I’m pretty sure he is single and I know he is gay.
The only conversation we have had outside of ordering was about the linguistics paper we had done together last year and whether we were doing any others. We hadn’t spoken during the paper.
How do I maybe get it to the point where I could ask him out and stop spending $6.90 a day on juice?
Readers, go to the comments and help Dan out, before he is bankrupted by juice. Although maybe he is hankering after this guy in the hope that, if his affections are returned, he’ll get free juice?
Anyway, I think Dan should just be direct and ask him out – if straightforwardness is a problem, perhaps he could spell out ‘Will you go out with me?’ in fruit – because if his approach is rejected, he no longer needs to keep spending the $6.90 a day on juice either.
We hope you haven’t overdosed on romance, because here’s a lovely love question from Celia in France:
So, two people I’m friends with just liked my profile picture at the same time on Facebook and it occurred to me that they would get along very nicely (and possibly make a nice little couple?). They have similar taste in films and music and stuff. They also go to universities about an hour’s drive away from each other.
However they don’t know each other at all, and seeing as I don’t live in the same country as them at the moment, I can’t invite them both out clubbing with me and see what happens when they are both drunk.
So answer me this please: do I play Cupid? And if so, how??!??!?!?!1?!?!/!/!???12!
Also to bear in mind: I haven’t spoken to either of them for at least three months and would feel a little uneasy recommencing conversation with “hey, you should go out with this guy!!!!!” On one hand there’s no harm in asking and seeing if they want to try it out but on the other hand maybe neither of them want to be set up so I don’t know. Help me please.
Readers, go to the comments to guide Celia. Should she effect some long-distance meddling? Or keep the idea in abeyance until she’s back in the country, or even for ten or fifteen years until such time as her friends are both despairing of finding partners by themselves? Or, indeed, should she sit back and let fate take the reins? After all, these two both like her Facebook picture, so they’re obviously MFEO.
What are the smells that trigger certain feelings or memories for you? Does the scent of a rose transport you back to eating Turkish Delight with your gran? Do exhaust fumes remind you of that trip to Rome where you lost your wallet but gained some minor STDs? Does cider bring back all too vividly that time you puked into your dad’s slippers?
Whatever the flavour of your nasal nostalgia, take a big sniff and listen to Answer Me This! Episode 245:
Today we speak of:
Annie Lennox
bouquet tossing uniformdating.com
the grapevine
the cheesy moon
the Earl of Grantham’s house before he moved into Downton Abbey Arrested Development vs. Arrested Development Phenom
sexy dill
wedding suits
Marvin Gaye: phone engineer
DVD/Blu-ray ordering
and
the lies of David Sneddon.
Also: Olly’s not a bad driver, it’s just his cursed jumper; Helen is abusing her magnificent brain, by filling it with shitcoms then hitting it with beer bottles; and Martin the Sound Man’s impression of Gregg Wallace is uncannilly shitty.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Ellen in North Carolina about the Tim Tam Explosion. If you’re not sure what that is, imagine the Australian version of the Soggy Biscuit Game.
On the subject of sweet things, see the proof of Thorntons icing HERE. But this innocentish fun has a dark side, and we don’t just mean 70% cocoa solids dark. As you’ll find out in the episode, Thorntons are striking back! Ulp…
Assuming Thorntons haven’t shut us down by next week, send us your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
Hey guys! Remember when we…? And that time when…? And that thing where…? Ah, good times. So many good times! Please join us in reliving half of them in The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part I:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 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 which we reacquaint ourselves with such beloved old friends as:
The Elves and the Shoemaker
Fabio and Fabio
Hong King Disney
nurse fantasies
the Elgin Marbles
PATP
the seawater cure
Will.I.Am’s nursery rhymes
Pink Lady apples
sexy snowgirls
mad neighbours
bloody Big Bird and dead Kes
Helen’s childhood crush on Inspector Morse
Olly’s kidney
and
Martin the Sound Man’s blue girlfriend.
Plus: drunk callers! Parping! D*ve from Sm*thw*ck!!! And if you enjoyed the assemblage of previously unheard material, ie the blooper reel, you can hear more of that sort of thing every week if you obtain the AMT app for your iDevices and Android.
Join us again next Thursday for the second half of our annual retrospective, and do also supply us with QUESTIONS for AMT 2013. Email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
Tyler from San Francisco is movin’ on up, movin’ on out, movin’ on up, nothing can stop him:
I broke up with my boyfriend about one month ago after nearly two years (in gay culture, this is a quite long relationship). We share a large group of mutual friends here in San Francisco which has made things a bit awkward. I have only briefly encountered my ex in passing. I’m now starting to date new people. Is this too soon? I don’t want to be insensitive, but we’re finished and I’m moving on.
Answer me this: how long should I wait before publicly dating or bringing a new gentleman to a party or event with this circle of mutual friends?
As we established last week: if the new relationship is with a close relative, WAIT FOREVER.
Otherwise – three months? Readers, what do you reckon? Since age gaps can be governed mathematically, surely there is an equation to compute the value of y (length of post-relationship public singledom) as a proportion of x (length of relationship). Add your calculation to the comments.
In the last episode, we decided that a relationship with your first cousin who also happens to be young enough to be your child equals ICK. But Sarah writes:
I utterly adore your podcast. So imagine my chagrin when, in the last episode, you guys ranted about the unsuitability of relationships such as mine. No, I am not dating my cousin. But my girlfriend and I are 23 years apart in age, precisely the same as your anonymous questioner and his girlfriend. Answer me this: what’s is so wrong with that?
Jenny and I are coming up on our five year anniversary. We have a circle of mutual friends that doesn’t suffer from the fact that they’re of different generations. Jenny is only seven years younger than my mom and nine years younger than my dad but that didn’t stop them from welcoming her into our family, something Jenny really appreciated as her own family, believing same-sex relationships to be wrong, have distanced themselves from her.
Come on, guys – you’re too smart to believe that age difference in a relationship is inherently wrong or icky or exploitative.
We agree that age difference isn’t inherently wrong, but this is influenced by the age of the youngest half of the couple. For example, although Courtney Stodden and Doug Hutchison would always seem an insanitary pairing, the 35-year age gap wouldn’t have appeared as bad had she been 26 or 36 when they got married, rather than 16.
Had our questioneer been 54 and his cousin-lover been 31, perhaps we would have been more generous to him (although, obviously not, because SHE IS STILL HIS FIRST COUSIN), and if children were not involved. You don’t mention, Sarah, whether Jenny has children that are almost the same age as you. Children are prone to being freaked out by their parents’ relationships, but surely more so when the new partner was in the same nursery school as them. (And even more so when said partner IS A BLOOD RELATIVE.) You see the difference between your relationship and his, we hope!
Mark from New Zealand chips in with an equation:
In terms of what a minimum age for a partner is, the standard creepiness rule: don’t date under (age÷2)+7 seems reasonable, so on that score your mid life crisis cuz-banger falls a bit short.
After the rather unsavoury brace of love-related questions we’ve just had, let’s cleanse the palate with this from Lindsay:
Almost two years ago, my husband left me and I’ve spent the last year or so moving on, having fun and relearning who I am as a singleton.
I’m now in the place where I’m considering dating, however it’s a thought that petrifies me as I’ve never done the whole dating thing before and I don’t know where to even look for a lovely bloke.
So please answer me this: can you help me find the hot, tattooed rugby boys who would consider dating a Christian girl divorced by the tender age of 32?
AMTfans are a wonderfully diverse bunch, so there MUST be some tattooed rugby boys amongst you lot. Any of you also currently single and looking for ladies? Go to the comments, and answer these Bliiiiiiind Daaaaaate-style questions:
1. Where would you take Lindsay on your first date?
2. If you were a foodstuff, what would you be and why?
3. How’s your tackle?
Or just tell her a bit about yourself, you know, the usual. Let love blossom!
We’ve come to this question from Mo a little late, since the critical deadline was the end of September. Sorry, Mo! Though you do seem to be ‘suffering’ from a ‘problem’ that many of our listeners would love to have:
Around February I meet a girl who is 37 and I told her that I am 27, despite her saying I am too young for her I managed to lure her into sleeping with me, the first problem is I am actually 23. Should I come clean? If yes, why ruin a good thing? (The sex is good, we are both quite adventurous.)
The second and maybe the main problem is why I am not breaking up with her or cheating? It is not like I love her (we did clear this matter between us that we cannot love each other even with artificial 10 years age difference!!). Even now that she has gone abroad for 3 months I still am not cheating on her although I had the chance to go out with girls my age!!
I cannot break up with her now cause she is not coming back till the end of September (I hate breaking up on SMS or Skype etc) and once she is back I wanna have sex with her for a couple of months before I do anything, but by then it is Christmas and who wants to break up in new year? So suddenly it will be a year I have been with this girl that I still do not call my girlfriend!!
I should say I do treat her nicely and with respect and I try to be a gentleman and not a jerk!!
Help me with my dilemma please!!!
By now, I presume she has returned, and you have embarked upon the beginning of your two-month sex adventure, which means you probably have not done what you should have done before and broken up with her. Why do I think so? Because if you have to ask why you’re not breaking up with someone or cheating on them, you’re really too silly to be in a relationship. Sorry, ‘relationship’.
(Also, she’s not a girl. And not in a Britney ‘Not a girl, not yet a woman’ way – she’s 37. SHE’S NOT A GIRL. At least one of the two of you is going to have to get used to this.)
However, you do keep making feeble excuses for why you have not broken up with her. Where does it end? ‘I can’t break up with her at New Year, but then it’s Valentine’s Day in February so I can’t break up with her before that, and if I break up with her right after Valentine’s Day everyone will think I’m a heartless bastard, but then it’s Easter and I want the egg she’s bound to buy me, then in May it’s World No-Tobacco Day and it’d be too stressful to break up without nicotine, then it’s the summer so I’ll probably want to have sex with her a lot, then it’s her birthday, then it’s Halloween and I want us to go as Bonnie and Clyde together, then it’s Armistice Day which is solemn enough, then Christmas, then New Year again, then I’m 80 and she’s 94 and I can’t tell her I want to break up with her because the shock might kill her and she still doesn’t know that I lied about my age.’
I’m rather expecting her to dump you because you’re not decisive enough.
The time has come, dear listeners, for us to pack up our microphones for a month and head off on holiday. But before we go, we tackle some very important questions indeed:
• Should one allow one’s allergies interrupt the loss of one’s virginity?
• What counts as a museum, once and for all?
• What IS R Kelly on about?
Discover those answers and more in Answer Me This! Episode 228:
Plus: Olly explains a ‘reverse American Pie‘, and no, you won’t find it in More! Magazine’s ‘Position of the Fortnight’ archives; Helen’s toilet is like Kanye West, and not because he has a pottymouth; and Martin the Sound Man had just about recovered from the disappointment that was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when Prometheus came along and crushed his expectations all over again.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Jennifer from Pittsburgh about whether being struck by lightning affects your ability to use technology; assuming the after-effects of that old lightning strike allow it, use your iDevices and Android to peruse the app.
Until we return on Thursday 20th September, here are some means of busying yourself:
1. Listen to us on BBC 5 Live, 1-4pm on Monday 27th August, talking about all sorts of fun and diverse listening materials in our special bank holiday show Required Listening. 2. Tune in to Olly on LBC, 20th-24th August between 1-4am. That’s right, am. Unless you live in a different time zone and it’s a perfectly civilised hour there. 3.Vote for Helen to go to SXSW next year, on a podcasting panel with Jesse Thorn and Roman Mars. 4. Listen to Martin’s music. It is much less obscene than him talking. 5. Have a go on our albums, our first 120 episodes, and some other nice podcasts. 6. Concoct QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Have a delightful month, and we look forward to reuniting on 20th September.
Helen & Olly
PS Sadly, the Cars of the Stars museum in Keswick closed down last year. But it still lives forever here:
Happy wedding anniversary, Henry VIII! Verily on this day in 1543, he married Catherine Parr, and as they say, sixth time’s the charm. According to the Big Book of Weddings, the traditional gift for the 469th anniversary is ‘MP3’, so here’s Answer Me This! Episode 223 for you, you loved-up kids:
Today we contemplate:
speciation
bloody Mary
pub lighting Def Leppard videos vs. Duran Duran videos
Bieber vs. dopamine
pride vs. prizes
curry house atmosphere
crisp etiquette (US translation: potato chip etiquette)
farm-themed restaurants
sepulchral Hollister
and
that bitch Tinkerbell.
Plus: Olly is mistaken for someone even lower on the celebrity ladder than he is; Helen breaks the bad news that Cain and Abel were motherjeffers; and Martin the Sound Man has something in common with the Queen, other than his fondness for shiny jewels and waving.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available on iDevices and Android) demonstrates how Martin paid a woman to write his name on her body. For ‘charity fundraising’, allegedly. Good ruse!
Another good ruse is to send us your QUESTIONS by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). More questions, more podcasts, see?
And don’t forget to click here to check out our latest album, the Answer Me This! Sports Day – the best 59 minutes and 33 seconds of all-new sporty-talk we have ever produced.
We’re as surprised as you to discover that Answer Me This! Episode 221 opens with a heated discussion upon the topic, ‘What is art?’ Check us out with our high brows!
Naturally our brows don’t stay high for long; in decreasing order of highfalutingness, we talk about:
Edward Lear
double-ended ice cream
Tracey Emin Jeremy Deller‘s teenage parties
the Marquis de Sade
firefighters
bridesmaids
pole dancing
Charlie Chaplin drowning horribly
the pull-out method
and Annabel Chong.
Plus: Olly is horrified to discover that there’s a boarding school-style communal wanking game that he’d never heard of; Helen knows how to make anything unsexy, using ham; and Martin the Sound Man would like to remind you that you only have a couple of weeks left to enter his Science Songwriter of the Future competition, so make the old man happy because he’s got a bad ear this week.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App Helen gives you a great tip for making new friends on late-night public transport, based on her recent encounter with a stranger’s pelvis on the Victoria Line. That stranger’s pelvis could be all yours, if you avail yourself of the app on iDevices or Android! Don’t worry if you’re married; the pelvis won’t be worrying about that either.
We don’t want your pelvises, but we do want your QUESTIONS, so thrust them our way by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). As a reward, you may watch the video below of Eleanor from Norwich’s pole dancing team going about their totally sexless business.
I have a female friend that has a boyfriend, but things with him are not going very well and they surely will break up soon. I really like my friend but I don’t want to look like I’m just waiting for her to break up to ask her out.
So answer me this: how can I confess to this girl without looking that I was with her all this time just waiting for her to break up with this boyfriend?
Does it actually matter that it looks that way? Surely the greater problem is the fact that she is still with her boyfriend. While you may be confident that they are on the rocks, that does not mean she is actually single, and/or open to new offers.
However, you’re clearly going to steam in and proposition her anyway, so I have no counsel for you. Readers, if you would be so kind in my stead, please go to the comments and coach Juan for this moment.
Answer Me This! Podcast 