Well Spotify just named AMT one of the top podcasts of the decade, so let’s conclude the 2010s as we began them: by answering your questions! Answer Me This! Episode 380 features a feast of such festive treats as:
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – we belatedly celebrate Martinmas! Which has more to do with geese and vintners than echoey-voiced Sound Men, but he’ll take it nonetheless.
How about some more AMT festive-related material? In AMT329, we have a Santa truther child, and the Catalan tradition of the Shitting Log; in AMT357 there’s the filming secrets of Home Alone 2, what happened to the three wise men’s gifts, and what the “new old-fashioned way” is that people are dancing in ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’; in AMT364 we talk about how cranberries are farmed; and in AMT368 we learn about Saint Nicholas’s sidekicks, department store Santas, Jesus and Mary’s relationship, and gift snobbery.
And of course, there’s a whole hour of festive AMT funtertainment in the AMT Christmas album, available at answermethisstore.com for a tiny price. Also there are AMTs 1-200; if you’re looking for a place to start, episodes 160 and 200 sit nicely at this time of year.
Martin is releasing four albums of new music this year! Hear them at 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‘.
We’ll be back with more AMT in 2020 – the podcast turns 13 (!!) in January, and as our birthday gift we want your QUESTIONS: send them, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever found in your food? A worm? A lung? Arsenic-laced hundreds and thousands? Gird your stomach for Answer Me This! Episode 355, in which we discuss:
food hygiene ratings
pig nipple bacon
Stanley Mann style
dating your dadalike
shipping it
Larry Stylinson
stans
stoners
Agatha Christie’s cornflour
store detectives
and
that Subway smell.
Plus: Olly shows up a logical flaw in ‘Stan‘; Helen went on an evening out, once; and Martin the Sound Man’s fragile guts are the only restaurant hygiene rating you need.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Michelle about the phrase “How’s your father?” Get the app for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices.
Want to hear more from us? There’s the retro AMT episode that lands your feed mid-month – right now you can hear AMT222, in which we learn about Battersea Power Station and the Brighton Pavilion, and coin a phrase that will chime in your mind forevermore every time you pass a branch of Giraffe. To get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. All of our back catalogue is available from answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums.
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Go forth and build yourseelf a website! Play around during the two-week free trial, then get 10% off Squarespace’s website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
We’ll be back with AMT356 on 2 November 2017, and with a Retro AMT episode on 19 October.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT355 Child-Friendly Rating: 55%. Questions about sexy fan fiction and Tinder dating, but nothing too lewd. Discussion of drugs, albeit an incredibly square one. A couple of swearsy. •••
Happy new year to you, listeners, and here’s your first dose of AMT for 2016. In Answer Me This! Episode 330, we ponder upon:
All Saints – not the band, the shop
Della Duck
Air Force One
boxing belts
remembering people’s names
Tom Cribb vs Tom Molyneux vs George Foreman Grills
Carson vs Alfred vs Jeeves
the psychology of Hampton Court
presidential decoys
and
Jacuzzi bubbles.
Plus: Olly dreams of being like Kathy Bates (in About Schmidt, not in Misery); in the Battle of the Butlers, Jeeves is Helen’s man – even if he’s a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ rather than a butler; and Martin the Sound Man makes a new friend in the jacuzzi.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iThings, Android and Windows devices – we consider a sporting event that appeals to fans of both board games and blood sports: chessboxing.
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. And if you do so, you’re showing Squarespace that they should continue supporting this show, so we all win. Unlike chessboxing, which we’d probably all lose.
SCHEDULING ANNOUNCEMENT: Olly’s baby is due out imminently. AMT331 will land on 28th January 2015, and after that, we’ll be taking three months off for paternity leave. We’ll let you know any news about the Mannbaby as soon as it/he arrives!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT330 Child-Friendly Rating: 85%. Maybe a couple of swears? Low on bawdy content. Overall: pretty respectable. •••
What an eventful year 2011 has been. Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear terror! Sit-ins, protests, riots! So many revolutions, we can’t even choose a favourite! Charlie Sheen being a messed-up addict – but funny, so it’s fine! Osama Bin Laden’s dramatic exit! Pippa Middleton’s bottom!
Plenty has happened here at Answer Me This! too, so take a jaunt with us into the vale of the recent past: here is The Best of AMT2011, part 1.
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)
What a lot we learnt this year! About such things as:
space tourism
coloured bathroom suites
William’n’Dorothy Wordsworth
celebrity cock-shots
ornamental jellyfish The Apprentice
Dodgy
‘Like a G6’
Dane Bowers’n’Jordan’s sex tape
John Travolta’s face vs. Nicolas Cage’s face
glass slippers
impulse bags
fake tan
undone flies Saturday Toilet
Olly’s lost night of Chico
doll hospital
phallic salad
phallic statues
phallic celebrity waxworks
phallic phalluses
and
Adult Milkybar.
There’s plenty more to come next week; but if you want plenty more AMT next year, then send us your QUESTIONS: deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
We have to say a huge thanks to everybody who has sent us something to celebrate our impending 5th birthday – we’ve already received many glorious cards, some rather exciting little presents, and enough sugary treats to push us over to the wrong side the Type 2 Diabetes fence! If you want to propel us into hyperglycaemic hyperdrive, or you want to show off your best penmanship, please dispatch a missive to:
Answer Me This!
PO Box 53587
London
SE19 9BQ
Thankyou for delighting us by post, listeners. You really are a tiptop bunch.
See you next Thursday, for the Best of AMT2011 part 2!
Since last we met, both Silvio Berlusconi and Justin Bieber’s not-babymomma have forsaken their respective meal tickets. They’ve got lots in common – dishonesty; revolting-sounding sexual encounters with minors – so maybe, now they’ve got all this free time on their hands, they should team up and make a podcast! There’s plenty room for another mixed-gender odd couple podcasting duo other than us.
But until they take the plunge, here’s Answer Me This! Episode 197 to keep you amused, although it is entirely lacking in bunga bunga and Bieber-boffing:
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)
On today’s slate are topics including:
garra rufa fish
Malcolm McLaren
the Boomtown Rats
hungover squash vs. hungover luge
Martin Scorcese vs. Caravaggio Jim Davis vs. Michelangelo
Sydney vs. Melbourne
New York City vs. Welwyn Garden City
the American Cinema Editors’ Union
chef’s chequered trousers
the Thames beach
Philip Green
existential angst in the H&M fitting rooms
and The Naughtiest Girl in the School.
Plus: Olly taps into the goldmine that is writing Garfield strips; Helen recalls the time when, for one night only, she was Oliver Reed; and Martin the Sound Man refutes the notion that the Sex Pistols were little more than four vomit-spattered Gareth Gateses.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App concerns the Scarlet Pimpernel of fast food: that damned elusive McDonald’s McRib. They seek it here, they seek it there, but you may seek it on iDevices or Android.
Meanwhile, we seek your QUESTIONS: please deposit your inquisitive voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis) and email queries to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
This week, we learn how to arm yourself in the event of the outbreak of cyber-warfare. Start digging a hole in your virtual back garden for your Javascript Anderson shelter; lay down supplies of canned goods, water, batteries, masking tape and binbags (because even in an emergency you need to be able to cobble together a rudimentary fancy-dress costume), and load up your rifle with Answer Me This! Episode 168:
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)
Conversational shrapnel includes:
Steamboat Willie True Grit
Alan Turing
Nicole Kidman News in Briefs
topless Kelvin MacKenzie
Sharon Stone’s dress-down Oscar-day
puntits
Victorinox
the Colosseum vs the O2 Arena
perfectly controllable semis
John Virgo
Marchesa
and
swim-gimps.
Plus: Olly’s not going to fall for your elaborate apple-tasting double-bluff, wiseguy; Helen will take out your unwanted small pets, no questions asked; and Martin the Sound Man swims like a middle-aged woman. This is almost as good a show as the Geekpop show he’s playing on 10th March, for which you can and should get tickets via geekpop.co.uk. There’ll be a taster of his new album, Songs from the Scientific Cabaret, at the end of the show next week, so let that be the bright point of light at the end of the tunnel that is the next seven days.
You can also enliven the next seven days by sending us QUESTIONS, which you can then pose to us in a voicemail to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or findanswermethis on Skype) or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And if you still find yourself with time to spare, you could squander a few more seconds on this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iPhone or Android), which contains further musing upon what the whole deal is with Snow White. What’s with them apples? Eh?
Today, 6th January, is of course Epiphany, the day on which the Three Wise Men called round to see the baby Jesus. It is also the day that the Three Unwise Men’n’Women unleashed Answer Me This! Episode 161, which is only slightly less suitable a baby-gift than a jarful of myrrh.
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 this first podcast of the new year, we contemplate:
soup-straws
American military acronyms In Bruges
Waterfit
water-avoiding ‘Gay Bar’ by Electric Six
muscular veiny crotches
Winnie-the-Pooh
Paul Merton
the Pet Shop Boys vs. Half-Life 2
children’s stories vs. beat poets
the best Christmas films ever – see what Team AMT opted for here
the least bad bits of Love Actually (that was quick)
and
Slash’s unusual tureen.
Plus: Olly vows to kick off his New Year’s fitness drive – motivated partly by vanity and health, but more by recouping wasted gym money; Helen anticipates the timely death of the Zaltzman family dog; and virus-laden Martin the Sound Man grits his teeth and tries to survive the episode without exploding with a big gush of gutwater. Cheer up the poor man by listening to some of his music here.
Today’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iPhone and Android, app-fans) is all about Frank Bruno’s penis. Clue: it’s a whopper.
Can you believe we have now entered the FIFTH year of Answer Me This!? It would have been zero years had it not been for your QUESTIONS, so please keep supplying them: leave voicemails on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Remember a few days ago, when Britain was still capable of having conversations about things that aren’t SNOW? Me neither, but SNOW-free Episode 159 is a throwback to those clement times:
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)
Topics on this week’s crib-sheet include:
SNOW
litigious Times New Roman
Shetland ponies
the Mildenhall treasure Jacob’s Ladder
the Crusades
zebra piss
londonollypics.com
flattering spectacles Kramer vs. Kramer
the BBC vs. Boston Business Computing
laser eye surgery vs. A Clockwork Orange
Las Vegas vs. Trafalgar Square
pet griffins
the Crystal Palace water-towers
the penalty for banging Prince Philip
cybersquatting
Stanmore the Monkfish
the MGM lion
and
Martin the Sound Man’s favourite fountain.
Plus: Olly salves his wounds from losing last week’s Queen’s Speech debate by triumphing in his other specialist subject: Macaulay Culkin’s uncredited early work; tedious stories thwart Helen’s attempts to compose the Zaltzman family tree; and Martin will sort out your myopia for a fiver and a bucket of chicken wings, no questions asked. Also, this week’s Bit of Crap on the App describes an inappropriate use for a lovely dollshouse (clue: it’s not this).
In the event that you too have things to say that aren’t about SNOW – preferably QUESTIONS – then please get in touch by leaving a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
If you can make it through the SNOW, then please come along to one of our imminent book readings and signings – there’s one in London this weekend, 3.30pm on Saturday 4th at The Social on Little Portland Street, then there’s another in Brighton, 7.30pm on Wednesday 8th at Waterstone’s Clocktower.
In this special commemorative plate of podcasts, Answer Me This! Episode 158, we join in with the national celebrations of the romance of our age. For finally, after years of waiting, years of frustration, years of public speculation…Pudsey Bear is finally getting his end away.
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)
We also mention:
Wills’n’Kate (o jubilate deo!)
Marilyn Monroe
humanure
the US Weather Bureau
Dolce’n’Gabbana
Audrey Horne
augmented reality vs. unaugmented reality
Jean Paul Gaultier vs. dog saliva
Dexter’s bloody cologne
pox patches
the true meaning of eau de toilette
the Queen’s blingy carriage
and
the unsung beauty that is Robert De Niro.
Plus: Olly surmises that the West Country is boozed up to the eyeballs 24/7; Helen gives tips for turning your unsightly syphilitic blemishes into a join-the-dots game on your face; and Martin the Sound Man manages to compare the Gospels to Rashomon and the other religious texts of the world to something far worse. This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Curtis from Guildford about what we’d call a games console if we were to invent one. Luckily that day is far, far off.
We also have a bit of a disagreement about which of the Queen’s speeches is actually the Queen’s Speech; help us settle it once and for all:
You can send us QUESTIONS for future shows by leaving a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And if you’re a student, unemployed, or have an unusually generous lunch hour, please pop down to Rough Trade East at noon on Friday 26th, which is where and when we’ll be doing a reading from our book and signing copies. We are also available for signing wedding certificates, will forms, decrees nisi, blank cheques…
Rejoice! We’ve at last reached not-especially-impressive-numerical-landmark-when-you-think-about-it Episode 150:
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)
And duly we celebrate this really-not-at-all-momentous occasion with such topics as:
Caddyshack Caddyshack II
Craig Phillips
Collins academic diaries
Adolf Hitler’s great-nephew
Gillian McKeith
Curiously Cinnamon
knickers full of coins
Paperchase medical supplies
doner kebabs = engineering feats
Postman Pat’s new job
floaters
Opal Fruits
canine panniers
boarding school trains
wretched funk
clockwise Usain Bolt Platform 9 3/4
and
the end of days.
Plus: Olly gives you the insider knowledge that guarantees to get you on telly; Helen does not want her Everyman’s Library books despoiled by cover illustrations; and Martin the Sound Man has a top tip for stingy people who wish to be kind to the sensitive skin of strippers. Tuck a copy of his album into their garter, that’ll make them happy! This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Simon from Wimbledon wondering why people say Inception is confusing. Because that’s what you’re supposed to say about it, durrr.
This is the last episode of the series, but we won’t be away for long: we’ll be returning with Episode 151 on 7th October, which gives you plenty time to get your bargainous audiobooks (and we will be superlatively grateful to you if you do) as well as send us QUESTIONS for the new series: ask them with your voice on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or with your written words by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Because you’ve furnished us with far more questions than we can squeeze into the podcast this series, we’ll be tackling some of them here on the website during our break – and check back here anon if you’re curious about this world record attempt that we’re abetting on September 30th.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen and goodbye, until October 7th!
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