As you were going to St Ives, did you meet a man with seven wives + 7x7x7 cats coming FROM St Ives or did you catch up with them as they were also heading TO St Ives? Ugh! Fucking riddles! We face this beast in Answer Me This! Episode 378 plus problems with:
Blue Peter pet SCANDALS
attraction/lack thereof
the Hairy Bikers’ friendship
‘Solomon Grundy’ vs ‘Seven Days‘
home CCTV
kombucha
and
getting over a lipstick fetishist.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we learn a bit more about naming Baby Lion Toby.
Also!
1. Helen has started a NEW PODCAST! Listen to Veronica Mars Investigations, wherein she and musician/Buffy aficionado Jenny Owen Youngs recap every episode of Veronica Mars from the start.
3. Martin is releasing four albums of new music this year! Hear them at palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc.
4. See Helen and Martin on stage! The Allusionist live tour is landing in cities across North America. Check theallusionist.org/events for listings.
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‘.
In Answer Me This! Episode 317, one questioneer is risking the beauty of his bottom for a bet; one appears to be too close to his sister; and another has an inferiority complex over his local multiplex (an inferiority multicomplex?). We also deal with:
Cornwall vs Greggs
Milton Keynes vs Merseyside
the Mercedes logo vs the peace symbol
Victoria, British Columbia
John Lahr’s remote working practices
dinner party gifts for the booze-free
unwanted text messages D-BOX seats, not to be confused with these d-box seats (link NSFW)
movie premiere attendees
Leningrad
bridegrooms
and
Matthew McConaughey’s norge.
There’s a double bill of childhood nostalgia-themed Bonus Bits of Crap on the App (available for iStuff, Android and Windows devices): Olly reminisces about another junior marketing exercise, and Helen about the Tunbridge Wells cinema now apparently known as a ‘grot spot’.
••• AMT317 Child-Friendly Rating: 62%. To be honest, we can’t remember the swear-situation in this episode, so we’ll be cautious and assume there are some. No bawdy-talk, though. •••
In Answer Me This! Episode 316, we have two very different questions concerning overpreparation for death. We also have:
cobbler problems
quinoa
wedding +1s
retirement climates
free salad vs free prawn crackers
cat shit vs cat sick
Mike Oldfield
Metallica Monopoly
soiled lost property
and
popular onions.
Plus: Olly will go on a cruise, as long as it’s free; Helen’s first musical memory is of a cool saboteur; and Martin the Sound Man wants you to slice your own apples and peel your own bananas, you big babies.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iStuff, Android and Windows devices), we continue AMT315‘s discussion of facial hair, and at long last hit on the format that’ll make Olly and Martin into YouTube stars. Or might have, ten years ago.
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‘. If you’ve ever wanted to launch your own website/podcast/blog/online gallery, deploy the code and GET ON WITH IT.
Are you ready to hear who’s the winner of AMT295‘s beauty pageant in which the only entrants are the knee-to-ankle portions of Olly and Martin? You ARE? Then waste no time – listen to Answer Me This! Episode 296 (which some would argue IS wasting time. Those people can shut their damn cake-holes):
Today we discuss:
having a kip
Kendal Mint Cake The Great British Bake Off leftovers
Louis XIV
ballet vs gymnastics
Bill Callahan vs Barry Manilow
Catherine de Medici
Matthew Bourne Barnoon Cemetery Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery A Chorus Line‘s sweaty gussets
Mary Berry’s Lemon Curd Surge
extra nipples
and
Gromit.
Plus: Olly’s not taking trip advice from Tripadvisor; Helen admits to being a philistine about ballet; and Martin the Sound Man recommends a lovely holiday touring London’s most beautiful burial grounds.
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android or Windows gadgetry), we continue workshopping our Cynical Statistician Catches The Bride’s Bouquet film, with a little stop to revist Britney and Kevin: Chaotic. (Fun fact: they got married on the very same day as Helen’s brother Andy. Sadly, there’s no shitty reality show about Andy’s nuptuals.)
And finally, big thanks to this episode’s sponsors Squarespace.com, without whom website-building would be a far uglier business. For 10% off their services for a whole year, enter the code Answer.
We will return with AMT297 on 4th September, and we hope you do too.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT296 Child-Friendly Rating: 42%. Several swears. Intermission concerns waxen genitalia, but at least we use some long words in it. Saucy remarks about Mary Berry. •••
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).
Hey, you! Yes, you – the man with the insecurity about your penis size! How would you like a new app that tells you how yours is the smallest wang in the world, and your ideal condom size is ‘Mouse Tail’? Well, colour yourself lucky – because today we tell you how to slim down your self-esteem by up to 100% in Answer Me This! Episode 244:
We also speak of:
carb crimes in Costco
gherkins
gurkhas
Bieber vs. Prince
Simon vs. Garfunkel
homemade peanut butter
dating disappointments
life disappointments
judgy mums
gushers
immigration officials
the green ink brigade
and
two thousand and late.
Plus: Olly wants to reclaim the red pen from censorious teachers and proofreaders; Helen makes good bread with her rough unfeminine hands; and Martin the Sound Man is all about the bell curve, laydeez.
Furthermore, if you’ve ever longed to hear Olly and Martin percussing their way through ‘The Boxer’ and ‘Born To Run’, you’re quids in! That is, you’re willing to expend two quids to get the AMTapp and thus this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android).
Finally! Please send us your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
PS For revision purposes, here’s that Bieber-wets-himself video for ‘Beauty and the Beat’:
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.
Of course we love hearing about your lives; also when you sendusstuff. But this may have gone too far in Answer Me This! Episode 227:
Wherein we consider:
Zooey Deschanel
holiday money
Worcestershire Sauce
wanking off vs. jacking off
Olympics vs. Eurovision
Baron Pierre de Coubertin
the sporty Vatican
flying horses
pasta sauce
and
a table covered in ice cream.
Plus: Olly doesn’t like the look of Joey Potter’s chalice nowadays, but back in the 90s he did get a bit Dawson Leary (Dawson Leery, more like); Helen was a financially responsible child – yet another way in which she peaked too early; and Martin the Sound Man recommends keeping your pasta carbonara minimalist, even if you really need a little nipper of booze to get you through.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the AppiDevices and Android is a question from Joss which reveals Olly’s Napoleon Complex. This is concerning trees, not height, seeing as Olly is 6’3″ when he stands up straight.
Next week is our last episode before we take a month-long hiatus, so hurry and send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
OK listeners, lots of admin to get through this morning, so pay attention:
1. We have a new album out! Click here to learn more about/buy The Answer Me This! Sports Day. Clue: it’s all about the Olympics sport.
2. We’re interviewed on the latest episode of the marvellous podcast Getting Better Acquainted, which you can hear here.
3. We’re also on Answer Me This! Episode 222, as you might expect.
4. If we sound a bit maniacal to you in the episode, it’s because of the sugar rushes provided by the AMTfans at Roly’s Fudge. Sooooo many sweeties… We’ll have a little lie-down while you listen:
Today we consider:
the definitive version of ‘Hallelujah‘ Brighton Pavilion
campfire guitar war
the Cornwall vs. Devon clotted cream war
universally compulsory therapy
Disneyland Battersea Giraffe
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott
Dr Richard Russell’s seawater cure
energy drinks
Emily Woof A Handful of Dust
afternoon tea strategy Muse phoning it in
and
an extremely traumatising image of calamari.
Plus: Olly almost allowed Lynda La Plante to steer his destiny; Helen shares her psyche with the ship from Dark Star; and we discover Martin the Sound Man find crumbs deeply upsetting. He’s really too delicate for this cruel world.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App takes the episode’s prevailing theme of afternoon tea and heads straight for the cucumber sandwiches. Fire up the iDevices or Android to hear, and if you try the Cucumber Supercrunch Megasandwich, let us know if it is pleasant.
It is definitely pleasant to send us QUESTIONS; please do so by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
In order of splashdown, the temples of hygiene we visited are:
• The Round Room at the Portobello Hotel, London. The tub in question is known as a ‘Victorian bathing machine’, which is appropriately sexy-sounding for a room with a circular bed in it. • Garderobe at Little Moreton Hall, Congleton, Cheshire. We can see why garderobes like this fell out of favour: 1) very drafty; 2) it’s not nice surrounding your home with a moat of shit; 3) danger of buttock-splinters. • The Ladies’ Room at the George Hotel, Stamford, Lincolnshire. Note to all of you: if you’re planning on filming yourself monologuing in a public convenience, make sure there’s nobody else in it first. • The sewers, Brighton. If you want to go on one of the regular sewer tours, book soon because they fill up months in advance. Especially Valentine’s Day. • Little Chef, Popham. If more than one person is using the talking lavatories at once, the combined effect is quite hectoring, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. • Castle Drogo, Devon, a 1920s folly with a very squirty bathtub and, downstairs, a fantastic collection of copper jelly-moulds. • Car-park loos at the Eden Project, Cornwall. Sure, other people go there for the indoor rainforest, the world’s largest greenhouse, Sir Robert McAlpine’s iconic domes; we just go for the bogs. • Bovine sewage-works at Rodda’s dairy farm, Cornwall. Watching a giant shit-stirrer is surprisingly relaxing – like a massive, stinky office toy. • Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh, where even the bathwater comes out stripy. • The Roman baths and the Thermae Bath Spa, Bath. It’s a big win for the city of Bath.
We’re also flushed with thanks to:
The nice gentlemen at the Hotel Missoni and Rodda’s, for patiently agreeing to our various ridiculous requests.
Rachel Bowers at the Thermae Bath Spa, for kindly filming us in our bathers – how did her eyes survive?
And the rubber duckie of gratitude goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
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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