We’re as surprised as you to discover that Answer Me This! Episode 221 opens with a heated discussion upon the topic, ‘What is art?’ Check us out with our high brows!
Naturally our brows don’t stay high for long; in decreasing order of highfalutingness, we talk about:
Edward Lear
double-ended ice cream
Tracey Emin Jeremy Deller‘s teenage parties
the Marquis de Sade
firefighters
bridesmaids
pole dancing
Charlie Chaplin drowning horribly
the pull-out method
and Annabel Chong.
Plus: Olly is horrified to discover that there’s a boarding school-style communal wanking game that he’d never heard of; Helen knows how to make anything unsexy, using ham; and Martin the Sound Man would like to remind you that you only have a couple of weeks left to enter his Science Songwriter of the Future competition, so make the old man happy because he’s got a bad ear this week.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App Helen gives you a great tip for making new friends on late-night public transport, based on her recent encounter with a stranger’s pelvis on the Victoria Line. That stranger’s pelvis could be all yours, if you avail yourself of the app on iDevices or Android! Don’t worry if you’re married; the pelvis won’t be worrying about that either.
We don’t want your pelvises, but we do want your QUESTIONS, so thrust them our way by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). As a reward, you may watch the video below of Eleanor from Norwich’s pole dancing team going about their totally sexless business.
Although we’ve come
To the end of the road current series,
Still we can’t let go – because we’ll be back on 19th April with yet more Answer Me This!. So long and adieu, here is Episode 210:
Today we ponder:
the Angel of the North Pet Sounds
sham marriage a different type of big bird Tom Jones
Mel Blanc
emotions vs. money
Matt Willis vs. televisions
Alice Cooper vs. vending machines
Jesus vs. Spongebob Squarepants
Father Christmas on film
Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth
and
Abraham Lincoln.
Plus: we learn the one place where Olly actually keeps quiet; Helen whips ’em out for SPRIIIIIINNNG BREEEEAAAK!; and Martin the Sound Man puts a price on his hand in marriage. But you might as well barter him down to something more realistic, like £20 and a Chocolate Orange.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from Celeste from Elephant and Castle about whether you can sell your house without the intervention of an estate agent. Of course you can! But, before you ask, you are probably better off not performing your own laser eye surgery.
There is more to listen to during our absence, because by royal appointment (not really) we’ve released the Answer Me This! Jubilee, a 57-minute romp through the massive numbers of questions you lot send us about Her Maj and the like. Click here to get it.
Don’t forget us while we’re away: keep sending your QUESTIONS, as voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
In order of splashdown, the temples of hygiene we visited are:
• The Round Room at the Portobello Hotel, London. The tub in question is known as a ‘Victorian bathing machine’, which is appropriately sexy-sounding for a room with a circular bed in it. • Garderobe at Little Moreton Hall, Congleton, Cheshire. We can see why garderobes like this fell out of favour: 1) very drafty; 2) it’s not nice surrounding your home with a moat of shit; 3) danger of buttock-splinters. • The Ladies’ Room at the George Hotel, Stamford, Lincolnshire. Note to all of you: if you’re planning on filming yourself monologuing in a public convenience, make sure there’s nobody else in it first. • The sewers, Brighton. If you want to go on one of the regular sewer tours, book soon because they fill up months in advance. Especially Valentine’s Day. • Little Chef, Popham. If more than one person is using the talking lavatories at once, the combined effect is quite hectoring, so it’s not for the faint-hearted. • Castle Drogo, Devon, a 1920s folly with a very squirty bathtub and, downstairs, a fantastic collection of copper jelly-moulds. • Car-park loos at the Eden Project, Cornwall. Sure, other people go there for the indoor rainforest, the world’s largest greenhouse, Sir Robert McAlpine’s iconic domes; we just go for the bogs. • Bovine sewage-works at Rodda’s dairy farm, Cornwall. Watching a giant shit-stirrer is surprisingly relaxing – like a massive, stinky office toy. • Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh, where even the bathwater comes out stripy. • The Roman baths and the Thermae Bath Spa, Bath. It’s a big win for the city of Bath.
We’re also flushed with thanks to:
The nice gentlemen at the Hotel Missoni and Rodda’s, for patiently agreeing to our various ridiculous requests.
Rachel Bowers at the Thermae Bath Spa, for kindly filming us in our bathers – how did her eyes survive?
And the rubber duckie of gratitude goes to Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain.
RT @OllyMann: Weird milestone for me today as @RetrospectorsHQ reaches our 400th episode - that's as many as we made of Answer Me This! in… 2 months ago