It’s Answer Me This Episode 399 which means next episode will be Answer Me This Episode 400, so we not only want your QUESTIONS, we want you to send us your AMT memories. Did our answers to your questions helped or hurt your life? Did you made any friends through the podcast? Did you start your own podcast? What’s the weirdest place or oddest thing you were doing while listening to the show. Tell us all! Record yourself or write it down and deliver it to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Today we learn about:
ball pits
pickled onion pits
the quantum mechanical reading of The Famous Five
secret filming when cameras were still enormous
learning to knit
tuning a church bell
knobbing
being lost in SeaWorld
cheetahs’ pet dogs
and lashings of ginger beer.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android – we check in on the latest in celebrity ballpits, courtesy of Cara Delevingne (check out the video below).
Hear our other work:
• Olly hosts several podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com. Subscribe to his all new daily show The Retrospectors!
• Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning – now halfway through season 4 hurtling towards completion.
• Martin makes music – including a new EP – which you can hear palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. His brand new podcast Neutrino Watch is different every time you download it. 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 kids’ science podcast Maddie’s Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate.
This episode is sponsored by:
• Wondrium, née the Great Courses Plus, a huge library of tutorials, documentaries, travel, how-to videos and much more! AMT listeners get a 14-day trial of unlimited access at wondrium.com/answer.
• 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 six special albums including AMT Holiday for your summer staycation and Sports Day for these ballsporty times, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
One last time: send us your QUESTIONS, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com for us to answer in our final episode. And don’t forget to send us your AMT memories. Deadline for both is the end of July 2021.
We’ll be back with a retro AMT in your feed (except for if you listen on Google Podcasts for some unfathomable reason) on 22 July and then AMT400 lands on 5 August 2021. Hankies ready, for crying, waving, or cleaning up after yourself.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT399 Child-Friendly Rating: 73%. A handful of swears. Discussion of balls, Dicks, Fannies and bells, but NOT LIKE THAT! •••
Greetings, listeners! If you’ve ever wondered how jellyfish eat, shit and fuck, we’ve taken the hit to our search histories to illuminate you in Answer Me This! Episode 374. We also discuss:
microwave cookery
confirmation of the Buckingham Palace in-house (in-palace?) cinema
post-chemo hairdos
Eddie Izzard vs Gerard Butler
many Michaels
green screens vs blue screens vs yellow screens
death by Babybel
sea monkey soup mug cakes
brownie points
Helen’s gash
Disney’s Spaceship Earth
and
the contents of Ryvita.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – Olly expresses his wish for an in-house jellyquarium. As long as the jellyfish don’t watch him sleep.
Olly’s other podcast The Modern Mann is back with a new series, and an episode containing New York japes and aerial gymnastics. Find it at modernmann.co.uk – and catch up on the news that you haven’t heard much about on his other other podcast The Week Unwrapped.
Helen and Martin are on tour of Australia with an all new Allusionist live extravaganza! Visit theallusionist.org/events for listings – extra dates have just been added in Adelaide and Melbourne. And wherever you are in the world, 100 – one hundred!! – episodes of The Allusionist await at theallusionist.org for your listening pleasure.
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 terrifying experiments in fusion food. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
And go behind the money curtain to get AMT episodes 1-200 and our special albums, Sports Day, Holiday, Jubilee, Love and Christmas. OK, maybe wait a few months for Christmas. But this month, Sports Day goes well with the Wimblesport.
For the rest of this month, AMT listeners in the UK can get a free trial of Audible 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.
As ever, we want your QUESTIONS: send them, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. (Also the email address to which you can send your requests for us to do the voiceovers on the theme park rides you’re building.)
Upon the last Winter Olympics in 2014, we fair shat ourselves with surprise and delight when Lizzy Yarnold, who won gold for Team GB in the skeleton, listens to AMT! She’s competing again this time, so GOOD LUCK, Lizzy. Do it for all of us who get most of our exercise running for the ice cream van.
People of all athletic abilities, Olympian or not: get ready to race through Answer Me This! Episode 359, to learn about:
pope tropes
hotel toothpaste
chewing toothpicks
your auntie’s Facebook pic Dave Claus The Santa Dave
Defence Against the Dark Arts
Dumbledore’s aptitude for HR
the Center Parcs trees
the Center Parcs dome
the Center Parcs soft play that’s located in the bar/the Center Parcs bar that’s located in the soft play
karakia
cocktail swords
buttermilk
butterfat
and
globules.
Plus: we hear the latest in Olly’s gold pen nightmare scenario #OllyMannProblems; Martin figures out his title for when, as a Son of Santa, he inevitably takes up Santa duties; and Helen is already running down the beach to go swimming with some snazzy fish, so SEE YA.
The conversation about advance ticket-buying continues in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – as Olly wonders whether his son, aged 2, will be too sophisticated to enjoy the Teletubbies live on the stages of Hertfordshire..
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show, and for making it so easy to set up a good-looking website for your business, store, restaurant, art portfolio, band, podcast, smug travel wankery, etc. Have a go 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‘.
You can also get two free Audible audiobooks if you go to answermethispodcast.com/audible. Two free audiobooks are better than one free audiobook which is better than no free audiobooks, so get yourself free audiobooks!
Send us your QUESTIONS: deliver a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You can still use the old ways of calling the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, but a lot of those messages haven’t been reaching us lately or are coming out sounding like you’ve just been eaten by a robot. So a voice memo is a safer bet.
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. •••
Jelly in your pipes,
Jelly in your pipes,
Wibbly wobbly wibbly wobbly
Jelly in your pipes!
Seriously, people, don’t pour jelly into your pipes. It will prove a trifle problematic.
Other matters considered in Answer Me This! Episode 348:
the sorting hat spider
the Harry Potter crab
the Michael Crichtonsaurus
The Great British Bake Off/Pottery Throwdown/Jelly-Off
charcoal vs teeth
the Liberty Bell vs Big Ben (WHICH IS A BELL (and you’re a bell if you point this out, matey))
your neighbour vs kangaroos
kangaroos vs breast implants
Caesar salads
passports: i) front cover of; ii) losing at airports
and
a slightly hairy elephant.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – there’s a counter-claim as to the inventor of the Caesar salad, and Olly purloins a posh example of the dish.
Occupy your ears with our other audio projects: Olly hosts The Week Unwrapped and has returned with a new season of The Modern Mann; Helen’s Allusionist has more eponyms for your consumption; and Martin’s Song By Song currently features Helen’s brother Andy Zaltzman and his wife Miranda, making her podcasting debut.
You can also hear all the AMT special albums and episodes 1-200 if you shop at answermethisstore.com. Don’t forget: to receive one retro episode every month in your feed, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice!
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
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. •••
Weddings are an emotive topic; Harry Potter is…also an emotive topic? So it is to be expected that you are feeling some very strong emotions following AMT328‘s mention of a Harry Potter-themed wedding. Look how worked up Steven is:
The “why not” for a Harry Potter (or similar) wedding: because it’s the very worst kind of forced fun. The very idea of going to a wedding where people “play Quidditch” makes me squirm with awkwardness, even considering that I’d obviously sit inside at the bar with the older members of the wedding party. I would rather not go at all than endure being around that, which I know is totally irrational, but there we go.
Like Steven, we intimated that wedding guests would not be properly playing Quidditch, causing many of you to write to tell us that Quidditch is a real game that real people play. Yeah, we know there’s a flightless version of Quidditch – similar to field hockey, but you play with the stick wedged into your crotch – but for attendees of a Harry Potter wedding, it’s this
How do you tell your mum that she is a STUPID WOMAN who is RUINING CHRISTMAS by buying you the WRONG GIFT? Plus other polite and classy problems compose Answer Me This! Episode 328, in which we contemplate:
Plus: Olly plans never to get married, but maybe he’ll change his mind purely to have the themed wedding of his Jennifer Connelly-starring dreams; Helen turns her profound laziness into creative tips; and Martin the Sound Man puts the beats into his favourite Christmas carol.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, available for iThings, Android and Windows devices, Olly reveals the surprise hair inspiration of his mid-1980s barnet: Princess Diana.
Feeling festive yet? Click here to read about and then buy the Answer Me This! Christmas album; and click here to get the delightful Christmas podcasts from today’s sponsor Dobbies Garden Centres – and there’re plenty of Christmas tips and decorations to buy at dobbies.com and in store.
••• AMT328 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. No bawdy content, but there are a few swears, and the possible demystification of the machinations behind Christmas presents IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. •••
Today we discuss the world’s greatest audio format apart from this one: Desert Island Discs. What would your luxury be? (If you’re a cheating cheater who wants to take a fully-stocked iPod, throw yourself into the sea.) Find out ours, along with myriad other important nuggets of information, in Answer Me This! Episode 259:
In which we also consider:
condoms vs. opera gloves
knits vs. nits
Tim Burton vs. Faust
Olly vs. Ollie vs. Olleigh
cherry-pickers gentlemen’s clubs (nb not ‘gentlemen’s clubs’) The Reform Act This Life
personalised Coke bottles
Simon Cowell’s reflection
mayonnaise spa treatments
retro-live-tweeting
and
Russ Abbott.
Plus: Olly is nostalgic for an infestation of headlice; Helen WOULD with the person who changes the lights in supermarkets; and Martin the Sound Man doesn’t want to swallow himself. Just reflect on that quietly.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Olly rhapsodises about the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machine. All the different types of sugar water – in one machine! A miracle of modern life.
Another miracle of modern life is to be able to watch thousands of hours of entertainment for FREE thanks to our LoveFilm offer – which, equally miraculously, helps pay for future Answer Me Thises.
As well as free money, we can only sustain the podcast with your QUESTIONS, so send them along in the form of voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Look. We don’t want to point fingers or anything, but if you are the person who rifled through Olly’s desk and stole the gold jacket he bought at the Strictly Come Dancing costume auction, GIVE IT BACK. It may have been years ago now, but as you can hear in Answer Me This! Episode 181, the pain is still all too raw:
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)
This week we also contemplate:
stagnant white scabs
fluorotrousers Rhydian
grievous misuse of the Keith and the Girl book
black pudding
Black Eyed Peas
manuka honey
Henry Holland aquarium pimp-shoes
Fruit and Fibre
Napoleon-compatible party themes
psychiatric facility reading matter
fish sausages
Baci
bees vs. babies
ice cream vs. ice lollies
globalisation vs. jokes
Seth Rogen vs. Olly Mann
our pitch for Wonderland
and
Elliott Gould.
Also – Olly’s not going to be inviting Mark Ronson on a trip to Topman anytime soon; Helen wonders about the secret life of Russell Brand and Katy Perry; and Martin the Sound Man finds the thing that keeps our conflict-strewn crazy world together: sausages. If only the UN would hurry up and realise.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android) explains how Olly’s youthful ambition to be the next Christopher Pike was derailed by his innocence. Which is why he’s slumming it at AMT now rather than living in the gothy house that childish horror built.
You can be part of the childish horror that is next week’s episode by sending us your QUESTIONS – leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Of course we will struggle to emulate this childish horror, but it’s good to have goals in life.
Of course, you’re already used to getting good advice from us. (Shut up!) But this week, we have some even better advice from broadcasting stalwart Paul Ross, which was instrumental in making Olly Mann the broadcasting stalwart he himself is today. Hear what it was here and here only, in Answer Me This! Episode 152:
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)
This week, we address subjects including:
90s collars
Benson & Hedges
The Saturdays
butterbear
Carr’s water biscuits
yuppie kids
evil spirits
Ciro Citterio
the Queen vs. Pixie Lott
Batman’s wedding
Hong Kong tailors
trangias
Terry’s Chocolate Lemons
ligatures
Warhorse
Ben Stiller’s workwear
the musical cleft
Luciano Pavarotti outstaying his welcome
ball-handlers
the Isle of Arran
and
&.
Furthermore: Olly is a staunch conservative when it comes to the appropriate composition of orange-flavoured foodstuffs; Helen’s innate scruffiness has dashed her telemarketing dreams; and Martin the Sound Man stands up for Tom Stoppard. Meanwhile, over on the app, Gaz from Jedburgh has a question about a problem we’re sure is common to a great many of you: nepotism in the forestry business.
Everyone who got a question answered in today’s episode needs to email us their postal address sharpish, so we can send along a free copy of the Answer Me This! book; everyone else needs to send us a QUESTION to be in with a chance to win a free book, along with an answer, of course. You know what to do: leave a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
As promised, we’re back from our little break – Olly at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Helen at the Wizarding World of her own living room – and without further ado, it’s time for Answer Me This! Episode 151:
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)
Rusty from our hiatus, we try to remember what that ‘conversation’ thingy is that we used to do, and harness the following subjects in the hopes that they’ll cumulatively become one:
dental floss sticks
inflated pig bladders
Mark Lawson
sexy Humpty Dumpty
minstrels Porn: The Musical vs. Les Mis
truth vs. not lies Tycoon with Peter Jones Terri Hall (not to be confused with Terry Hall) the Spitting Image Chicken Song
unequal phone relationships
crows
Stewart Lee
Paul Daniels
stoned assassins
the sack of Troy
the Hogwarts Express conductor
invisible dog leads
and
Brian Krakow.
Plus: Olly finally understands why he’s booked in for so many appointments at the GUM clinic; Helen wants praise for her more obscure career avenues, thanks; and Martin the Sound Man wants to see a bit more of Ian Holm. Quite a lot more, in fact. But if he can’t get Holm’s pants off, Caitlin Moran’s would be a welcome consolation prize.
This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Catherine about why a kitty is called a kitty. As in a financial kitty, not a cute wickle cat, though just the linguistic similarity is enough for Olly in his now inevitable slide into becoming one of these.
We crave your QUESTIONS for the new series, so deliver them to us in the form of a voice mail left on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis; alternatively you can deliver them emailwise to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And, as we announced on today’s show: everyone who gets their question into an episode this month wins a copy of the Answer Me This! book! Yes, we’ve bloody well written a book. It comes out on 4th November. You can read a sample of it here where there are also links for pre-ordering it, if you are inclined to be an early adopter.
See you next week,
Helen and Olly
PS Here’s a family-friendly(ish) clip of Alice in Wonderland – An X-Rated Musical Fantasy. If you can make it past the actors speaking in rhyming couplets to anything even faintly stimulating, we salute you.
was derailed by his innocence. Which is why he’s slumming it at AMT now rather than living in the gothy house that childish horror built.
Answer Me This! Podcast 