inspiration of his mid-1980s barnet: Princess Diana.
Feeling festive yet? Click here to read about and then buy the Answer Me This! Christmas album; and click here to get the delightful Christmas podcasts from today’s sponsor Dobbies Garden Centres – and there’re plenty of Christmas tips and decorations to buy at dobbies.com and in store.
••• AMT328 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. No bawdy content, but there are a few swears, and the possible demystification of the machinations behind Christmas presents IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. •••
Welcome to the ninth year of AMT! Before we get stuck into Answer Me This! Episode 305, care to guess which literary work is the inspiration for this questioneer’s tattoo?
Plus: Olly likes to hang loose, even in his gloves; Helen’s going to have to work on her offensive foreign accents if she wants a career narrating audiobooks; and Martin the Sound Man’s morals go to shit around olives.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App Olly discovers the one type of present his dad Stanley IS happy to receive. Give yourself this gift by getting the app for your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘answer’. You want a nice website, don’t you? DON’T YOU? Thought so.
We’ll be back with AMT306 on 22nd January, so be ready.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT305 Child-Friendly Rating: 80%. Maybe we’ve forgotten something, but we think both language and content were pretty above-board today. Moments of parental concern may have occurred during the discussions of Stephen King’s It, and Carmen Electra. •••
Voice your opinion in the comments if you can think of a way to salve questioneer Peter‘s festive pain:
How can I get out of spending Christmas with my in-laws? My horrible, small-minded, racist, bigoted, climate change denying, Daily Mail-reading, UKIP-voting in-laws.
Or should I just suck it up, try and remain polite and go along?
I and my wife both are Guardian- (and Independent- and BoingBoing-) reading lefty libertarians. I really am not looking forward to three days of my in-laws banging on about immigrants being to blame for everything, as well as the EU, and their trotting out the Daily Mail and Express as evidence that renewable energy doesn’t work and is all just a big con (I work designing wind farms and marine energy installations), even though it reduced Britain’s energy bills by 10% compared to gas last winter! How the recession was really caused by the Germans (not the British bankers) as a ruse to take over Europe again (because, you know, The War).
I’ve had ten of this shit! I despise them. I despise their circular thinking nonsensical irrational arguments, and I regret every moment I waste in their miserly company.
So should I break a leg? Emigrate to Germany or France? Crash the car into a tree so we cannot drive there?
Or should I just suck it up, try and remain polite and go along?
Or something else?
Peter, you’re acting like this torment is all negative, but it does fuel bitchery for you and your wife for a whole year. Perhaps you could intensify this by turning it into a satirical game: your challenge is to access your inner Chris Morris and see just how ridiculous a point of view you can get them to agree with. Brush up on Brass Eye for ideas.
Or take the easy way out and just piss off abroad till January.
(If you can’t afford to go abroad, just tell them you’ve gone abroad and don’t answer the phone or doorbell.)
Also, reluctant as I am to badger you, HAVE YOU LISTENED TO THE AMT XMAS ALBUM YET?
If not, redress before the festive season has expired: go to answermethispodcast.com/Christmas, whence you can follow links to buy it from the AMT store, iTunes and Amazon. It’s the perfect track with which to drown out the sound of the family row about the best way to achieve the crispiest roast potatoes.
Plus: for Olly, giving is better than receiving (when it comes to picture messages); Helen does not belong on wheels; and Martin the Sound Man searches for logic in cartoon characters off adverts, which is really the wrong place to look.
All we want for Christmas are your QUESTIONS, so shove them into our stockings, by which we mean leave a message on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Also, forge the bounds of internet friendship at facebook.com/answermethis and twitter.com/HelenAndOlly. Not LinkedIn, NEVER LinkedIn.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘answer’. That’s got to be better than anything you win in a cracker. (Except for the set of tiny screwdrivers or a bottle-opener shaped like an animal; both of these come in surprisingly useful. But, you know, the miniature pack of cards or tiny plastic comb or annoying puzzle made out of metal rings.)
The Best of AMT 2014 will be out next Thursday, 18th December. Return then!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT304 Child-Friendly Rating: 74%. Opens with further discussion of AMT303‘s cheese handjobs, but once the first couple of minutes are over, the rest of the episode’s topics are clean aside from two or three strong swears. •••
This week, a lot of you will want to hear the 2010 episode of WTF where Marc Maron talks to Robin Williams. Here it is, with a new intro from a choked-up Marc. Get your hankie ready.
You might also want to hear Lauren Bacall tearing it up on Desert Island Discs from 1984, here. Now please excuse me while I get lost in the Desert Island Discs 60-year archive. Again.
Not a million miles from Desert Island Discs is BBC 6 Music’s The First Time With…, in which musicians talk about the songs that made them. Sorry if you were expecting a show in which famous people discuss losing their virginities. (Does such a show exist? Aside from this one?)
I’m intrigued to listen to this programme about the politics of Dr Seuss: Dr Seuss and the Butter Battle. And if you’re intrigued to hear the AMT take on Dr Seuss, you can find it in the Answer Me This! Christmas album. You may think it’s unseasonal to listen to a Christmas show in the middle of August, but there’re only 132 days to go! (‘Only’. That’s still more than a third of a year. But it doesn’t stop a film called Santa With Muscles being played on one of the more remote Freeview channels every damn day.)
Finally: if you’re keen to start making your own podcasts, you can learn everything you need to know at the Essentials of Podcasting Guardian Masterclass on 20th September. I’ll be there to share all my podcasting knowledge, which should take around five minutes; luckily you’ll also be taught all about hardware, software, editing, production, formatting, publicity etc from the likes of Bugle producer Chris Skinner, Guardian podcast producer Jason Phipps, and software inventor Drew White. Book your place here.
PS: if you’re at Green Man festival this weekend, say hi to me and Martin! I’ll be doing Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown at 1am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Martin will be playing songs on the Solar Stage on Friday and Sunday, and demonstrating 3D printing in Einstein’s Garden every day. 3D printing at a folk festival? Apparently so.
Which shows have been delighting you lately? Recommend some in the comments.
Listeners, who is the bigger idiot: the questioneer who is too big an idiot to make toast, or the podcasters who talk about that big idiot for nearly ten minutes?
The only way to decide is to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 292:
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we delve deeper into the grotesque and terrifying world of novelty toasters. Join us if you dare on your iDevice, Android or Windows toy.
If you’ve invented your own amazing multi-functional toaster (“Guys! It can heat soup at the same time as cutting the toast into perfectly equal croutons!”) then build yourself a snazzy online store through our benevolent sponsors Squarespace.com, deploying the code Answer for 10% off their services for a whole year.
We shall return on Thursday 3rd July with AMT293 – but we’ll also be appearing on this Radio Academy panel about podcasting on 25th June; and as we mentioned, we’re also available at our side project podcasts The Media Podcast, Sound Women and Brain Train. Furthermore, to accompany all the SPOOOOOORT that seems to be happening at the moment, you can hear us talking as sportily as we are able on the AMT Sports Day album, available now at answermethisstore.com.
That’s it! We’re off to make some toast. We could be gone for some time.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT292 Child-Friendly Rating: 40%. Swears. Cartoon phallic noses. Kicks off with feedback about parental sex, the very notion of which can be traumatic for your progeny. •••
Scott from Bury is a fraction of the man he used to be, and would like to remain so:
Both my girlfriend and I have had some success with calorie restrictive diets, losing 9 stone between us in approx a year and a half. However, we have some more work yet to do and feel that we would get through the last difficult steps of this process much quicker and easier if we had fewer social engagements with friends and family on our calendar (obviously including the gut-busting Christmas and new year holidays coming up).
So answer me this, should we accept a short term life (6 months maybe) as anti-social shut ins to archive our goals? Or is there a better way to get the best of both worlds?
I think you can do both. If you’re invited to something which is very food-focused, eg a dinner party, it’s probably simpler to avoid it than to try to make it work with your diet. A fairly easy excuse is to pretend you’ve already said you’d go to another fixture that evening.
However, if the party involves milling around with canapes, you can survive it: make sure you don’t arrive at the party hungry; bring some diet-compatible snacks if need be; and keep your hands full at all times with glasses, stupid Christmas props, etc. And stay away from the eggnog, which should be easy, since it’s eggnog.
Readers, any tips for Scott to maintain his new slimline frame this festive period?
Abracadabra! Alacazam! Bippity Boppity Boo! Hey Presto! And other words stage magicians probably don’t use any more! But as if by magic, out of the false-bottomed top hat Answer Me This! Episode 279 appears:
In which we speak of:
hangovers in London
The Breakfast Club burrito
card tricks
great grandparents (not great-grandparents)
the Masked Magician’s spoilers
Simon Callow’s Vegas spectacular Olly’s fantastic grandma
grumpy old men
and
shutting children up.
Plus: Olly is bewitched by David Copperfield’s hair more than his illusions; Helen got lost on a school trip, which was probably better than being on the fun-drained trip itself; and Martin the Sound Man illustrates why the romance of (500) Days of Summer wouldn’t have worked so well if the action had been transplanted to Croydon.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows) we consider what wisdom our grandparents passed on. Did yours bequeath any sage homilies or sensible advice? Let us know in the comments.
If you’re as excited as we are about the all-new AMT Christmas album, click HERE to find out more about it and to buy. Your money keeps this podcast going, which hopefully is a good thing in your minds as well as ours.
Also keeping this podcast going are squarespace.com, who are also keeping easy website-building going. For 10% off their services, use the code Answer11; they’re also offering you the chance to win a free YEAR of the service if you send us a link to your Squarespacetacular website – if tweeting said link, deploy the hashtag #AMTsquarespace. Come on, you competitive-spirited web-builders! PLAY TO WIN!
Finally, please send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Vanishing in a puff of smoke, but really behind a curtain,
Helen & Olly
AMT279 Child-Friendly Rating: 68%. Some swears. Discussion of hangovers, which may corrupt the youth. Deconstruction of some stage magic tricks, which may prove disillusioning to the credulous young mind.
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.
NO DON’T TELL US. Tell nobody. Find that impulse that lurks deep within yourself to vocalise your opinions upon a matter so boring, so mundane, so underwhelming an indicator of anything interesting about your character; find it, then destroy it.
Then listen to Answer Me This! Episode 248:
Today we ponder upon:
Flu Camp
pregnancy disguises
Stevenage slush puppies (not a euphemism)
Ming Dynasty toilet paper
Joseph Gayetty
posh Pot Noodles
domestic rubbish vs. commercial rubbish
London, UK vs. London, Ontario
figure skating vs. Dancing On Ice
Tiny Toronto
and Sergey Brin hiding in the bushes.
Plus: Olly’s lukewarm about Google Glass, but looking forward to the installation of his Google Womb; Helen believes the empire waist to be an offence to waists (and empires); and Martin the Sound Man doesn’t like the principles of Ayn Rand, he just looks like he does.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Poppy wondering why Skittles’ latest ad campaign is targeting the people-who-eat-bodily-growths market. Cheer up, Poppy; at least they’re not suggesting you wipe your bottom with Skittles then tell them about it.
Tell us your QUESTIONS, though: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis. Then treat yourself to a free Audible audiobook as a reward. OK, you can have one anyway, for being so well-behaved (and because we receive a bit of lovely money for each of you who has one; let’s not be coy about it).
Answer Me This! Podcast 