Welcome! We hope you’re doing OK. We’re keeping AMT a pandemic-free pod, so if you’re looking for content to take your mind off things for a bit, Answer Me This! Episode 384 can provide, with topics such as:
shitty spinach
Tamworth (again)
speaking slower
ghostwriters
badger repellent
young person repellent
leopard print
lion poo
that old mining town your dad bought
a fortress of toasters
and
getting your head stuck.
Hear more about Macaronis in AMT324, and if you want to try making crumpets using discarded sourdough starter, here’s the recipe Helen and Martin used.
This month there is a double dose of Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – where we discuss the most famous ghostwriter AND the most expensive toaster.
Hear our other work!
• Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning. Season two just begun.
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including The Week Unwrapped, The Media Podcast and The Modern Mann.
• Martin recently released a bumper new album, which you can hear palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. You can also join him in contemplating the work of Tom Waits in Song By Song, which has just got to the end of Black Rider.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Buy AMT episodes 1-200, our five special albums, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
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‘.
Thanks, Josh from Cambridge, New Zealand, for supplying a little book-learning:
Really enjoyed AMT294 and was intrigued by your segment on the first rock T shirts.
I thought you might be interested in the following timeline for the development of the rock T shirt, as we know it, as recorded by authors Amber Easby and Henry Oliver in their book The Art of the Band T-shirt (Simon & Schuster).
1956 Elvis Presley’s record company produces a shirt to promote four of his singles.
1964 The Beatles commemorate their US tour with a special T-shirt for fans.
1967 The Monkees produce T-shirts for their tours.
1970 The Allman Brothers make a T-shirt, not as merchandise but for family, band members and crew.
1971 Grateful Dead produce their tie-dye shirt – starting a 40-year tradition.
1973 Concert promoters produce a shirt for a festival, promoting three bands at once – The Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead and The Band.
1973 Promoters bring out a T-shirt for a Yes tour, and make $250,000 profit from them.
The T-shirt as merchandise is up and running!
Here’s a sweet gallery with people’s anecdotes about their band T-shirts; readers, which one do you treasure? I’ll come clean: I’ve never had one. But I do have a Pixies shopping bag.
Pack your flippers, sunblock and emergency stomach medicine, because our new album The Answer Me This! Holiday is ready to depart!
It’s 58 minutes 3 seconds of all-new material – right down to the jingles – all about holidays, vacations, minibreaks, staycations, jaunts, sojourns, escapes; whatever you like to call them. In the usual AMT style, we tackle questions about such holidayish topics as:
things to do in New York City
summer reading lists
artificial insemination for pandas
dads’ embarrassing holiday-wear
what lies behind – or, more accurately, beneath – the scenes at Disney
Legoland sculptors
why the Spanish Steps in Rome aren’t Spanish
what to expect from a Chinese breakfast
stag parties abroad
and
why the Brits are lagging behind in competitive eating contests.
• A full range of holidaywear: clip-on sunglasses, short shorts, convertible trousers, Speedos, gilets, electroejaculators; • Classic tourist attractions: the Staten Island Ferry, Downton Abbey, Disney’s utilidors, Burghley House, the Winchester Mystery House, Flambards and A Day at the Wells; • Delicious holiday grub: satirical breakfasts, ‘world famous’ foods, congee, Sex on the Beach, the Heart Attack Grill, pork and its tasty friends, Economy Candy; • Delightful holiday companions: Cara Delevingne, Eugene Levy, Nancy Mitford, Adam Richman, naked mole rats, Spagna; • Fun holiday activities: the ‘bollocks’ game at festivals, drinking games, humiliating your fellow diners, being assaulted by Mexican shots girls, trying to remember your one-night-stand’s name.
Big thanks to Amy Smith and Sam Pay for the jingles and Jenny Robertshaw for the cover – and speculatively to you for buying it, because your outlay helps fund Answer Me This! (and our actual holidays).
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).
It’s odd that in his ode ‘To Autumn‘, Keats never mentioned amongst the swelling gourds and clammy cells that it is also the time of year where the images of schoolchildren are harvested for posterity in the annual school photos. See above, then while your eyes recover, hear Answer Me This! Episode 230:
In which we speak of:
sharing a bedroom
Dorian Gray Liz Jones
the Meg Ryan Game
glamping Olly’s friend Chay in a Britney video
sleeping arrangements
dehumidifiers
the Titanic Memorial Cruise
grey water vs. black water
big baggy clothes vs. Joseph Gordon-Levitt Aaron Paul vs. Aaron Paul
court artists
Ocean Colour Scene
and
relationship advice via Neil LaBute.
Plus: Olly has had enough of these mother-fighting snakesDaily Mails on this monkey-liking plane; Helen’s Kentish childhood was nothing like the latest Wand Erection video (see below); and Martin the Sound Man did not do a William Hague, honest.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (get it for iDevices and Android) involves further discussion of cruises, namely why haven’t hipsters taken them up yet. Surely it’s only a matter of time, though – after all, nobody ever thought bowler hats or the A10 would ever make a comeback, and look at them both now.
As we said in the show, do share your most memorable birthday in the comments; and as always, share your QUESTIONS by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or sending emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Also go here if you want your own Answer Me This! mug. It’s so big, you could probably go for a week-long cruise in it.
Round here, we thought there’s no way the opening ceremony of next year’s London Olympics could be anything but a damp squib. Given our Glorious Nation’s inherent shyness, we assumed we’d be lucky if the expected pageantry ascended such heights as the whole squad doing the David Brent dance, with commentary from Myleene Klass wearing a low-cut dress and speaking only in adjectives. But au contraire, we were much mistaken! Here, in Answer Me This! Episode 170, we discover what’s going to make the Olympics go with a bang:
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)
Accompanying the episode, like a flock of primary schoolkids wearing national dress, are topics including:
Booze Britain Ibiza Uncovered
Winston Churchill
coffee stirrers Jaws
dog trends
Wiesbaden Danger UXB
monkeys in clothes
fancy-dress football
the abandoned bomb register
Jonathan Creek’s downtime
illegal snoods
the other Martin Austwick the real-life Miss Marple
dihydroxyacetone
and the Maillard Reaction.
Plus: Olly is silenced by booze; Helen’s not going to be winning a car anytime soon; and Martin the Sound Man intimates that the dinosaurs might have survived, if only someone had bought them little pink coats with diamante on. Martin would also like you to know that his latest album is out today, which is sadly diamante-free but not without other compensations – download or buy a special edition physical copy here.
Today’s Bit of Crap on the App is the Deleted Scenes from our chat about amateur detectives. How does one get from the FBI to Paul Ross in five easy steps? Find out for yourself on iPhone or Android.
We be wanting your QUESTIONS for next week, so send them as voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or findanswermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And you know what else is next week? Red Nose Day! So if you fancy a bit of pain-free fundraising (ie no climbing mountains or digging latrines or songs involving Bob Geldof), please come along to Literary Death Match on Friday 18th March, in which Helen joins Spaced alumna Jessica StevensonHynes to judge the bookish equivalent of sumo wrestling.
This week we caught not one but two Maypole dances! After the sight of a team of hail-lashed eight-year-olds cavorting around a giant phallic symbol, then a second helping of the same, anything’s going to seem anticlimactic. Except, perhaps, for Answer Me This! Episode 134:
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)
Wherein we speak of:
Peppy the polar bear
Mint Imperials
ostrich meat
Claude Garamond
Roald Dahl
Microsoft whimsy
the Empire State Building
Australian superlatives
British teen pregnancy rates WIN
the Burj Al Arab
phone cake
Stanley Morison
the Mr Bean Diary
and
Kidderminster.
Plus: Olly emphasises the importance of proper hydration during hot hungover Hellenic hikes; Helen recalls her days as the Nadia Comaneci of Tunbridge Wells; and Martin the Sound Man poaches an old Pappy’s Fun Club joke, With Hilarious Results. Or similar. We also implore you to help out Ian from Florida with his dating profile; click here to see it and comment politely thereupon.
Apologies to any of you who couldn’t get through to our Question Line last week; it’s up and running as normal now, so don’t hesitate to leave your QUESTIONS on it by dialling 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis; or, of course, emailing them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, in the classical style.
If you enjoy staying up all night listening to the radio, tonight you can hear us assisting Iain Dale on LBC from midnight-6am as the election results roll in; tune in on 97.3FM, Sky Channel 0124 or online via lbc.co.uk.
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