At the bottom of the post are the photos you’ll need to picture Olly’s mum’s erotic occasional table with detachable stiffy, and listener Erica’s sweary embroidery and butt planter. Oh, and beware, the pics are NSFW unless you work at the Saucy Decor Factory.
We also consider:
Cheesecake Factory’s most ordered item Cheesecake Etc cooking slugs gifts that the recipient asked for then never uses those cow sculptures that are all through town sextons Torajan death rituals (CW for this link: images of death) Spotify making you gnash your teeth when you just want to play an album too many boules not noticing that your home is full of clowns and how to own a cemetery.
Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you. Next new episode will land in your podfeed Thursday 28 August 2025.
Paying patrons hear from us before then, though: not only will you receive a compilation of Bonus Bits halfway through the month, and an ad-free version of the episode, AND our live video question-answering series Petty Problems tackling some some not so serious problems. Catch up with previous editions and be ready for the next by becoming an AMT donor at patreon.com/answermethis.
Check out our other work:
Olly handily lists most of his work at ollymann.com, where you’ll find his several podcasts including his news show The Week Unwrapped.
Helen will be appearing at Nerd Nite in Vancouver on 10 September, talking about mysterious surprises in Scandi versions of Dracula – tickets are on sale here – and if you’re the kind of person who appreciates sweary embroidery in the home, check out the Allusionist’s Four Letter Word season. Some of the episodes are about swears; some are not; and a recent one featured a familiar special guest…
…Martin! Singing a new song about poisonous plants, which you can get from his Bandcamp, along with his other songs. And keep up with his Beatles covers project at instagram.com/MartinAustwick.
OK are you ready for the NSFW decor photos?
Here
they
are:
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.
In AMT404, listeners want to know where to go to see the northern lights, why Jesus’s official birthday and deathday aren’t on the same calendar, and who is being weird: them, or their family? We also learn about:
sand heists leaving your body to scienceDisneyland the perfect beachcarpet of fish blood werewolf menstruation Apple Tango 404 codes opening coconuts cooking with mayonnaise Nicky Pluff the doll’s eye polisher and bat-flavoured beverages.
And a question for you to answer in the comments: what would you write in a note to the medical students dissecting your body after you left it to science?
Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you. Next episode will land in your podfeed 1 May 2025.
Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethis to help with the continuing resuscitation of AMT, and to get an ad-free version of the episode, plus bonus material.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.
Pop in your prosthetic fangs, spritz yourself with fake blood and turn off all the lights except for that annoying one that flickers – it’s the Answer Me This Halloween Special! (Known by day as AMT390.) Featuring SCARY plays, GIANT gourds, MONSTER Mash and BESHAT trousers. And also:
pumpkin boats SPAM® suits
sexy Halloween costumes
actors playing dead
sweet Fanny Adams
the lack of Halloween pop songs (except ‘Monster Mash’)
the lack of scary plays (except The Woman In Black) Ghostwatch
and
vampire injuries.
CW: suicide, child murder, death.
Send all your Sexy Martin the Sound Man costume pics to us at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis! And also tell us how much time you had to spend explaining who you’re dressed as.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android – is a question from Seren about the origins of ‘hocus pocus’.
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 – currently the very stressful end of season 2 is nigh!
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including The Modern Mann and The Week Unwrapped.
• Martin makes music 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 every song by Tom Waits Tom Waits in Song By Song, and he produced and composed the new kids’ science podcast Maddie’s Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate.
This episode is sponsored by:
• Manscaped, precision-engineered grooming for your danglers. Get 20% off plus free shipping with the code ANSWER at Manscaped.com
• Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Filled with lights, portraits, seaside photo boards and, er, dead bodies on display, Answer Me This! Episode 383 is a very visual episode. Of audio. Rifle through your mental Google Images as you hear about topics including:
BOB the Box of Bibles
missing cats
not-missing cats
warring cats
posthumous pants
Las Vegas lights
comic foregrounds/face-in-hole boards/kaohame
portraits’ eyes
and
Jeremy Bentham’s corpse.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – we learn which shop was the first to offer gift vouchers. And ibuprofen! And gift certificates for ibuprofen?
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. They just completed season one.
Martin just 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.
We’ll be back with AMT384 on 2 April 2020, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 19 March.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT383 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. Low in swears, but the final question in the episode is about how to say goodbye to casual hookups so, while the content itself is not explicit, it may raise some awkward queries. •••
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‘.
What would YOU like to be buried in, listeners? A solid gold sarcophagus? A Zorb ball? A burlap sack? Contemplate this issue whilst listening to Answer Me This! Episode 282:
In which we discuss:
coffins vs caskets
coriander* vs carbonara
statues vs sculptures**
Leonardo DiCaprio vs Norman Lamont
sweaty sportswear
Americano coffee
Lincoln Logs
film soundtracks
sexy parrots
jamoke Jesse Honey vs flags of the world
the price of Lego Ron Mueck
and
an update to the Mastermind chair?
Plus: Olly probably doesn’t want to be served up as a snack at his own wake; Helen will be a posthumous pedant, OF COURSE; and Martin the Sound Man, MPhys, DPhil, doesn’t have a specialist subject on Mastermind, unless you can spin a whole round out of turning One Direction into physics references. Which seems quite possible, actually.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, Olly invents a new game, even better than Lego, even better than Lincoln Logs. What, what, what incredible passtime can this be? Find out on your iDevices, Android and Windows.
We invite you to aid questioneer Brian by naming this tune:
We also invite you to give Squarespace.com a whirl, and if you enjoy that whirl you give it, use the code answer1 to snag a 10% discount for a whole year.
We also also invite you to send us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We finally invite you to rejoin us in a fortnight for AMT283,
AMT282 Child-Friendly Rating: 76%. A couple of F-bombs, but other than that, fairly clear of saucy language. Elevated discussions of sculpture, coffins and Mastermind. Less elevated discussions of sweaty sports bras. Remember, parents: light and shade, light and shade.
In the words of Neely O’Hara, Answer Me This! Episode 266 is all ‘Boobies boobies boobies’: surgically enhanced ones, natural ones, milky ones, Kelly Brook’s ones…
Plus: Olly specifies where his ashes are to be scattered; Helen doesn’t care if her craft legacy dies with her; and despite all his singing skills, Martin the Sound Man doesn’t have the range to sing in Aspects of Love. He’ll never get to be Michael Ball (ball!).
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, a revival of Olly’s beloved Hunting of the Snark might become a reality? Come on, Mike Batt – make a young Mann’s lifelong dream come true!
And you – make our combined dream come true by sending us 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
AMT266 Child-Friendly Rating: 70%. References to the songs of Peaches. Question about dead bodies. Discussion of boobs, natural and cosmetically altered. Very little swearing aside from an f-bomb.
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.
The time has come, dear listeners, for us to pack up our microphones for a month and head off on holiday. But before we go, we tackle some very important questions indeed:
• Should one allow one’s allergies interrupt the loss of one’s virginity?
• What counts as a museum, once and for all?
• What IS R Kelly on about?
Discover those answers and more in Answer Me This! Episode 228:
Plus: Olly explains a ‘reverse American Pie‘, and no, you won’t find it in More! Magazine’s ‘Position of the Fortnight’ archives; Helen’s toilet is like Kanye West, and not because he has a pottymouth; and Martin the Sound Man had just about recovered from the disappointment that was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when Prometheus came along and crushed his expectations all over again.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Jennifer from Pittsburgh about whether being struck by lightning affects your ability to use technology; assuming the after-effects of that old lightning strike allow it, use your iDevices and Android to peruse the app.
Until we return on Thursday 20th September, here are some means of busying yourself:
1. Listen to us on BBC 5 Live, 1-4pm on Monday 27th August, talking about all sorts of fun and diverse listening materials in our special bank holiday show Required Listening. 2. Tune in to Olly on LBC, 20th-24th August between 1-4am. That’s right, am. Unless you live in a different time zone and it’s a perfectly civilised hour there. 3.Vote for Helen to go to SXSW next year, on a podcasting panel with Jesse Thorn and Roman Mars. 4. Listen to Martin’s music. It is much less obscene than him talking. 5. Have a go on our albums, our first 120 episodes, and some other nice podcasts. 6. Concoct QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Have a delightful month, and we look forward to reuniting on 20th September.
Helen & Olly
PS Sadly, the Cars of the Stars museum in Keswick closed down last year. But it still lives forever here:
This week, we wonder at the morals of fairy tales. You know, the stupid underlying ‘meaning’ that spoils the fun of a far-out fictional confection, and ensures that kiddies absorb some very dubious life lessons. There are probably some very dubious life lessons in AMT216, but at least we’re not pretending we have any morals.
Plus: Olly would like Aesop’s Fables to be more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book; Helen is the Sookie Stackhouse of AMT; and Martin the Sound Man gets quite emotional about the tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker. Thankfully he recovered sufficiently to launch a contest for under-18 songwriters, which you can find out about by clicking here.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from a couple of chaps on their way to Alton Towers. Cue a blast of Mann Rage directed at theme park rides that blatantly used to be other theme park rides. Oh God, why dost thou torment him thus?
What is not a torment is asking us a QUESTION! (Though reading some of them is a torment for us.) Send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave a voicemail on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
And assuming the elves will step in to finish off our chores, we will see you again next week for AMT217.
To all our listeners in the Northern Hemisphere: hope you enjoyed the summer solstice! Only 185 sleeps to go until Christmas! Wooooo!
Southern Hemispherical listeners: happy mid-winter’s day! Now roll on summer! Woo woooo!
Equatorial listeners: as you were.
One thing that is the same the world over is Answer Me This! Episode 180:
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)
In it, we speak of such things as:
Gunther from Friends
seaside rock
the Wailing Wall
chocolate mousse
Claridge’s tea
mango lassi Face/Off
disappointing fudge
hypnotherapy vs. stage hypnosis
British postboxes vs. French postboxes
Lady Godiva vs. Ed Balls
and
wanking in the Ritz.
Plus: Olly is made of stronger stuff than Carrie Bradshaw; Helen was hypnotised for love; and Martin the Sound Man admits to a few awkward moments in his honeymoon. He likes to live life like an Ashton Kutcher film, he does. Accordingly, before any and every decision, Mr Kutcher thinks, “What would Martin the Sound Man Do [WWMTSMD]?” And Demi Moore sighs, and thinks that if only she’d stayed with Bruce Willis, she wouldn’t ever have to talk about sound cards over breakfast.
This week, we’re popping up on a couple of other podcasts: Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown, the new comedy quiz show from the AMT37 alumni; and Radio 4Xtra’s What’s So Funny?, wherein we talk in a not-so-funny way about podcasting.
Despite flirting with other podcasts, AMT will always be our (audio)boo, so keep the love alive by sending your QUESTIONS – leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – that we may magically create next week’s episode with them.
That’s right – the time has come for us to shout ‘Wooooo!’, whip our tops off, and throw up all over a beach resort in Mexico while Joe Francis captures our shame on video. Answer Me This! is off on its hols for a few weeks, but before we go, here’s Episode 175:
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)
Furthermore! Olly is like a smack-head, but for Percy Pigs; Helen shuns a potential money-making scheme; and Martin the Sound Man provides the key to safe toaster cookery. This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (a worthy addition to your iPhone or Android) is the true question of Lil Wayne: what possessed him to go for this?
We hope you don’t forget us while we’re away; please keep sending us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Plus, don’t hesitate to sign up for your free and half-price audiobooks at answermethispodcast.com/audible – you get a bargain, we get paid, everyone’s happy!
There will be bits and pieces popping up on this site during the break, but we’ll see you back here bright and early on 26th May for AMT176. Until then, behave yourselves.
Answer Me This! Podcast 