If you take the plunge and purchase it, you’re not only funding the podcast, you also get one hour of all-new Christmas chat about such festive topics as:
✯ FOOD!✯
Audio is entirely calorie-free, so feast your ears on mince pies, trifle, Brussels sprouts, poisoned turkey, lutefisk, Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa Cake and what Christmas pudding can teach you about atomic physics (which is better than eating it).
✯ENTERTAINMENT!✯
Christmas titans Eric’n’Ernie face off against Mike Yarwood; Olly fails to be swept away by ‘Fairytale of New York’ (and don’t even get him started on ‘Christmas Wrapping’); and the Grinch stole Dr Seuss’s doctorate.
✯CUSTOMS!✯
How the Norse deities Frigga and Baldur got you to snog people under a bunch of a poisonous parasitic plant; why Rudolph’s got a red nose; how the first ever Christmas card managed to be offensive; why Kwanzaa was invented; and Santa on waterskiis.
✯CRISIS MANAGEMENT! ✯
How to salvage the situation if your partner’s bought you a brilliant present and you got them something shit; what to do if you dread staying at your in-laws’ house; how to uninvite people from your party; and why you’re more likely to end up getting a divorce at Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.
✯DECORATIONS! ✯
Let us deck the halls of your ears with Christmas jumpers, Christmas crackers, double beards, and paper hats, even though everyone looks like a dick in the paper hats. Especially because everyone looks like a dick in the paper hats.
The Answer Me This! Christmas Album is fun for all the family – no, it really is, because we don’t even swear. So Great-Grandma Gladys and Tiny Tim can listen happily together while you sneak off and neck the cooking brandy.
While we reel from the ‘IT’S OCTOBER ALREADY, HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?’ feeling, get stuck into Answer Me This! Episode 273:
Today we tackle such subjects as:
Olly Mann vs Eminem
old men vs dead men
Shakespeare vs Star Trek
“carriages at 11pm”
spare buttons
Michelin Guides
naming planets
and The Fat Duck.
Furthermore: Olly is not a particularly discerning restaurant reviewer; the surprise element means Helen is bound for glory in rap battles; and Martin the Sound Man’s not going to helm an AMT Album about rocket science any time soon, though you can buy his new concept album Kill It With Fire – all proceeds go to the charity Arts Emergency.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) we continue our discussion about Michelin-starred restaurants, but somehow end up considering which wines to pair with a Gregg’s pasty. These things happen.
If you want more AMT to happen, send in your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
And please do give squarespace.com a whirl: they have not only sponsored today’s episode of AMT, but are also offering you a 10% discount off their service if you use the code Answer10, after you’ve had your two weeks’ free website-building fun.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT273 Child-Friendly Rating: 94%. Light on bawdy-talk and it was SO close to being a swear-free episode until we mentioned of the planet Uranus, causing Martin the Sound Man to make up some sweary planet names of his own. A couple of low-impact swears thereafter. Also a passing reference to bongs, but not one encouraging kids to use them.
Today we learn why all those people believe Elvis to be alive, whereas they don’t feign such confidence over the likes of, say, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, Mozart… Put on your white jumpsuit and conspiracy theorising hat, and get stuck into Answer Me This! Episode 271:
In which we also ponder:
office nemeses
servants
panpipes
table tennis bats
cupcake wars (interpersonal ones, not the tv show of the same name) Red Or Black vs Ant Or Dec
the parliamentary mace vs Geoff Hoon
The Flaming Et Cetera
and
the National Enquirer.
Furthermore! Of course Olly loves the sound of his own voice, but only in solitude; sure, Helen can bake, but it’s nothing really (on the other hand, talking shit every week is high art); and Martin the Sound Man posits that not only is Elvis not alive now, he was also not alive during most of his life. You still following?
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) Helen wonders how a duck foetus ends up in a glass of champagne on a tasting menu – and moreover why anybody would think that is a suitable first date drink.
Also not suitable for a first date, but perfectly suitable for most other times, is sending us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT271 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. Opens with an email about Consenting Adults’ Bedsports, but other than that, very clean, even swear-wise.
We thank the many of you who sent in very knowledgable-sounding feedback upon last week’s topic of pianists’ page-turners. As well as some very informative comments about the system, our inbox has received so many emails that it was difficult to choose which to present to you here; but we ended up choosing this one from Cassandra because she sounds so cheerful:
Greetings!! I am parked outside the Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Fairfax, Virginia listening to your episode on page turners for pianists and orchestras. I was so excited I knew the answer I had to hold off on buying cherry cheesecake until I could answer it.
I can help!! I am a violinist and in an orchestra the string players are always grouped by twos: two musicians to a music stand where they share the music.
When it comes to the point of the page turn, it is the “inside player” who does the page turning. This means that the musician who is closet to the audience/edge of stage always continues playing while the inside person pauses for a few seconds, flips the page, and then continues playing. This ensures no break in the music. It is essentially universal, this method.
However, I teach high school orchestra students and there is usually a pretty lengthy “debate” on who has to turn pages, meaning “I am a senior and you are a freshman and I don’t care that you are the outside, you are turning my pages, blah blah blah.” It’s amusing to listen to and then correct them that no, you really do need to turn the pages for the freshman since you are on the inside.
BTW – my younger sister has turned pages for a pianist before, harder than it looks as you have to turn them EXACTLY when they indicate and you have to be able to read music (she played piano herself), or they swear at you under their breath 😉
Now I need cheesecake.
You go get that cheesecake, Cassandra! Thanks for the information. And thanks also to Adam for suggesting something to watch whilst gobbling the cheesecake:
Did you ever watchThe Page Turner? It was a very boring movie about some lesbian pageturner who started an affair with a pianist wife of a family.
I didn’t; and now you’ve told me what happens, and that it’s very boring, I will continue to not watch it.
Trolls have been in the news a lot lately – the online tormentor kind, but not the toys that used to be so popular. Why is that? Did people finally take a clear-eyed look at those dinky little plastic haemorrhoids and realise that they disobeyed William Morris’s dictum regarding beauty/usefulness? Has there been a worldwide shortage of neon hair?
No. Find out the true reason for trolls’ recent retirement from the limelight in Answer Me This! Episode 269:
In which we also learn about:
wicker furniture
family holidays
murder houses
Ray Winstone vs. June Whitfield
indoor-outdoor space
the Lindbergh baby
the seven generic top-level domains
pianists’ page-turners Thomas Dam
and
Yoshi.
Plus: Olly gets to talk about cats, and their glands, and their necks, and their cheeks, and their adorable bums; if Helen were the subject of a Thomas Harris novel, it’d be The Silence of the Chairs; and Martin the Sound Man is indignant at the idea of a male dinosaur laying an egg through his urethra.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App features a humdinger of a tale: Olly has alphabeticised his spice rack. For reals! Hear all about it, and how Helen has organised her spice rack, on your iDevice or Android.
Also, if you want to have a holiday that is more enjoyable than questioneer Pat from Canada’s, try the AMT Holiday album – no family rows or screaming kids, just one hour of us jabbering on into your ear. What could be more paradisial and relaxing than that?
Don’t be so relaxed that you forget to send us your QUESTIONS, though. Leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT269 Child-Friendly Rating: 78%. Some swearing, one attributable to Olly channelling Ray Winstone. References to feline sexual delight. Detraction of possibly beloved-by-children Troll dolls.
PS Oh, HERE’s where all the Trolls disappeared to. (Aside from all the ones that have been hiding out here.)
He wasn’t good enough for you! You’re better off without him! and other platitudes go out to Matilda in California, who writes:
My boyfriend and I just decided (somewhat mutually) that we needed to stop seeing each other, since I’ve just started a Master’s program, and he wants to move to New Zealand for an indeterminate amount of time. I still care about him very much, so this has been a little bit rough for me.
At night, when I’m not finishing a paper or making dinner, I have taken to spending my time watching sad movies about people who have broken up with each other, listening to sad songs, and weeping uncontrollably into a pillow.
So, answer me this: What has helped you during a breakup, and can you recommend any songs that I should add to my “End of Times” playlist?
Readers, get yourselves to the comments and compile the epitome of break-up playlists. NB Matilda, avoid listening to songs you might need in future years, because once you’ve recovered from the break-up, it can be unpleasant to return to the music that sustained you through the difficult times.
A smidgeon more information on ‘She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain’.
Judgement day was sometimes a metaphor for freedom.
Jesus sometimes had the secret meaning of Harriet Tubman, who would lead the slaves to freedom.
It was all right for slaves to be found singing spirituals, but not all right for them to be plotting or hoping for freedom out loud.
This song grows ever more interesting! But still not at all dirty like our questioneer thought. That was all in her mucky mind.
Here’s more feedback on the musical elements of AMT266, from Rebecca from Letchworth:
Musicals are my favourite thing in the world and seeing as I am a drama student, I am constantly singing songs from musicals and going to see musicals in the West End.
I don’t think you should sing along when you go and see musicals on stage – you’re paying a lot of money hear trained professionals do it. Also, the seating in some theatres is very tight, you are practically bumping shoulders with the people either side of you. My advice would be that if you really cannot control your need to sing along (and sometimes you really can’t control it), you should simply mouth the words.
I do this when I go and see a musical, because you feel like you’re singing along and if you get your timing just right, you can pretend in your head that the actor’s voice is actually yours. That way you are having a little sing-song to yourself and you’re not disturbing anyone around you.
Very considerate, Rebecca – unless you’re also silently dancing along, and elbowing your seat-neighbour in the face when you do jazz hands.
In the words of Neely O’Hara, Answer Me This! Episode 266 is all ‘Boobies boobies boobies’: surgically enhanced ones, natural ones, milky ones, Kelly Brook’s ones…
Plus: Olly specifies where his ashes are to be scattered; Helen doesn’t care if her craft legacy dies with her; and despite all his singing skills, Martin the Sound Man doesn’t have the range to sing in Aspects of Love. He’ll never get to be Michael Ball (ball!).
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, a revival of Olly’s beloved Hunting of the Snark might become a reality? Come on, Mike Batt – make a young Mann’s lifelong dream come true!
And you – make our combined dream come true by sending us QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT266 Child-Friendly Rating: 70%. References to the songs of Peaches. Question about dead bodies. Discussion of boobs, natural and cosmetically altered. Very little swearing aside from an f-bomb.
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.
Uh oh, Hoff-based contention! Though he unites nations, he has divided our listeners. Gesine writes:
David Hasselhoff (our beloved hero) did not bring down the Berlin Wall by standing on it and belting out “I’ve been looking for freedom” – he did his New Year’s Eve gig AFTER the wall came down. He also didn’t stand on the wall – they got a crane in for him.
If he had tried to do it before November 9th 1989, he would have probably been shot. If he had come from East Berlin, he would have needed to navigate thousands of armed soldiers, barbed wire, dogs, trenches and the death strip. And even though he must have been pretty fit during his Baywatch heyday I doubt he could have climbed the 3-4m smooth concrete wall on his own.
If he had managed to come from West Berlin and climb the wall, he might have been shot as well because his blinking leather jacket must have been a pretty tempting target.
So enough ranting – Olly you can redeem yourself by answering me this – beside the ladies in red bathing suits, what made Baywatch so popular around the world?
IT WAS THE LADIES IN RED BATHING SUITS OF COURSE. What more do you need?
But Gesine, you don’t address a greater mystery, as contemplated by Neal from Crawley in West Sussex here:
Olly mentioned that Hoff’s popularity in Germany was due to his Berlin wall unification gig. However the reason he was on the wall in the first place was because he was already popular there. So. Why was he popular in Germany in the first place?
Any ideas, anybody? Go to the comments to cast light upon this mystery, although Gary rejects the assertion upon which it is based:
Normally, I am not the type to write to podcasts and express my discontent.
But I do want to clarify something about Germany and David Hasselhoff.
Yes, he had a big hit in Germany at the time the Berlin Wall, but that was the only hit. The rest is just hype and The Hoff’s PR team. Saying Germans love David Hasselhoff based on one hit is like saying Brits love Chumbawumba because of that Tub Thumping song.
Sorry to pick nits, but the truth need to be put out there.
Can it be? You’re smashing a lot of myths there, Gary…German readers, are you just going to sit there and let him defame your beloved Hoff? Or sit there and let everybody think you have mystifying taste in music?
I’d also be interested to hear from Japan-based readers about whether bands that are renowned for being ‘big in Japan’ really ever were big in Japan. Tell me: does the country have statues of Shampoo in every city, and a national holiday in honour of Corduroy?
Hello listeners! We hope you have survived our three-week absence. If not, it’ll be no use to you to know that Answer Me This! Episode 262 is ready for your attentions:
Nor to learn that in it we speak of:
the A1 (the road, not the boyband)
baseball caps
food trucks
hammock hazards Pulse and Cocktails (link NSFW)
ice cream vans and cocktails
Steven Spielberg’s headgear ‘Looking for Freedom’ vs ‘Looking for Linda’
pate
and
great big strapping Michael Parkinson.
Plus: Olly receives the wrath of the Hoff; Helen would not give away what goes on in large discreet carparks; and Martin the Sound Man describes his brief moment as the young Frank Rossitano in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App – or, given the subject matter, this week’s Bit of Cap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android.
Please do click here to preview/purchase our SMASH HIT TOP 15 ALBUM Answer Me This! Holiday, that was briefly but thrillingly sandwiched between Robbie and Rihanna.
And also please do send us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT262 Child-Friendly Rating: 60%. Question about sex shops polluting an otherwise innocent episode.
Today we discuss the world’s greatest audio format apart from this one: Desert Island Discs. What would your luxury be? (If you’re a cheating cheater who wants to take a fully-stocked iPod, throw yourself into the sea.) Find out ours, along with myriad other important nuggets of information, in Answer Me This! Episode 259:
In which we also consider:
condoms vs. opera gloves
knits vs. nits
Tim Burton vs. Faust
Olly vs. Ollie vs. Olleigh
cherry-pickers gentlemen’s clubs (nb not ‘gentlemen’s clubs’) The Reform Act This Life
personalised Coke bottles
Simon Cowell’s reflection
mayonnaise spa treatments
retro-live-tweeting
and
Russ Abbott.
Plus: Olly is nostalgic for an infestation of headlice; Helen WOULD with the person who changes the lights in supermarkets; and Martin the Sound Man doesn’t want to swallow himself. Just reflect on that quietly.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Olly rhapsodises about the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machine. All the different types of sugar water – in one machine! A miracle of modern life.
Another miracle of modern life is to be able to watch thousands of hours of entertainment for FREE thanks to our LoveFilm offer – which, equally miraculously, helps pay for future Answer Me Thises.
As well as free money, we can only sustain the podcast with your QUESTIONS, so send them along in the form of voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Hello listeners,
