Posts Tagged ‘kings’
December 5, 2019
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:
candy canes
boarding school pranks
turkey trends
Christmas Day in London
artificial Christmas trees vs toilet brushes
Thanksgiving dinner vs Christmas dinner
Pirates of the Caribbean vs squid
getting drunk on brandy sauce
the Snow Buddies puppy tragedy
Mister Ed’s mouth
podcaster baubles
the Serpentine Christmas Day swimming race
fake wine
and
the SPAM Museum.
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.
Hear our other work!
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.
Be our interfriend at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis.
We’ll be back with AMT381 on 9 January 2020, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 18 December.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT380 Child-Friendly Rating: 78%. Some Santa Truth business. Discussion of puppy death. Couple of swears.
•••
Tags:advent calendars, Airbud, alcohol, American Humane Association, animal actors, animal cruelty, animals, animals in film, armed forces, artificial Christmas trees, Babe, belief, Ben-Hur, BFPO, Bob McCormack, Body Worlds, booze, brandy, brandy butter, brandy sauce, bullshit, candy, candy canes, CGI, children, chipmunks, Christmas, Christmas films, Christmas food, Christmas gifts, Christmas movies, Christmas trees, credulity, cruelty, dogs, drink, drunkenness, dry ice, Edward VII, Evergreen, factories, Failure to Launch, families, family, Father Christmas, Father Gregory Keller, festive, festivities, films, flavor, flavourings, food, gag gifts, gifts, handmade, Henry VIII, homemade, homemade gifts, inebriation, inventions, japes, Jesus, jokes, Keller machine, kids, kings, Leave Right Now, London, London 2012, mail, Martinmas, Matthew Perry, merchant navy, mint, Mister Ed, monarchs, movies, Mr Ed, offspring, parks, peppermint, Pirates of the Caribbean, post, poultry, pranks, presemts, puppies, religious symbolism, rock, royal assent, sailors, Santa, Santa Buddies, Santa Claus, Santa spoilers, Serpentine, SFX, ships, Snow Buddies, solitude, special effects, squid, sugar, sweets, symbolism, talking animals, talking dogs, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner, the administrative process of Christmas, toilet brush factory, toilet brushes, turkey, umble pie, VFX, widowhood, Will Young, Winterval, Xmas
Posted in PODCASTS | Leave a Comment »
April 4, 2019
Whatever happened to aerobics on morning telly, the corpse of Henry VIII, and cummerbunds? In Answer Me This! Episode 372, we crack these mysteries and more, including:
the Pete Best of the Spice Girls
the Magic Castle dress code
fish death
taxi radio
Mr Motivator
‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ at the football
Man of La Mancha
books as gifts
mummified monarchs
borrowing clothes from Switched On Pop
and
cummerbunds.
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – our conversation about kings’ corpses turns to a surprisingly thoughtful contemplation of burial and shivah. And then away from that to Scooby-Doo.
Prepare yourselves, New Zealand and Australia, for an influx of Helen and Martin: the Allusionist live tour is coming to you. Check theallusionist.org/events for shows in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide; more dates will be added soon.
Also! Listen to Olly’s new series about diets and body image, Tip the Scales, and it’s ready and waiting for you if you’re an Audible subscriber in the UK and a handful of other countries (commiserations, USA). You AMT listeners in the UK can get a free trial of Audible for a month 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. Hear a sample of Tip the Scales HERE, then get your free Audible trial HERE then hear the whole series HERE.
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 Oscar-nominated documentary. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
As ever, we want your QUESTIONS: send them, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Be our interfriend at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis.
We’ll be back with AMT373 on 2 May, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 18 April.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT372 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. One or two swears, otherwise sanitary. •••
Tags:accessories, Alan Hollinghurst, athleisure, Baby Spice, black tie, book recommendations, books, cabs, Carousel, Center Stage, Charles I, Charles II, clams, clothes, clothing, coffins, conjurers, corpses, cufflinks, cummerbunds, death, drivers, driving, Dubai, Eamonn Holmes, Emma Bunton, exercise, fashion, fish, fishing, fitness, fitness DVDs, football, football songs, formalwear, Geri Halliwell, gifts, Ginger Spice, Green Goddess, Henry VIII, holiday reading, home video, Kelsey Grammer, killing, King Charles, King Charles II, King Henry VIII, kings, Mad Lizzie, magic, Magic Castle, Magic FM, magicians, Mama, Man of La Mancha, Mary Roach, Mel B, Mel C, menswear, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, monarchy, mothers, Mr Motivator, mummies, mummification, mums, music, music videos, musicals, Nicholas Hytner, noises, podcasts, pop music, pop songs, Posh Spice, posthumous, preservation, radio, reading, Restoration, Rosemary Conley, Roxette, Savannah, Scary Spice, Smooth, soccer, songs, sounds, Spice Girls, Sporty Spice, Stiff, style, taxis, telly, The Blind Side, The Impossible Dream, The Strangest Child, tombs, tuxedo, TV, Victoria Beckham, videos, You'll Never Walk Alone
Posted in PODCASTS | 1 Comment »
August 2, 2018
Apologies for the unscheduled absence of a fresh episode in July, listeners: Helen’s neck had other plans for the past few weeks. But hooray, Helen is out of hospital and all new Answer Me This! Episode 364 is here! WARNING: there’s a bit of Medical Stuff in the first few minutes of this episode, so if you’re sensitive to that, skip to the 4-minute mark, after which you can hear about:
Paw Patrol vs the football World Cup
post-swim communal shower etiquette
cosmetology
Cast Away
jesters’ staffs
cranberry farming
lost birthday presents
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
and
an inflated bladder on a stick.
There is more cranberry-chat in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices. We discover a previous, more ferocious name for the fruit, and reminisce about The Delia Effect (not a euphemism for a UTI or the soothing thereof with cranberry juice).
Check in with our other work: Olly hosts The Modern Mann; and Helen and Martin are performing the Allusionist live show on stages in the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada this autumn – check where and when at theallusionist.org/events.
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show, and for making it so easy to set up a good-looking website for your projects. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
The Bluffers’ Guides are back! Rapidly become passingly well-informed in subjects from cats to fishing to social media to wine at bluffers.com.
Send us your QUESTIONS: any time, 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. So emailing a voice memo is the safer bet.
Be our interfriend at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis.
We’ll be back with AMT365 on 6 September 2018, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 23 August.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT364 Child-Friendly Rating: 71%. No smut, but quite a few swears. •••
Tags:awkward, awkward situations, awkward workplace conversations, backstage, birthday, boats, bosses, Bram Stoker's Dracula, branding, brands, Bristol, Bristol City, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Pugwash, Cast Away, cats, changing rooms, children, colleagues, coma, costumes, court jesters, coworkers, coyness, cranberries, cranberry, crops, cruise, cruises, desert islands, Disney cruises, Dracula, entertainment, etiquette, FedEx, films, football, football kit, football players, football strips, football teams, fruit, genitalia, genitals, gifts, hair, health, history, horticulture, hospital, hygiene, irritation, jesters, jobs, kids, kings, leisure centre, marine, marottes, mascots, medical, medically induced coma, medieval, monarchy, movies, neck, nudity, Paw Patrol, presents, privacy, product placement, props, pus, retropharyngeal abscesses, Robert Zemeckis, Sheffield Wednesday, ships, showering, showers, soccer, sport, staffs, sticks, surgery, swimming, swimming pool, tiaras, What Lies Beneath, wigs, Wilson, workplace, World Cup
Posted in PODCASTS | 2 Comments »
January 24, 2013
Our quaint retro Wee Britain customs have perplexed Cameron from Hamilton, New Zealand:
I was recently listening to some earlier episodes of Answer Me This! and you were asked a question about beefeaters.
In my city we have a restaurant called Beef Eaters, and your answer to the question confused the crap out of me because I got the impression that beefeaters are people.
So answer me this, what are beefeaters? Perhaps this is a British thing which is not replicated where I come from, in New Zealand.
Indeed, it’s a British thing that’s not really replicated even in the rest of Britain that isn’t the Tower of London. But your fellow countrypeople are not completely estranged from the custom – look!
So as you can see, your suspicion was correct: beefeaters ARE people, indeed a crack team of yeoman warders who act as living breathing tourist attractionsceremonial guardians of the Tower of London.
Their beef-eating name, by popular legend, came from the notion that they had to taste-test the monarch’s food (beef – monarchs love beef) for poison, but more realistically from the fact that they used to be partially paid in beef.
Just to cause you extra confusion, Cameron, there IS also a restaurant chain here called Beefeater, but unlike the beefeaters, it was not founded by Henry VII in 1485.
Furthermore, there’s also Beefeater Gin, which even more confusingly contains no beef and cannot be eaten as it is a drink.
Tags:beef, beefeaters, customs, food, kings, monarchy, New Zealand, Tower of London
Posted in Answer Us Back! Your time to opine, extracurricular questions | Leave a Comment »
March 17, 2011
Dear Team AMT,
We hope you are all safe and sound wherever you are in the world, and that this year’s trend for End of Days-style disasters has left you unscathed. We can’t stave off the apocalypse, but we can offer you 29 minutes of distraction while you wait, in the form of Answer Me This! Episode 171:
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 conversational dance-card are topics including:
Brian Wilson
broken teapots
Kafka
5ive vs. Jesus Lizard
Dorothy Wordsworth vs. Macaulay Culkin
William Wordsworth vs. Jade Goody
stupid shoe-shaped planters
fairy codmothers
Kate Middleton’s genetically modified footmen
Harold Wilson’s lying wife
Pandaemonium
Fifteen to One
Christ’s comeback tour
and
flesh-trampolining.
Plus: Olly suggests that Cinderella be a bit more nonconformist in her eveningwear style if she wants to make a splash in society; Helen’s green brogues make her an outcast in the Apple Store; and Martin the Sound Man’s dainty guts could bring in the win if any of us decided to go on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Major Charles Ingram, eat your heartfart out!
Today’s Bit of Crap on the App is a discussion upon whether sentimental idiots like Olly should cook peas for their cats, or whether said beasts should learn to tough it out. You can get that app for iPhone or Android for mere pence; but remember, it costs nothing to send us your QUESTIONS, so squander a load of no-money by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or findanswermethis on Skype) or emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. We may not be rich, but a wealth of questions is all the wealth we need. (Well, it isn’t, but that’s hardly your problem, is it? And as soon as we get our Playdate with the Stars agency off the ground, we’ll be rolling in the good stuff.)
See you next week!
Helen & Olly
Tags:apocalypse, bands, Blankety Blank, body, bottoms, Buddha, Bullseye, bums, Chess, Cinderella, closing down sales, crockery, Crystal Maze, DFS, Dorothy Wordsworth, Duke of Edinburgh, euphemisms, ex-military, fairy godmothers, fairy tales, fiction, footwear, frogs, Fun House, furniture, game shows, garden centres, gardening, genitalia, godparents, gynaecologists, gynaecology, hierarchy, horticulture, Houses of Parliament, HP Sauce, incest, Jade Goody, John Hannah, kings, kitchenware, Linus Roache, literature, Lizzie Roper, Macaulay Culkin, medical, mice, Michael Jackson, military, military operations, monarchy, music, names, ornaments, overstepping boundaries, physique, plants, poetry, politicians, pop, Prince Philip, princes, prizes, professionalism, quizzes, recession, retail, reunions, romantic poets, royalty, sales, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sex, shoes, shops, siblings, Steps, stores, tea, teapots, Telford, telly, the Queen, TV, vagina, weddings, West Midlands, William Wordsworth, Wills'n'Kate
Posted in PODCASTS | 6 Comments »
Answer Me This! Podcast 