In Answer Me This! Episode 329, one questioneer wrestles with the ethics of breeding Christmas-truther children who ruin everything for the other kiddos; another introduces us to the Catalan Christmas tradition we now desperately need to appropriate. Listen to find out about those, and also these:
Plus: Olly rode the carousel we all dream of riding; at primary school, Helen reined in her Junior Richard Dawkins; and Martin the Sound Man manages to ruin Oral-B for everyone, thanks Martin.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, the talk of free coffee fraud turns to a far graver offence: Toys R Us fraud. To hear, fire up the app on your iThings, Android and Windows devices.
Thanks very much to today’s sponsor Squarespace.com, who’ll give you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you invoke the code ANSWER.
Thanks also to everyone who has supported the show by buying the Answer Me This! Christmas album. If you haven’t yet, this is really the time of year to do so. April, not so much. It’s available at answermethisstore.com, as well as some of the online retail behemoths – links and further details of the contents are available at answermethispodcast.com/christmas.
We’ll return with the Best of AMT 2015 on 24th December 2015.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT329 Child-Friendly Rating: 5%. Some swears; some bawdy references; and the greatest peril of all: THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS OF CHRISTMAS GIFTS IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN AND WE THINK YOU DO. So, beware! Also, Olly encourages your children to break the airport rules, which will probably get them tasered. •••
Summon up all your capacity for doomed adolescent romance, lean over the parapet and cry, “Wherefore art thou, Answer Me This! Episode 318?” In which we discuss:
Plus: as a result of today’s questioneer, Olly has cancelled his vasectomy; Helen has no time for ‘ye olde’; and Martin the Sound Man is keeping up with the movements of Tiffany, mutually bonded forever by familiarity with Staffordshire.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) we continue to consider Bluetooth, and wonder when our connected household appliances will start embarrassing us on social media. Oh, they already have? Shurrup, kettle, or you’re going in the bin.
if you want to try the early ‘experimental’ phase of AMT, our vintage episodes are available on iTunes, Amazon, and our very own corporate megagiant operation answermethisstore.com, built using today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Try them out – there’s a free two-week trial, then you can have 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. So do!
We’ll return on 23rd July 2015 with AMT319. Keep polishing your boobs till then.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT318 Child-Friendly Rating: 55%. A few swears. At the end, there is question about vasectomies; if your child hears it, it could necessitate you having The Chat: either the ‘how babies are made’ one, or the ‘Daddy, do you actually wish you’d prevented me from being born?’ one. •••
If, like today’s questioneer Paul, you want to allow a cool breeze to circulate around your nethers, but without the hazard of being charged with indecent exposure, we recommend you wear one of these around the house. The pockets are really useful too, for carrying cooling ice-packs and emergency underpants lest you receive an unexpected guest.
Also useful, though providing no modesty coverage, is Answer Me This! Episode 265:
Today we discuss:
Amazon
Amazons’ boobs
Amazon’s Eye
penile hygiene
straitjackets
Dire Straits
(ham)burgers
tartar vs. tartare sauce vs. the Tatars
chips and gravy vs. poutine
political speech spoilers The Bridge
Jeff Bezos
and
the Midlands swing vote.
Plus: Olly thinks one of the world’s biggest online retailers caters especially to his ego; Helen improves upon Ed Miliband’s cigarette packet zingers; and Martin the Sound Man explains why Sylvia Plath ate her mince raw.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, we come up with a more fitting name for the Shakespeare play that so nettled Olly in last week’s episode. Look out for a production of Much Ado About Vagina at an outdoor theatre near you.
Our podcast would be much ado about nothing without your QUESTIONS, so please send them to us: 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
AMT265 Child-Friendly Rating: 30%. Mention of ripe topics including boobs, suicide, politics, fellatio. A few swear-bombs.
This week, listener Melvyn from Israel got in touch to ask whether we have a system for identifying AMT episodes which are suitable for his children to listen to. So from this point forward*, each episode will have a rating so you parents/children are aware of the incidence of blue language and depraved material. Answer Me This! Episode 260 scores a Child Friendly Rating of 70% (mild swearing/bawdy talk and one question about dicks).
Today we discuss:
Wagon Wheels
jalapeños
disappointing Oxford Circus Loose Women‘s stools (not as in bowel movement stools)
tuk tuk drivers
Fentimans
The Pammy vs. The Governess
Lord Adonis
helium
and
dressing to the left/right.
Plus: Olly has a simple but cunning method for hiding his Special Racy Magazines; Helen is a fan of neither Buckfast nor Red Bull; and the only thing bigger than Martin the Sound Man’s head is his…ego?
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we discuss Desert Island Drugs. We may be squares in our normal lives, but leave us to die alone on a desert island and we’ll give any intoxicants a whirl.
What a surprise the publishers of our book decided not to use this picture! Granted, their usual style of authorial portrait is usually a little more contemplative, a tad more restrained. But they probably thought that to print an image of such timeless, exquisite beauty on the cover of our book would be unfair on all the other books.
Yes. That must have been the reasoning.
To find out why we have unleashed this aesthetics gamechanger, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 247:
Today we discuss:
forked tongues
Liv Tyler’s tits
holiday snaps
smoking vs. self-pleasuring
Pot Noodles vs. aquariums Armageddon vs. Les Miserables
menageries vs. mono-nageries corgis’ Christmas Lion Tower
Bruce Willis in a space suit
and
bedroom antics.
Plus: Olly reveals how the Queen helped Kate and Willsher dogs to mate; Helen’s holiday photo albums all look like this; and Martin the Sound Man ejaculates through his tear ducts, apparently.
As an extension of the final questioneer’s bath masturbation query, this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) considers what else you can do in a bath, if said bath is in Las Vegas. Clue: cleanliness is unlikely to be the most immediate concern.
Our immediate concern is, of course, gathering your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
Unlike Whigfield, we don’t spend our Saturday nights dancing by ourselves in front of a mirror. (That is, of course, our official Tuesday night business.) Instead we trot off to talk about the week’s most thrilling internet events on BBC 5 Live’s Saturday Edition.
Many of you have previously asked whether the show is available as a podcast. Hitherto, the answer has been ‘No’, but now, it is ‘YES!’ It is called Let’s Talk About Tech and you can get it HERE. Also includes tech, cars, gaming and other matters of interest.
As AMT devotees, you know that we don’t shy away from the most serious questions the human mind can concoct. Remember AMT198 last year, when we boldly tackled “What makes a pie a pie?” Today, in Answer Me This! Episode 220, we broach another foodstuff with an identity crisis – salad:
Seriously though, how can this and this and this and this be even nominally related? Pffft.
Anyway, tossed into the conversational salad this week are:
facts about Eugene, Oregon
Hamlet, the Madonna of his time
Madonna, the sexual bully of her time
alternating current vs. direct current
dentist chair vs. electric chair
Natalie Portman Hershlag
French Freemasons William Kemmler
Pizza Express
rainbow parties Rory Gallagher’s guitar
and
Spin the Bottle.
Plus: Olly impresses the ladies with his great big throbbing veins; Helen discovers that Thomas Edison was a right cnut; and Martin the Sound Man plays coy about his age. Don’t worry Martin, you don’t look a day under 55.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is more crap-related than usual, as it features a question from Stephy from Bristol about the point of patterned toilet paper. Along the way we learn upon what Simon Cowell and the Queen probably wipe their bottoms. The rich educational resource that is the Answer Me This! app is available for iDevices or Android, you’ll be relieved to know. Relieved. Ho ho ho.
Enough japery for one week; but if you want to listen to more of our japery next week, you are obliged to send us a QUESTION: emails go to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
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).
Well, listeners, this is it. The last episode for a month – Answer Me This! Episode 191:
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 our last yaps before shutting up for a month, we speak of:
Gossip Girl‘s out-of-character choice of search engine
Tate & Lyle
Envirofone
Jon Snow’s laptop
cinder toffee Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Samson speed-dating
iPhones vs. traditional toilet reading
bio vs. non-bio
blue plastic champagne flutes vs. classiness
Rihanna’s Navy vs. Bruno Mars’s Hooligans vs. K£sha’s Animals
female magnets
and
paediatric brine.
Plus: Olly reveals the secret to his Oxford success – York Notes; Helen has worrying plans to become a major soak over the break; and Martin the Sound Man will be jetting off to space on the back of the Philips Man Iron. Brrrrm brrm!
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App is about newsreader Kay Burley’s eggs, which are available exclusively to denizens of the Sky News make-up room – unlike the AMT app, which is available to any old chump with an iPhone, iPad or Android device.
Though we are off-air for a month, we’ll still be updating this site, and more importantly collecting QUESTIONS for the new series. So send them along, by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) and sending emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We hope you have a smashing month, and we’ll you on October 13th, bright and early!
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.
ELECTION ELECTION WINEHOUSE’SBROKENBOOBS ELECTION ELECTION ELECTION KATONA. That’s all we’re hearing about this week, and frankly it’s wearing us down. Listeners, perhaps you feel the same; or perhaps you don’t live in Britain and therefore didn’t even know there was an election on. And now that you do, you couldn’t give a tortoise’s bra about it. But hopefully we can all agree to settle down and listen toAnswer Me This! Episode 133, before returning to deface Tory pamphlets/whatever the hell you non-Brit-residents were up to:
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 speak of:
Tory tax breaks
Smith Kendon travel sweets
Kenneth Tynan
Scotney Castle
Birmingham Selfridges
Tate Modern
satnav wipes
sphygmomanometers
sexting vs. proper infidelity
Facebook vs. Friends Reunited
syntax vs. inflections
souvenir pencils
the Paris Expo
James Citizen Kane
Sarah Kane Hamlet II In the Night Garden
and
Ozwald Boateng.
Plus: Olly yearns for the rural life, tilling the soil and raising livestock; Helen is shocked by the potty-mouth affecting Woman’s Hour; and Martin the Sound Man seems to know more about blood pressure than the average district nurse. And some news that might be more exciting to us than to you, and more exciting to our mums than anyone else.
You know what’s definitely exciting all round, though? Your QUESTIONS! So give us a thrill by sending them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. Our timbers are shivering in anticipation.
RT @HelenAndOlly: 🎵I gotta question
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