We love a good prank and we love a happy ending, so we double-love this correspondence from Richard in Finsbury Park:
In AMT303 you talked about my inappropriate prank on my elderly mum. I had put Fifty Shades of Grey on her Kindle with the names of the main characters changed to my mum and dad’s: Christine and Frank.
Well finally she has read the thing. I was worried she might go ape when she rumbled me. She didn’t. Look at the email she sent me. I think I have the best natured parent on the planet.
Well you little bugger, I have been making such a fool of myself as I thought that the characters in 50 Shades were really called Frank and Christine. It would never have occurred to me that the names throughout a whole book could be changed. This morning in the hairdressers I asked a lady who had read the trilogy why the names had changed in the second book. She said they hadn’t and when I said they were Frank and Christine, Lee said ‘I think someone has been having you on’. Then the penny dropped and everyone in the shop was in stitches. I don’t know how you did it and I had been telling people what a coincidence it was, how silly am I. Dad said, ‘Well, that is a typical Richardism,’ so now you can have a good laugh. Wait ’til you get here and you might find your flies sewn up or one leg off your trousers!
Mum
So answer me this: what can I do to wind her up next?
It’s surely her turn to prank you in return, isn’t it? But if you really want to risk a second round, perhaps some of the AMT squad have some cunning ideas. Readers, go to the comments and suggest a jape. I still think you’ll be hard pushed to beat Richard’s original prank, but I feel you’re up to the challenge.
Happy Thanksgiving to AMT’s American pals! Today’s episode is thematically appropriate for you, since it involves a question about Disney’s turkey legs; so don your turkey boxer shorts and turkey tops, strap on your turkey watch, inhale the delicious scent of turkey, plug in your turkey headphones and listen to Answer Me This! Episode 303*:
We also speak of such non-turkey topics as:
mirrors in the gym
sexy cheese
a pat from Paul Daniels
the Dewey Decimal System
Meville Dewey vs Melvil Dui
McDonald’s bagels
wanking into bagels
ripping off Starbucks
hidden Mickeys Fifty Shades of Grey-based pranks
and
cat scat chat.
Plus: Olly favours almond milk over animal milk (maybe the question about cheesy handjobs put him off); size matters to Helen, when it comes to shelving second-hand books; and Martin the Sound Man is never going to be a serial TV quiz contestant
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets) is stuffed full of praise for the bountiful foods of Manchester. If you like the sound of the Answer Me This! Christmas – and even Scrooge can get behind it – then you can buy it and episodes 1-170 as an early prezzie for yourself at answermethisstore.com. You’re funding the future of AMT with your purchases, so Thank You from the future!
We’ll be back with AMT304 on 11th December 2014; stay out of trouble in the meantime,
Helen & Olly
••• AMT303 Child-Friendly Rating: 30%. Sweary from the off. Obscene question about cheese ten minutes in, followed by a Fifty Shades of Grey-based prank, then the possibly non-consensual and definitely unprotected sex in Phantom of the Opera. Overall, not an episode to listen to on the school run. •••
* And here is Helen sporting one of your traditional Thanksgiving hats:
Our next question comes from a lady known only as A, who says:
I’m in a dilemma. I know this guy who I met at an event last year and he is way older than I am. We kept in touch but kinda lost touch for a few months. Then about a few months after that we bumped into each other and he and i got back in touch and started emailing each other. Those emails got quite intimate and personal.
We soon met up and had a quiet lunch in January. Then we kept emailing each other and pretty soon we both confessed that we want each other sexually but there’s a catch: he’s married and has a daughter and wants me the way it’s written in Fifty Shades of Grey. I am into that whole thing but just on paper and haven’t even tried that whole spanking and tying up bit.
He is heading abroad for a month and when he’s back we are planning to get busy. My gut is telling me not to do so, but my mind is saying something else as I have just started an awesome new job and have got my life in order.
What should I do? Should I just give into what he and I want or push him aside? We have been friends since day 1 so that seems to be out of the question.
It seems out of the question to you only because you’re so DISTRACTED BY THE YELLING OF YOUR LOINS.
I’m assuming from your penultimate paragraph that you’ve taken leave of your senses. You’ve just started an awesome job and got your life in order – so now would be the optimal time to mess everything up? For…karmic balance? Colour me baffled.
By all means go ahead and experiment with your BDSM fantasies, but choose somebody who is unattached with whom to do so. The Fifty Shades scenario is already one in which the man controls the woman; don’t tip it further to your disadvantage by enacting it with a married man, because you will have ever little dominion as time passes. And you should be especially cautious about enabling somebody else’s extra-marital funtime because you sound like you’ve already grown emotionally attached even before you’ve deployed the bondage kit.
Readers, if you have anything to say about A’s Fifty Shades of Folly, go to the comments and do so. But she’ll probably never read this post through her blindfold made of lust and neckties.
Happy Valentine’s Day, listeners! We know how you love to celebrate the feast day of the patron saint of plague, epilepsy and bee-keeping, so we’ve got a wonderful gift for you: A FREE AUDIOBOOK FROM AUDIBLE! Gallivant to answermethispodcast.com/audible right now to get it, then as a warm-up to your many hours of free audio content, listen to half an hour of free audio content, ie Answer Me This! Episode 246:
This week we consider:
the Chinese zodiac
the longest queue ever
Lemar
premium cinema seats
stop-motion water
baby clothes
asexual koalas
Mike Leigh vs. Red Dragon Les Miserables vs. Undercover Boss Mary Poppins vs. The Sound of Music
Pete Doherty vs. Peter Brame
and
the point of kissing.
Plus: Olly’s going to build his business empire on XXX fortune teller fish, whilst Helen’s looking into a range of mouth condoms for slimmers; and Martin the Sound Man is a shrivelled little short tongue man. But at least he’s not the only one.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is further contemplation upon the masterwork of David Sneddon, star of Fame Academy series 1 and AMT245. It’s a song which bears many hours, nay months, of interpretation. This week’s lesson: what’s up with your sleeves, Sneddon?
Instead of whatever Valentine’s love token you were planning to give us, please send your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis. (Although, when we say ‘instead’, we do mean ‘as well as’, if the token was heart-shaped boxes of Ferrero Rocher. Keep ’em coming.)
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.
I’m completely bored of Fifty Shades of Grey, and I haven’t even read it. I’m even bored of all the humorous deconstruction of it, but our next questioneer Mike from Shropshire may have hit on a way to quell some of the public enthusiasm for the phapping phenomenon:
Many women I know are putting status updates on Facebook telling us all that they are reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Some of these people are also professional colleagues of mine.
In view of this new openness about reading of pornography, answer me this – is it now acceptable for me to tell the world on Facebook what porn videos I am watching?
Readers, what do you reckon? Tell us in the comments – if you’re not too busy being tied to your bedposts by an arrogant businessman, or whatever.
This week, we hint at the reason behind one of the most pressing mysteries of the 1990s. Not what happened to Princess Di, nor what became of Richey Edwards, but why Mick Hucknall decided to hack off his dreadlocks. Discover all in Answer Me This! Episode 224:
We also consider:
stage kissing
business kissing
The WI in WWI Great British cheeses
Whoopi Goldberg The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vs. Men Who Hate Women
fabric conditioner vs. towels
going cold turkey on caffeine
Adelaide Hoodless
feta
and
dead landladies.
Plus: Olly wishes to replace his happy childhood with a lot of bonking; Helen launches her campaign for more Wigmore cheese to be made (WigMORE! WigMORE!); and think carefully before accepting Martin the Sound Man’s handshake, because you may be getting a whole lot more physical contact than you bargained for.
We’d love to hear more from you, in the form of QUESTIONS sent as emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Happy wedding anniversary, Henry VIII! Verily on this day in 1543, he married Catherine Parr, and as they say, sixth time’s the charm. According to the Big Book of Weddings, the traditional gift for the 469th anniversary is ‘MP3’, so here’s Answer Me This! Episode 223 for you, you loved-up kids:
Today we contemplate:
speciation
bloody Mary
pub lighting Def Leppard videos vs. Duran Duran videos
Bieber vs. dopamine
pride vs. prizes
curry house atmosphere
crisp etiquette (US translation: potato chip etiquette)
farm-themed restaurants
sepulchral Hollister
and
that bitch Tinkerbell.
Plus: Olly is mistaken for someone even lower on the celebrity ladder than he is; Helen breaks the bad news that Cain and Abel were motherjeffers; and Martin the Sound Man has something in common with the Queen, other than his fondness for shiny jewels and waving.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available on iDevices and Android) demonstrates how Martin paid a woman to write his name on her body. For ‘charity fundraising’, allegedly. Good ruse!
Another good ruse is to send us your QUESTIONS by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). More questions, more podcasts, see?
And don’t forget to click here to check out our latest album, the Answer Me This! Sports Day – the best 59 minutes and 33 seconds of all-new sporty-talk we have ever produced.
We’re picking up good vibrations (good, good, good, good vibrations, oooh bop bop, good vibrations) in Answer Me This! Episode 219, thanks to one of our listeners sending us a Groupon offer for Power Plate sessions.
This week we consider:
gratuitous nudity
sexy playing cards
bomb shelters Sliding Doors, alternative version
abetting child criminals
Joseph ‘Giuseppe’ Pinetti
Apple Paltrow Martin
subtitles Slendertone vs. exercise for cosmonauts
and
Ceefax.
Plus: Olly believes china shops should tolerate, nay welcome, his unapologetic vandalism; fun-hating Helen eschews murder mystery parties, entertainment at weddings, and jiggling in public; and Martin the Sound Man is still imploring you to enter his competition to be the Science Songwriter of the Future, which sounds a bit like being the artist-in-residence on the International Space Station, but is in fact much more straightforward and does not require you to urinate into a funnel. Although, the prize includes a trip to the Green Man festival, so a funnel might prove more hygienic than a Portaloo.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) recounts some incredible facts about jubilees, such as how they used to lead to famine, and how the Queen was probably wasted on hers. This seems a suitable point to mention that the Answer Me This! Jubilee is at last available to buy on Amazon. You may think it a bit late for Jubilee Fever now, but we’ve got a £50 bet on the Queen reaching her Platinum Jubilee, so consider the album 15 years ahead of its time rather than two weeks behind.
If you want more AMT next week, send us a QUESTION: emails should be sent to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and voicemails left on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
RT @HelenAndOlly: 🎵I gotta question
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vs. exercise for cosmonauts
Answer Me This! Podcast 