It was a race against time to complete this week’s episode and make it to London Road before curtain up. “But it’s the National Theatre!” you wail. “They don’t DO curtains.” You’re right. We’re talking metaphorical curtains. But we’re not talking metaphorical curtains in Answer Me This! Episode 185:
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)
We are, instead, talking about:
marriage certificates
prize belts
toy guard dogs
claret jugs
meat feast pizza
Ian Huntley vs. Poirot
killer whales vs. sharks
spiders vs. bananas
The Shamen, Bob Dylan and Lulu vs. the BBC Jerry Sadowitz ‘Je T’aime’ Slinky Dog
how Noel Edmonds’s Multi-Coloured Swap Shop begat Live & Kicking Orcus Rodney Alcala
tall geriatrics
and
krill.
Plus: Olly lays waste to Percy Pig and Pals; Helen tells you how to liven up a TV gameshow; and Martin the Sound Man thinks the Strokes and Primal Scream are a bunch of wusses. This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) tackles Olly’s golfing future. Will he? Won’t he? Will his shoulder pop out of its socket yet again? That’s not something anyone wants to see as they tee off.
We can’t tee off next week’s episode without your QUESTIONS, so deliver them as voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Fooooore!
We, you, and everyone else in the world with functioning ears should be celebrating following the joyful news this week that the Black Eyed Peas are cancelling their subscription to What Sample? magazine, hanging up whatever contraption it is that makes their oeuvre so appealing to people who enjoy shit parties, and taking an indefinite leave of absence from generating that infernal racket.
Yes.
But if, for some reason, you start to miss the sound of puerile nonsense, simply fire up Answer Me This! Episode 183:
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)
No booms, pows or lumps, we promise; just conversation upon the following:
Christmas in July
BBC1’s Coast Shakespeare in Love
Queen Middleton’s off games excuse
sample groups
substitute swears
baseball
Caroline Quentin
Annabel Chong
Anna Paquin
Neal Street
Canadian cricket
verticals
and
Danny Baker’s Dozen.
Plus: had he not been thwarted by the onset of puberty, THIS could have been Olly; Helen gives Tesco some much-needed advice to raise their game or lose their festive glove market share; and Martin the Sound Man blackmails petrol stations with his bowel movements. Concede to his demands, or face the direst consequences on the forecourt.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from Simon from Beddington, who has one problematic nipple. But which one? You have a 50% chance of guessing it correctly!
You have a 100% chance of sending us a QUESTION if you properly employ the usual means, which are leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emailing to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Our new intern Apl.de.Ap looks forward to sifting through them all.
In Answer Me This! Episode 178, we finally discover the point of marriage. It’s not for the love, or for religion, or for the kids. It’s not even for the presents or the party. So what the flap is it for?
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)
Therein we mention:
the universal train ticket
Eliphas Levi
Buzz Aldrin’s pants
Helen’s slutty mum
the goat of lust
the shittest ride at Thorpe Park
pentagrams
Tetley Tea
McPizzas
Helen and Martin’s divorce settlement
and
the price of nuts.
Plus: Olly wouldn’t want to be the centre of attention on The Happiest Day of His Life (because that would make it too similar to all the other days of his life); Helen operates an equal opportunities policy for animals – she’s happy to cook and eat the ugly ones AND the pretty ones; and Martin the Sound Man tells you how to trap an evil spirit. All you need is a pair of compasses, a ruler and some chalk.
In this week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android), a question from horticulturist Stephen makes us go all Gardener’s Question Time. It must be the smell of manure on the rosebeds that makes Olly hallucinate about a time when we’re wealthy and successful, because if you want your own country pile with 100 acres, don’t ever go into podcasting. EVER.
We do love to hear from you, so please get on the phone (0208 123 5877), the Skype (look for answermethis) or the email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and ask us your QUESTIONS. If AMT were a sausage, your questions would be the minced pigbits, we would be the rusk and additives. And I think we’ve all just learnt why analogies involving sausages are not a good idea.
What would you do if you had the run of the Houses of Parliament? Rifle through all the documents with TOP SECRET stamped on them? Leave a drawing pin on the Speaker’s chair? Try on all of Theresa May’s shoes? Or use their wifi to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 177?
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)
In this episode we contemplate that matter, and others:
Shutter Island
anti-gravity
Dodgy
art vs. law
parliamentary privilege vs. podcasting privilege
the BBFC vs. the Mull of Kintyre test
accredited space agents
conspiracy theorists
school play smoking
reprobate Mel Smith
Princess Michael
‘Governor’ Palin
‘Cape Canaveral’
and
squid rings.
Plus: Olly would have got more action at university had it not been for his inner gameshow; Helen gives a lesson on basic squid anatomy; and Martin the Sound Man swears that with bog-standard telescopes, you could read a copy of yesterday’s Evening Standard that someone had left on Uranus as clearly as gawking at it over the shoulder of your fellow commuter. This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android) sees Olly point the finger at the real villains of the 21st century: anyone who puts one of these in their mouth. You monsters!
You have until June 5th to snap up free audiobooks and half-price Audible membership at answermethispodcast.com/audible, but you have all the time you need to ask us QUESTIONS, in the form of voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Although don’t take too long over it, because we’ve got to be back here next week with a new episode, and without your questions in it, it’d be like we’d turned time back to Web 1.0. Which is just too awful to contemplate.
It’s been a long holiday, but huzzah, we have returned intact. Since last we spoke, Olly has entered his thirties, and Helen and Martin entered the matrimonial institution (with each other, don’t worry!), so as you will hear,Answer Me This! Episode 176 is all mature and responsible right from the off:
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)
Conversation-nuggets in today’s gold-pan include:
divine disapproval of Helen’n’Martin’s legalised union
Gordon Ramsey’s Cambodian eggy treat
phallic salad
the Pringles saddle
Madonna as Cruella de Vil
Pamela Anderson as cola bottle the tragic life of Mr E Forever Plaid
freedom of the city
aldermen
grungers vs. lumberjacks
caviar vs. frogspawn
and
Peppa Pig.
Plus! If you’re looking to pull, just take Olly out on the town with you; Helen bemoans the public interest in whether her womb is available to let on a nine-month contract; and Martin the Sound Man does not want to sound Dickensian. Spoilsport! This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android) is about the only meme to involve high-end millinery (that we know of): Princess Beatrice’s fancy hat.
It may have been a while, but you still know what to do: ask us QUESTIONS, in the form of voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. As a reward for your diligence, you can have free audiobooks and half-price Audible membership at answermethispodcast.com/audible until June 5th. Lazy people who don’t bother asking us questions are allowed those too, as an incentive. Carrot not stick, right? And carrot sticks best of all. Blend a metaphor, get a crudite, as our great-grandmothers used to say.
That’s right – the time has come for us to shout ‘Wooooo!’, whip our tops off, and throw up all over a beach resort in Mexico while Joe Francis captures our shame on video. Answer Me This! is off on its hols for a few weeks, but before we go, here’s Episode 175:
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)
Furthermore! Olly is like a smack-head, but for Percy Pigs; Helen shuns a potential money-making scheme; and Martin the Sound Man provides the key to safe toaster cookery. This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (a worthy addition to your iPhone or Android) is the true question of Lil Wayne: what possessed him to go for this?
We hope you don’t forget us while we’re away; please keep sending us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Plus, don’t hesitate to sign up for your free and half-price audiobooks at answermethispodcast.com/audible – you get a bargain, we get paid, everyone’s happy!
There will be bits and pieces popping up on this site during the break, but we’ll see you back here bright and early on 26th May for AMT176. Until then, behave yourselves.
Here is Answer Me This! Episode 174. Cherish it. Savour it. For it is the penultimate episode before we take a holiday until May. Aw, quit blubbing, you’ll set us off as well…
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)
Today we consider:
Tony Blair’s fortune
fireman’s poles
Barbie cakes
pretty jellyfish Home on Their Own
Chartwell
southpaw mathematicians vs. rhubarb
John Major vs. Rufus Hound
Paul O’Grady’s fake shed vs. John Wayne Gacy This Morning‘s head-shrinker Cluedo, the telly quiz adaptation
post-prime ministerial perks Catalog Living
Britney’s derriere
and
the new face of Blue Harbour.
Plus: Olly shows the ladies a good time in Wood Green; Helen dusts off her good manners in order to tell you that your flies are undone; and Martin the Sound Man WAS NOT LOOKING AT ANYTHING IN HIS PRIVATE BROWSER, alright? This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (find it on iPhone or Android) tells how Olly beat the charity auction system, because even altruists love a bargain.
You’ll be needing noises to destroy the sweet sound of silence while we’re away, so go to answermethispodcast.com/audible to get yourself free and half-price audiobooks. And to send this series out in a blaze of glory, please delight us with your QUESTIONS for next week: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. It’ll be something to remember you by on our vacation; like a knot in a hankie, a pressed flower in the pages of a Bible, or a repent-at-leisure tattoo of your face.
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.
Woo-hoo, it’s time for our special guest episode! Sorry campers, Ian Collins forgot to turn up this week (although with any luck he will be on the show in a couple of weeks. (If he remembers.)), so you’ll just have to make do with the three of us in Answer Me This! Episode 147, as per. Here we are:
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)
We speak this week of:
speed of sound vs. speed of light Cats vs. pigs vs. puppets
Keanu Reeves vs. Martin’s dad
steak and kidney pudding
newspapers for Christmas
blue-screening Neighbours
hare The Sheep-pig by Dick King-Smith
artichoke liqueurs
builders’ tea
allergens Countdown for foreigners St John
and
eel.
Olly depends upon Twitter to make even the most banal decisions for him; Helen explains Deal or No Deal in a nutshell; and Martin the Sound Man calms everyone down with some maths before they crap themselves in a scary thunderstorm.
Over on the AMT app, there’s the extended coverage of the balls’n’Marmite issue; and we bid farewell to our Great British Questions series with a blooper reel, which is the only way we know how to say goodbye. Which will make our funerals interesting.
There’s good news too, folks: once again we’ve teamed up with Audible.co.uk to give freeeeeee audiobooks to AMT-listeners! Those of you who signed up before, do not feel left out, for there is also a very special offer for you too: dirt-cheap Audible membership for months of audiobook joy. Click here to find out how to claim your audiofreebies!
You know what else is free? Asking us QUESTIONS. Leave a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or dispatch an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You’ll be none the poorer, and our lives will be the richer. RESULT.
In order of appearance, here’s where we go during our Great British love-in (in which we play a couple FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY):
• the Cerne Abbas giant, Dorset – the earliest known NSFW field in Britain! • Brighton, to hang out with drunkards. It’s a pretty sexy place – after all, George IV built his amazing personal shag-palace there. • The Assembly Rooms in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Didn’t score ourselves any husbands, though; the only man there was the old chap superintending the Saturday afternoon book sale. • The Heartwood School of Woodcarving in Port Talbot, Wales. If you want to carve your own spoon of love, or get someone else to do it for you, you can email spoon-carver extraordinaire Sharon LittleyHERE, or find out more about the traditional Welsh lovespoons in her book. • Boat trip up the River Thames, a very pleasant way to travel through central London if you’re not in a hurry. • Picnic at Penrith Castle, Cumbria – an unlikely thing to find in the middle of an ordinary-looking housing estate! • The Cumberland Pencil Museum in Keswick, Cumbria. Don’t go there if your pencil collection has an inferiority complex already. • The Museum of Surgery in Edinburgh, after which you’ll see we didn’t walk up Arthur’s Seat. • Punting in Oxford, thanks to the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse – who also very kindly lent us hats with which to accessorise this beautiful scene. • Grasmere in the Lake District. William Wordsworth’s signature restaurant can be found here. Apparently they only serve daffodils. • The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, where they hold the annual Mr Darcy Wet Shirt Contest. Ok, well we maintain that they should. • Chesil Beach, Dorset out of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares. • The Eden Project, Cornwall, inspiration for Nelly’s hit ‘Hot in Herre’. • The London-Edinburgh sleeper train, which is a bit like North By Northwest only with a complimentary sponge-bag rather than Eva Marie Saint. • Glastonbury, Somerset, where we met the marvellous Jacqui Winn of the Witchcraft Emporium, approximately a cross between a herbalist’s and a branch of Ann Summers. If you’re keen to follow Jacqui’s advice, damiana is the herb you’re after, although we have yet to try it so can’t vouch for its effectiveness. Still, it’s a lot cheaper than fake Viagra off the internet! • And finally, we wind up in the Westmoreland Hotel, Cumbria, which is the first motorway services hotel we’ve ever been to where you could even contemplate having a romantic night.
We also need to bestow affection upon: Chay Allen for propelling our punt, because we sure as hell couldn’t have done it ourselves without injury; Jill Collinge, for showing us Stamford then standing politely by as Helen did stupid impressions of Beyonce;
and the loves of our lives, Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked of VisitBritain. If you love the UK as much as VisitBritain do, join the online love-in at their Facebook page at facebook.com/LoveUK.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Four: Tea; and for more scenes from our romantic mini-break, peruse the photos below.
This week we caught not one but two Maypole dances! After the sight of a team of hail-lashed eight-year-olds cavorting around a giant phallic symbol, then a second helping of the same, anything’s going to seem anticlimactic. Except, perhaps, for Answer Me This! Episode 134:
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)
Wherein we speak of:
Peppy the polar bear
Mint Imperials
ostrich meat
Claude Garamond
Roald Dahl
Microsoft whimsy
the Empire State Building
Australian superlatives
British teen pregnancy rates WIN
the Burj Al Arab
phone cake
Stanley Morison
the Mr Bean Diary
and
Kidderminster.
Plus: Olly emphasises the importance of proper hydration during hot hungover Hellenic hikes; Helen recalls her days as the Nadia Comaneci of Tunbridge Wells; and Martin the Sound Man poaches an old Pappy’s Fun Club joke, With Hilarious Results. Or similar. We also implore you to help out Ian from Florida with his dating profile; click here to see it and comment politely thereupon.
Apologies to any of you who couldn’t get through to our Question Line last week; it’s up and running as normal now, so don’t hesitate to leave your QUESTIONS on it by dialling 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis; or, of course, emailing them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, in the classical style.
If you enjoy staying up all night listening to the radio, tonight you can hear us assisting Iain Dale on LBC from midnight-6am as the election results roll in; tune in on 97.3FM, Sky Channel 0124 or online via lbc.co.uk.
Everyone, thankyou so much for your lovely messages regarding my betrothal to Martin the Sound Man. And apologies for taking him off the market.
We’ve no idea when or where the nuptials will take place as yet, but we’ve currently no plans for the cynical scheme suggested by Ben from Stafford:
When you get married could you guys have a MASSIVE wedding party somewhere in the country and invite all the Answer Me This! fans to wish you a happy life and charge people to get in to ease on your cost?
No chance, Ben; I’m not Jordan!
Naomi from France also has a suggestion:
At Helen and Martin’s wedding, you could play ALL the stuff they’ve ever said about marriage on AMTP, and then have a Big Brother type voice saying: ‘And look at them now!’
Again: NO.
Happily, we’re not the only new engagement; congratulations are in order for young CJ from Wales:
On the 23rd March I proposed to my now fiancee Emma-Lea who I love and would do anything in the world for! I love her so much and I trust her with my life, to prove this I have told her more about me than ANYONE else will ever know, I told her EVERYTHING I can think of and remember and then told her my facebook password because I love and trust her so much! She has told me everything and her facebook password too! We’re now in the position where we can tell each other everything and we have each other’s passwords to facebook which our lives are virtually on so Helen and Martin answer me this, do you or would you tell one another everything and share your passwords where by you could destroy the others life if you so wished but love and trust each other enough to know neither of you would ever do that?
Aaah CJ, when you get to our age it’s enough of a struggle just to remember your own password.
by Dick King-Smith
by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares.
Answer Me This! Podcast 