Overshadowed by a special guest appearance from Missy Elliott*, here’s Answer Me This! Episode 307:
*Not really. She refuses to respond to our postcards.
On today’s question-answering slate:
female strippers
male strippers
drupes
Grumpy Cat beckoning cats Cats Lil Bub: the Chris Martin of cats
Ben Lashes
fast food delivery
wedding diplomacy
Happy Meal toys
Ronald McDonald vs Carol Vorderman
human beatboxing
coconuts
and
Femidoms.
Plus: Olly’s brain or his wang can be stimulated, but never at the same time; Helen could have been the late-90s Beanie Baby trading magnate of Tunbridge Wells; and Martin the Sound Man exercises uncharacteristic restraint in the face of a question about beatboxing. Though he still manages to sound like he’s polishing a window with his own spit.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App contains further contemplation of memes and cats and the internet’s favourite/Helen’s least favourite, cat memes. Hear on 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‘. Use it use it use it!
With every fibre of our being, we yearn for your QUESTIONS. Leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
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. •••
Listeners, thank you so much for contributing your attention, questions and eartime to us this year. What a year it has been! Relisten to the highlights – and lowlights, including such annual delights as the Parade of Melancholy Calls and the blooper reel – in The Best of Answer Me This! 2014:
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)
So many precious moments… Create more of them in 2015 by sending us your QUESTIONS: leave a message on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
By the way, if you have the AMT app on your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets, you have access to all the previous AMT Best Ofs. For those of you who are app-less, you can obtain these joyous compilations from answermethisstore.com/best. Also at the AMT store, iTunes and Amazon, you can buy our albums and old episodes – the perfect festive gift for the AMT fan, ie you, and the perfect gift for us, ie money to continue making the show next year.
Another Christmas gift we would love is for you to tell a friend about the show! There are still a few billion people in the world who are yet to hear it, so do your bit to remedy this sad situation.
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.)
My sister is about to have a baby, which means I am about to become an aunt! In fact, I recently realised I will be the baby’s only aunt, which means I feel like I should get it right. I know Helen is an aunt, and I suspect a fun one, or at least I know she likes to lie to her ‘niecephews’.
So answer me this: what do I need to do to be an excellent aunt?
1. Deploy exciting-looking gift-wrapping (the gift within is of secondary importance).
2. Try not to look bored when the kid is telling you an anecdote that doesn’t go anywhere.
3. Teach them to make paper aeroplanes.
4. Don’t bury their grandmother without telling anyone.
That last point is information someone should have given my only aunt. Hindsight is a powerful thing…
Readers, any tips for excellent aunt or uncle performance? Add in the comments.
Got any great tips for gaming a hotel breakfast buffet? Do share in the comments; but first, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 297 to learn from the master (ie Olly Mann):
In today’s buffet of audio delights, we’re serving:
Sea Monkey refills
second hand wedding dresses
green peppers vs red peppers
Bob Dylan vs grapefruit juice Steve Wright in the Afternoon vs heroin Harold Von Braunhut
the Pizza Hut salad bar
Oxford divorces
cryptobiosis
spying on your children
and
gobbing in the pot.
Plus: if you see Olly roving towards you armed with a Tupperware tub, he’s either going to take advantage of your buffet or imprison you with fatal consequence; Helen will be survived by a sackful of raw gingerbread; and Martin the Sound Man is a masochist for grapefruit juice.
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we tackle another Great British Bake Off question from Katherine from Sheffield. To find out how we go from that to the Sword of Gondor in just four short minutes, fire up the app on your iDevices, Android or Windows playthings. As a happy by-product of buying the app, you’re funding the show – likewise if you splash out on any of our albums or vintage episodes at answermethisstore.com. So you know that along with your purchase you’ll receive a free dose of our eternal gratitude.
And because we’re simply brimful of gratitude today, let’s throw a bucketful over Squarespace.com, for sponsoring this episode, for allowing people to build and host websites easily and beautifully, and for offering you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer.
By the way, if you’re keen to start your own podcast, book a ticket for this Guardian Masterclass and on 20th September, Helen and a host of other podcasting mavens will teach you all you need to know, and then some.
We will return with AMT298 on 18th September, and we hope you do too. Cheerio!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT297 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. Light on profane language. Unfortunate TMI about Olly and Martin’s bodily fluids. Question from a parent running surveillance ops on their teenager, which may instill trust issues in your own offspring. •••
Apologies to Gina G for the theme in Answer Me This! Episode 289. YOU WERE ROBBED, GINA! The injustice smarts as much now as it did in 1996! Neva 4get!*
On today’s agenda:
Pret a Manger
ladies ‘freshening up’
homecoming queen
wood-panelled station wagons
red Solo cups 60 Minute Makeover
the Mosquito Alarm vs turds
stealing leftovers
Olly’s schoolboy politics Marlene from Neighbours Four Weddings and a Funeral vs The Inbetweeners vs Trainspotting
Skype calls with your parents
pebbledash (again!)
the cloakroom
Peter Andre’s career
and
Nigella Lawson’s handbag condiments.
Plus: abandoned milkshakes bring all the Olly Manns to the yard; Helen tries to become the Barbara Woodhouse of effusive emailers; and please excuse Martin the Sound Man, he’s just off for a ‘bio-break’.
We’re talking brown sludge in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, albeit not the same kind of brown sludge as covering the lawns at the beginning of this episode, or being emitted by ladies under the cover of Euphemisms. The tide of not-effluent is available for iDevices, Android or Windows gadgets.
There’s also a shitload more bonus material here – the full-length interviews we did with podcasters including Marc Maron, Roman Mars, Night Vale, Keith and the Girl, Dan Savage and the Bugle for our Radio 4 documentary Podcasting: The First Ten Years. So head over there if you’re interested in hearing Helen talk shop with other podcasters; Olly’s interviews will be added to the playlist shortly.
Many thanks to Squarespace.com, who have not only funded today’s podcast, but also offer you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer when making your website-building dreams become reality.
Make our question-answering dreams become reality for the 290th time: call the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And you are of course welcome to join us at facebook.com/answermethis and/or twitter.com/HelenAndOlly to discuss your findings following this episode.
Until AMT290 on 22nd May, farewell,
Helen & Olly
••• AMT289 Child-Friendly Rating: 68%. Early scatchat. A few strong swears. Largely harmless overall. •••
*We’re sure Gina G is reading this from the secret clubhouse where she, Sonia and Love City Groove retreat to shoot spitballs at a cardboard cutout of Katrina and the Waves.
MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP:
If you downloaded AMT285 very soon after it was released, you may have ended up with a version that is rather longer or considerably shorter than the correct AMT285-length of 42 minutes 45 seconds. If so, please delete it and obtain the proper one, as linked to below. Thanks! HZ
In response to AMT284, the first few minutes of Answer Me This! Episode 285 are SO exciting, you should listen RIGHT NOW:
But do carry on listening beyond the first few minutes, to hear about:
‘Torn‘ by Natalie Imbruglia vs ‘Torn‘ by Ednaswap Randy Newman vs Tom Jones
the Recycle Bin vs Trash
rawl plugs vs wall plugs
Lizzy Yarnold
Magic FM
saloon doors
Mini Babybel
‘Hazard‘ by Richard Marx
the face of fistula
and
magnolia paint.
Plus, there’s a manliness contest between Olly and Martin the Sound Man. Which of these opposite-of-Titans is the least masculine? It’s a VERY close contest. Like a boxing match between a wet lettuce leaf and a fluffy sock.
There’s double Crap on the App this week, as Olly chooses chateaubriand over speakeasies (whither the gastrospeakeasy?), then says gardening’s for girls, even though he’s got a grow-your-own Alan Titchmarsh. Fire up the app on your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgetry.
Also fire up Squarespace.com, who have not only given us money to make this episode but are also giving YOU a 10% discount off their services for a whole year if you use the code answer3.
Back in a fortnight!
Helen & Olly
AMT285 Child-Friendly Rating: 52%. The topics aren’t unsuitable, but two f-bombs are detonated in the first ten minutes. Miscellanous other swears appear towards the end, when discussing the vile names Martin the Sound Man gives to computer things. So blame Martin for the defilement of your children if they hear this episode.
The podcast is BACK for 2014. And changes are afoot; listen to Answer Me This! Episode 281 to discover what they are:
But as normal, we talk about such things as:
ice sculptures
coach travel
cat litter
cystitis
Piccadilly Circus vs Times Square
country pubs vs London bars In Bruges vs Helen in Bruges the Blue Posts Crawl
stamps
floppy disks
empty London
attractiveness gaps
and
blank videotapes.
Plus: how schoolboy Olly Mann was both a ‘budget Elvis’ and like Jesus; how Helen’s jar of gallstones is keeping a low profile; and how Martin the Sound Man didn’t have an affair with a dog. (That he’ll admit to on air.)
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows), Olly’s beloved cat Coco gets her Flavor Flav gear on. Of course, Olly adores her whatever she wears.
We adore your QUESTIONS, so send them in: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Thanks to Squarespace.com for funding this episode of AMT, and if you want to see an example of a Squarespace site, visit our new answermethisstore.com, where you can buy our archive episodes/albums/Best Ofs with far more of your hard-earned money going to the AMT Corporation rather than a Big Corporation.
See you in a fortnight,
Helen & Olly
AMT281 Child-Friendly Rating: 44%. Second half is pretty clean, but what use is that coming in the wake of a discussion of cystitis, masturbation and cervical mucus? Swearing: there is some.
PS Here’s that Facebook pic of the collection of baby teeth:
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.
We really hope you didn’t first hear the sad news about JLS on Answer Me This! Episode 255. If you did, please accept our condolences at this difficult time.
Through our veil of grief, today we discuss:
fruit PDA
inappropriate gifts
Volvos
proofreading Pitbull’s party anthems
Pop Star to Deer Farmer Abz from 5ive
bangs
Andre 3000 + Beyonce covering Winehouse
porn prodigies
Paul Torrisi
Olly’s mum’s sex tips
and
Olly’s cat’s arsehole.
Plus: Olly’s not so much house-hunting as Costco cupboard-hunting; Michelle Obama makes Helen weepy; and if unlike Martin the Sound Man’s parents you DO want to listen to his albums, get them from thesoundoftheladies.com. Perfect soundtrack for gardening and cat funerals.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we consider the ridiculousness of reading about Web 2.0 via Web 0.0, ie print media, which is going the way of JLS before too long.
We don’t intend to go anywhere soon, though, so do send us your QUESTIONS for forthcoming episodes: leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Bye!
Helen & Olly
PS Revisit our previous discourse about the male and female symbols in AMT96 and JLS in AMT187.
Brace yourselves, listeners: in Answer Me This! Episode 240, those two titans of the Northern Hemisphere, Russia and Canada, face off for the bout you’ve all been waiting for. KABOOM!!!!
Sort of.
This week we speak of:
Andy Warhol’s wig
podcatchers
Russell Brand’s dad
penis pasta
Guinness World Record adjudicators
mean mean mother-in-law
pleasing your partner’s parents
the death of Borders
holidays with Paul Daniels
and
poutine vs. Putin.
Plus: you may be surprised to hear that Olly is a one-doughnut Mann; Helen’s ex-boyfriend moved the earth for her, literally; and Martin the Sound Man unleashes his inner Sarah Palin. Watch out, world.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Sam about Gems TV, that 24/7 diamond of entertainment.
Next week is the first half of the Best of Answer Me This! 2012, but for your chance to appear in the Best of Answer Me This! 2013, send us QUESTIONS for the new year. Email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
Also please do try out our other weekly podcasting exploit The Joy of Tech from BBC 5 Live, in which we talk about the week’s internet events alongside experts in tech, cars, gaming and other highlights of modern existence.
Answer Me This! Podcast 
EPISODE 255 – you can’t build up to the Shewee
May 2, 2013Hello listeners,
We really hope you didn’t first hear the sad news about JLS on Answer Me This! Episode 255. If you did, please accept our condolences at this difficult time.
Through our veil of grief, today we discuss:
fruit PDA
inappropriate gifts
Volvos
proofreading Pitbull’s party anthems
Pop Star to Deer Farmer
Abz from 5ive
bangs
Andre 3000 + Beyonce covering Winehouse
porn prodigies
Paul Torrisi
Olly’s mum’s sex tips
and
Olly’s cat’s arsehole.
Plus: Olly’s not so much house-hunting as Costco cupboard-hunting; Michelle Obama makes Helen weepy; and if unlike Martin the Sound Man’s parents you DO want to listen to his albums, get them from thesoundoftheladies.com. Perfect soundtrack for gardening and cat funerals.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we consider the ridiculousness of reading about Web 2.0 via Web 0.0, ie print media, which is going the way of JLS before too long.
We don’t intend to go anywhere soon, though, so do send us your QUESTIONS for forthcoming episodes: leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Bye!
Helen & Olly
PS Revisit our previous discourse about the male and female symbols in AMT96 and JLS in AMT187.
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Tags:5ive, Abz, Alex James, Amy Winehouse, ancient gods, Ancient Rome, Andre 3000, anus, art, Aston Merrygold, awkward, bands, bangs, Beyonce, birthday presents, bisexuality, bodily functions, bottoms, boundaries, boybands, break-ups, cars, clubs, comments, Costco, couples, deer, equine, erotica, families, family, fringes, fruit, gifts, hair, hair styles, homosexuality, horses, innuendo, International Love, iron, JB Gill, JLS, Latin, literature, M&S, Mars, Marvin Humes, Michelle Obama, multiple sclerosis, music, novels, Olly's cat, One Direction, optimism, Oritse Williams, parents, party anthems, Paul Torrisi, PDA, Pitbull, pop, pop bands, prawn, prodigy, reality tv, romance, Romans, Rupert Grint, sex, sexuality, Shewee, Simon Cowell, SoundCloud, splits, stag parties, symbols, telly, the apprentice, The Big Reunion, The Voice, venison, Volvo, weapons, Will.I.Am, X Factor, yuk
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