Remember a few days ago, when Britain was still capable of having conversations about things that aren’t SNOW? Me neither, but SNOW-free Episode 159 is a throwback to those clement times:
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)
Topics on this week’s crib-sheet include:
SNOW
litigious Times New Roman
Shetland ponies
the Mildenhall treasure Jacob’s Ladder
the Crusades
zebra piss
londonollypics.com
flattering spectacles Kramer vs. Kramer
the BBC vs. Boston Business Computing
laser eye surgery vs. A Clockwork Orange
Las Vegas vs. Trafalgar Square
pet griffins
the Crystal Palace water-towers
the penalty for banging Prince Philip
cybersquatting
Stanmore the Monkfish
the MGM lion
and
Martin the Sound Man’s favourite fountain.
Plus: Olly salves his wounds from losing last week’s Queen’s Speech debate by triumphing in his other specialist subject: Macaulay Culkin’s uncredited early work; tedious stories thwart Helen’s attempts to compose the Zaltzman family tree; and Martin will sort out your myopia for a fiver and a bucket of chicken wings, no questions asked. Also, this week’s Bit of Crap on the App describes an inappropriate use for a lovely dollshouse (clue: it’s not this).
In the event that you too have things to say that aren’t about SNOW – preferably QUESTIONS – then please get in touch by leaving a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
If you can make it through the SNOW, then please come along to one of our imminent book readings and signings – there’s one in London this weekend, 3.30pm on Saturday 4th at The Social on Little Portland Street, then there’s another in Brighton, 7.30pm on Wednesday 8th at Waterstone’s Clocktower.
In this special commemorative plate of podcasts, Answer Me This! Episode 158, we join in with the national celebrations of the romance of our age. For finally, after years of waiting, years of frustration, years of public speculation…Pudsey Bear is finally getting his end away.
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 also mention:
Wills’n’Kate (o jubilate deo!)
Marilyn Monroe
humanure
the US Weather Bureau
Dolce’n’Gabbana
Audrey Horne
augmented reality vs. unaugmented reality
Jean Paul Gaultier vs. dog saliva
Dexter’s bloody cologne
pox patches
the true meaning of eau de toilette
the Queen’s blingy carriage
and
the unsung beauty that is Robert De Niro.
Plus: Olly surmises that the West Country is boozed up to the eyeballs 24/7; Helen gives tips for turning your unsightly syphilitic blemishes into a join-the-dots game on your face; and Martin the Sound Man manages to compare the Gospels to Rashomon and the other religious texts of the world to something far worse. This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Curtis from Guildford about what we’d call a games console if we were to invent one. Luckily that day is far, far off.
We also have a bit of a disagreement about which of the Queen’s speeches is actually the Queen’s Speech; help us settle it once and for all:
You can send us QUESTIONS for future shows by leaving a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And if you’re a student, unemployed, or have an unusually generous lunch hour, please pop down to Rough Trade East at noon on Friday 26th, which is where and when we’ll be doing a reading from our book and signing copies. We are also available for signing wedding certificates, will forms, decrees nisi, blank cheques…
In honour of the Answer Me This! book being officially (well, close) declared ‘one of the greatest pieces of toilet literature of all time‘, we’ve got an accidental toilet-reading theme running through Answer Me This! Episode 157. What does Jack Bauer read on the bog? Is Timmy Mallett’s How to be Utterly Brilliant or Kenny Everett’s Ultimate Loo Book the biggest star in the loobrary firmament? Why does Martin the Sound Man dream sweet dreams of lavatories? Find out all:
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 amuse ourselves with:
the Mann Booker prize
Nightmare on Hygiene Street The Piano: The Musical
Gibson vs. Fender T3 vs. 3T
tarts vs. tarts
salesmanship vs. psoriasis
The Guardian Bedside Reader
martini-making machines
Autoglym
David McAlmont and Michael Nyman
the Nissan of the guitar world
the Captain Corelli’s Mandolin-branded backgammon set
hairy oil spills
No More Nails
bezoar
nut hamper
the Alcor Life Extension Foundation
parallel parking
and
the Strawberry Strumpet.
Plus: Olly has some dodgy plans for death row prisoners; Helen revolutionises bridal traditions with the help of Stilton; and Martin the Sound Man sold off his glorious ponytail for far less than its current market value. This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Jack, the 21-year-old undertaker in Uckfield, who feels uncomfortable with atheism in front of mourners and wanking in front of his cat. What a shy soul!
Now, if you’ve got time this evening (that is, Thursday 18th November), please do pop along to see us read bits from our book at Waterstone’s Gower Street. We kick off at 6pm sharp, but if you can’t make that, how about a rerun at noon on 26th November at Rough Trade East, huh? Come and have a little pre-lunch fun with us. There are some excellent bagel-shops a mere gherkin’s throw away.
Happy halloween to you! Here’s not-at-all-reflective-of-the-festival Episode 154, but you can decide where it falls on the Trick Or Treat spectrum, 1 being a nice lollipop and 10 being a dog turd through your letterbox. Squelch! DAMN YOU PESKY KIDS.
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 contemplate subjects including:
Scream IV
Ken Kirzinger
Rentokil
Ebenezer Howard
Robert De Niro’s patchwork face
Nigella’s fishy keyboard
the amazing voice of Red Pepper
Welwyn Garden City vs. Letchworth Garden City
Don LaFontaine vs. Alfred Hitchcock Shutter Island
vegetable oil fountains
sweetcorn fajitas
wigs Strictly Come Dancing demystified
and
a brief history of refrigeration.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Emma about whether lentils can kill. If they can, the Ban Lentils campaign starts right here!
Elsewhere: Olly recoils at the idea of dunking fruit into a festive torrent of vegetable oil, despite his total lack of qualms about smearing absolutely everything in mayonnaise which is effectively the same thing; Helen reinterprets the Pied Piper as a cautionary tale preaching socialism; and Martin the Sound Man is uncharacteristically restrained during an entire discussion based around the word ‘shuttlecock’. We think he was sidetracked by a piece of junk mail he’d received in the post from a chocolate company, trying to sell him half-price nut hampers. Fnarrr!
While Martin sniggers like a man half his age, you can get on with sending us QUESTIONS! Leave a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com; and if you had your question answered in this week’s show, email us your address that we may dispatch your free copy of the Answer Me This! book. Next week there are no free books, but you will be able to get a not-free copy from a bookshop or The Internet, because the delightful volume will be available for sale from November 4th. As will next week’s podcast, so we’ll see you back here then! Toodles.
To follow the mood of this week, we must announce that we’ve decided to cut Answer Me This! Episode 153 by eight per cent. However we reassure you that we will be freezing the length of this episode at 27 minutes 37 seconds for the next two years, or until the apocalypse, whichever is sooner. Here you go:
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’s time-of-austerity topics include:
non-alcoholic beer
Jim Henson’s fake rats
shadduck
Michael Apted
Lidl
Johnny Depp vs. Danny Dyer Center Stage
Olly’s favourite condoms (surprisingly not these ones) The Witches
Stephen Jones, milliner
isopropanol
Rowan Atkinson’s ‘early’ work
Bonnie Prince Billy’s hometown
Nicolas Roeg
identical twins
Michael Palin in drag
and
losing your virginity to a chair.
Plus: Olly has been repelled from his favourite snack by Gok Wan; Helen suggests a high school Joseph Mengele; and Martin the Sound Man plays off Gene Wilder and Spike Milligan against each other. WHO WILL WIN? We will, alas, never know.
What we do know is that next week is the last episode in which we’ll be handing out free books to questioneers, so send us your most brilliant QUESTIONS right now! Leave a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, to which you should send your postal address if you are one of this week’s featured questioneers and want to claim your freebie.
If you want to claim your not-quite-free-but-really-not-too-pricey copy of Answer Me This!: Collected Juvenilia, then investigate answermethispodcast.com/book, whereat you will find not only links to a few online bookshops, but also some sample pages to induce you to preorder itmake you decide to order Booky Wook 2 instead.
Helen and Olly
PS Forgot to mention: this week’s bonus bit on the app is Olly’s account of his recent debut trip to a branch of Hooters. It was all in the name of post-feminist irony, alright?
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.
Rejoice! We’ve at last reached not-especially-impressive-numerical-landmark-when-you-think-about-it Episode 150:
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)
And duly we celebrate this really-not-at-all-momentous occasion with such topics as:
Caddyshack Caddyshack II
Craig Phillips
Collins academic diaries
Adolf Hitler’s great-nephew
Gillian McKeith
Curiously Cinnamon
knickers full of coins
Paperchase medical supplies
doner kebabs = engineering feats
Postman Pat’s new job
floaters
Opal Fruits
canine panniers
boarding school trains
wretched funk
clockwise Usain Bolt Platform 9 3/4
and
the end of days.
Plus: Olly gives you the insider knowledge that guarantees to get you on telly; Helen does not want her Everyman’s Library books despoiled by cover illustrations; and Martin the Sound Man has a top tip for stingy people who wish to be kind to the sensitive skin of strippers. Tuck a copy of his album into their garter, that’ll make them happy! This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Simon from Wimbledon wondering why people say Inception is confusing. Because that’s what you’re supposed to say about it, durrr.
This is the last episode of the series, but we won’t be away for long: we’ll be returning with Episode 151 on 7th October, which gives you plenty time to get your bargainous audiobooks (and we will be superlatively grateful to you if you do) as well as send us QUESTIONS for the new series: ask them with your voice on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or with your written words by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Because you’ve furnished us with far more questions than we can squeeze into the podcast this series, we’ll be tackling some of them here on the website during our break – and check back here anon if you’re curious about this world record attempt that we’re abetting on September 30th.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen and goodbye, until October 7th!
• Princes Street, Edinburgh, where in 1995 the iconic opening sequence to Trainspotting was filmed, and in 2010 our iconic looking-like-total-dicks sequence was filmed. • Crystal Palace Park – come for the Victorian dinosaurs and the biggest maze in London; stay for the swimming pool which is 20cm too short to be used in the Olympics. • Stonehenge, where the banshees live and they do live well. • Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, where Sir Anthony Hopkins lived in Remains of the Day – before he got into chewing off human faces. • Antony House, Cornwall. Too bad that, blinded by giant plastic mushrooms, we missed its ‘national collection of daylilies’. • Burghley House, Lincolnshire – home to a herd of deer, the horse trials, and Queen Victoria’s marital bed. • The Cars of the Stars Museum, Keswick – not the average Lake District attraction. • Carnforth station, Lancashire. They play Brief Encounter on a loop in the waiting room, which would be a pleasant distraction when your train is running 40 minutes late because there’s a cow on the tracks. • Oxford, including Christ Church College and the Bodleian Library. Not including kebab vans or getting run over by drunk students on bikes. • London, playing multiple roles:
• Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross;
• Postman’s Park out of Closer. The Julia Roberts’n’Jude Law film, not the telly thing starring Kyra Sedgwick.
• The church of St Bartholomew the Great – oy, no need to brag, Bartholomew!
• Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, which star on the BBC Parliament channel all day, every day.
• also, nominated for the award for best supporting location: St Paul’s Cathedral, the O2 Arena, the London Underground, Notting Hill, County Hall, and Tower Bridge (out of that Fergie video about a different bridge entirely).
But let’s not forget all the behind-the-scenes crew: the cinematographer, the craft services, the key grip…OK, it was just me and Olly with two camcorders. But we couldn’t have made this film without the invaluable assistance of: Jill Collinge – if ever you want to spend a very entertaining and interesting afternoon looking around the beautiful historic town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, Jill is your woman. Philip Gompertz, for showing us around Burghley House. It’s really not too shabby. Chay Allen, for allowing Olly to nestle his head in his crotch. Shalini Jadeja, for risking life and limb running backwards with a camera through Edinburgh – and before breakfast, too!
And the Weinsteins of this operation: Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked at VisitBritain.
Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Three: Romance.
For more VisitBritain finery, join their Facebook page; and for more of our tomfoolery, peruse the photos below.
Are we harbouring some pent-up aggression or something? Because Answer Me This! Episode 142 is quite the pugnacious little beast, as we parry questions on how to sock someone in the face, and how to have a good old bloody battle. Bam! Splat! Wallop! Here it is:
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 between blows, we talk about:
comediennes
Byker Grove vs. Pin Oak Court, Melbourne Dreamgirls vs. Showgirls
Nicole Lawrence out of the X Factor The Killer Inside Me
Eldorado
pocket watches
the YMCA
semicolons
Paul Robinson: panto villain
Michel Gondry
that little pocket in jeans
a famous mouse
and
rheum.
Furthermore: Olly disobeys all the Village People’s instructions; Helen tells you all you need to do to become a Somerset celebrity; and Martin the Sound Man cheers up a military history lesson with a burst of Tim Rice.
We also give the behind-the-scenes commentary on our latest video adventure, Great British Questions Episode One: Cheese; if you haven’t already, please take a look at it HERE. Meanwhile, over on the app, this week’s bonus snippet is some incredible insight into those soap opera characters who are written out just as you’re getting used to them. Like Guy Pearce in Home and Away, who knocked up a teenager, promptly died in a car crash, then turned up in Memento denying all knowledge. DID SOPHIE MEAN NOTHING TO YOU, GUY???
As always we yearn for your QUESTIONS with every particle of our being, so submit them to us in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday for Episode 143, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Two of Great British Questions, starring Tower Bridge, James Bond’s big dome, and the Flintstones’ car. YES. Contain your excitement, please; you’ll damage yourselves!
Here it is folks, the final Answer Me This! of the second quarter – Episode 140:
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)
As we clear out our desks for the break, we give the following topics an airing:
Wills’n’Harry
eggnog
Anjou
the new Mentos + Coke
Duncan Goodhew vs. Dizzy Gillespie
Leonard Cohen vs. Magnetic Fields
Siberian husky dogs vs. Paula Radcliffe
wedding pyromania
hotel breakfast buffets
goat dowry
Freecycle surprise party
revolving restaurants
and
Narnia in Canada.
Plus: it turns out Olly can multitask after all, but only in hotel bathrooms; Helen manages to make prunes even more boring than you already thought they were; and Martin the Sound Man gives a line reading of The Human Centipede, which is as close as we ever want to get to actually seeing that film.
We hereby bid you adieu for a month, but we’ll be popping back here every week to post up some choice words – and to display the results of the Berocca Challenge that we set you this episode, should any of you choose to rise to it! You can also keep in touch with us via Twitter and Facebook, but more importantly by sending us your QUESTIONS – call 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Parting is such sweet sorrow. We’ll be back on 15th July. Have a smashing month!
For reasons outlined therein, we’re yawning and stretching during Answer Me This! Episode 136; but we sincerely hope you don’t:
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 call sheet are topics including:
iron ore
Hereford Cathedral’s record-breaking library
abseiling
Jo Whiley’s washing tips
fishy Ashton Kutcher
chopsticks vs. cutlery
stripey horses vs. horned horses
communion wafers vs. transubstantiated flesh
Mel Gibson vs. Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves
pox vs. coma
weather houses
whitebait
Martika
grey hair
and
blue movies.
Furthermore: Olly only publicly relieves himself the classiest way; Helen shuns bridesmaids; and Martin the Sound Man is a silver fox, although hopefully not the same one that pissed in Olly’s trainers, or fisticuffs will ensue.
We also contemplate what makes us feel aged; proceed to the comments on this post to share your own. Although if you are only half our age, don’t. You are mere saplings, so enjoy that while we wheeze and wobble along the path of physical and mental decline.
Old or young, you are all very welcome to send us a QUESTION, so please do that by leaving a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or by sending an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Last week we wondered how Yoda’s syntactical mischief is expressed in other languages. Tom from Battersea sheds light on the linguistic larkery:
Re: Star Wars in other languages, I couldn’t resist piping up, as I spent a year in my early twenties making replica light sabers in an Umbrian hill town. I was so poor I lived off stale panettone and coffee for weeks at a time, and it was so cold in my tiny flat that the oil set hard in my cupboard.
Wait right there, Tom – this sounds like a promising scenario for a rom com! Do any of you readers have an in with the greenlight guy at Universal?
Il Maestro Yoda does indeed fuck around with standard sentence structure in the same way as in English, sticking the verb at the end for wise effect. For example, instead of saying ‘TU HAI molta fretta giovane Jedi’ [you have much haste, young Jedi], he says, ‘Molta fretta HAI TU, giovane Jedi’ [much haste have you, young Jedi].
It is a different bloke who did the dubbing for the recent ‘prequel’ Star Wars films, but he tries to maintain the same sound as the bloke who dubbed the original films. In general, Yoda’s voice is less guttural in Italian than the English voice, less alien, and more wise old man, sort of thing – they’re trying to recreate an Umberto-Eco-after-six-hours-of-armchair-discussion at an Italian arts festival type of character, rather than the grumpy persona George Lucas originally went for.
Sounds much better than the original! Umberto Eco would certainly be a pleasing addition to the Star Wars oeuvre, although probably has less appeal than Yoda in the range of spin-off collectable dolls and backpacks.
‘, we’ve got an accidental toilet-reading theme running through Answer Me This! Episode 157. What does Jack Bauer read on the bog? Is Timmy Mallett’s How to be Utterly Brilliant or Kenny Everett’s Ultimate Loo Book the biggest star in the loobrary firmament? Why does Martin the Sound Man dream sweet dreams of lavatories? Find out all:
Answer Me This! Podcast 