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‘.
There’s MAGIC! all over Answer Me This! Episode 354: how to MAGICALLY transform a banana into a sliced banana, how to MAGICALLY turn an egg into an egg IN A BOTTLE, and how to MAGICALLY turn an adolescent boy into a hit with the ladies. We also learn about:
Plus: Olly recaps the origins of his lifelong feud with Wales; Helen does not want to learn magic tricks to break the ice at parties (also does not want to go to parties); and Martin the Sound Man can be found behind a veil of steam rising from a Szechuan hotpot.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we learn what it takes to make Olly crack up on air: hepatitis.
Want to hear more from us? There’s the retro AMT episode we lob into your feed mid-month – right now you can hear the crowd favourite AMT186, containing the last known sighting of Owl City; 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.
Thank you very much, thank you very very very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode, and for making spiffy websites so easy to build. Do as Martin did: 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‘.
Today, in Answer Me This! Episode 264, we pretend to remember the most beloved 20th century canine entertainer. No, not Lassie! No, not Rin Tin Tin. No, not Columbo’s Basset hound… Alright, one of the Top 40 (give or take) most beloved 20th century canine entertainers: Schnorbitz.
Plus: Olly is a human salad, with the Body Shop providing the dressing (but don’t put any strawberries in it!); Helen makes things other than podcasts; and Martin the Sound Man resolves to suspend his scepticism. We’re sure that’ll last more than 0 minutes.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, we consider the Bacardi Bat and its similarity to Captain Birdseye. Certainly if we were choosing one of them as the voice of a joke Twitter account, we’d go for the one that can at least communicate in words. Sonar doesn’t translate well to tweets.
If you would like us to translate your QUESTIONS into podcast, send them to us as voicemails deposited on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT264 Child-Friendly Rating: 50%. Bit of swearing, short discussion about sex, plus a section about a dead dog. Children do get upset by dead dogs.
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).