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?
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.
Cover your eyes, clutch your pearls, and have a big cringe along with Sean from Kings Lynn:
A couple of weeks ago my parents presented me with a plastic box, while they stood there I opened it to reveal they had given me 200+ condoms, amongst them there was pineapple flavour!
So, Answer Me This:
What’s The Weirdest Thing Your Parents Have Given To You As A Present? (Olly Excluding The Thong!)
Well, if you’re excluding the thong, Sean (Episode 89 if you need a refresher, people!), then Olly is going to have to stand down this round. But between you lot, you must have memories of some time when your parents celebrated your birthday or Christmas with a big beribboned box of Wrong, in comparison to which Sean’s parents merely look like health campaigners urging Sean to remember to practice safe sex and eat his Five A Day. Am I right? Then please share in the comments!
Welcome, listeners, to the first Answer Me This! of 2010:
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 which we speak of:
the Next sales Sherlock Holmes
sweetbreads
condominiums
the son of Sam
Golden Wonder
Stanley Kubrick
the Queen’s Speech
Scotch woodcock
Johnny Carson
snake lungs
Anne Frank
and
the best public lavatories in Balham.
Furthermore: Olly manages to draw comparison between Lolita and Match of the Day; Helen manages to draw comparison between estate agents and kidnapped children; and Martin the Sound Man manages to draw comparison between a suitable Christmas present for his girlfriend and a DVD boxset about serial killers. Let’s hope he didn’t buy it for research purposes.
We’ve a list of chores for you to do this week:
1) click here to get yourself a free Audible audiobook;
2) share your neuroses, like shark-fearing questioneer Bunty did, in a comment on this post;
3) decide for the world whether humans are red meat or white meat by voting in this poll
4) if you’re still steaming about Walkers Crisps’ packet colours (and frankly, we aren’t), sign the petition;
5) listen to Martin the Sound Man’s latest music podcast;
6) and, of course, send us YOUR QUESTIONS for future episodes, via answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877.
So, after you’ve done all those, we’ll see you next week for Episode 122!
In Episode 114, Olly revealed he can no longer eat even small quantities of cinnamon without suffering a gag reflex, because he and his friend Mr Will Brown recently undertook the ‘Cinnamon Challenge’ – a YouTube meme in which self-hating stupidity-junkies attempt to swallow a whole heaped teaspoon of pure ground cinnamon. For Fun.
Now, following popular demand, we are pleased to reveal the evidence, lovingly caught on camera by Answer Me This! jingle-voice Tom Price. Enjoy:
Let Olly’s fate be a lesson to you all: cinnamon is not to be taken neat.
(But, for those who fancy a bit more Friday Fun, more of our favourite examples of this particular phenomenon can be found here, here and here. Hee Hee!)
As the age of economic belt-tightening continues tiresomely, listener Alex from Nottingham has kindly lent us his cunning way of getting drunk on the cheap. If you want to know what his budget route to fast-track inebriation is – involves both do-gooding and personal risk! – then just bend your ear to Answer Me This! Episode 106:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p, through iTunes or a secure PayPal server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
And on today’s dance-card:
Brighton Pavilion
Jennifer Lopez
We Are Klang’s furniture
the asymmetry of marriage
London vs. York
Tallahassee vs. Martin’s sanity
Puritans vs. decor
Ann Widdecombe vs. the Jonas Brothers
double-barrelled surnames
the antiques of the future
Olly’s grandmother’s wallpaper
Helen’s father’s gullibility
and
the dragon in Shrek
Plus: Olly’s Big Blood Giveaway is ruined by alternative medicine; Helen is defeated by mere wallpaper; and Martin the Sound Man brings someone back from the dead, or at least wakes them up after a moderate thwack to the head. He’s a miracle-weaver! Bring your children to Answer Me This! Towers and he will bless them for £20 a head. 10% discount for two-headed babies.
Aaaanyway, if you have a problem concerning your two-headed baby, or perhaps another query of some kind, let us know! Send your QUESTIONSto answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, or speak them to Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877.
Right, we’re off to nab the last remaining blackberries in Crystal Palace park before the birds shit on all of them, but we’ll see you next week. Bye!
Readers, it’s time to get your oar in to this romantic dilemma from Amelia from London:
I have recently started going out with this really nice guy. He is funny, smart and not a generic prat like most of the teenage boys I know.
But there is one problem: he is in the year below me and I keep getting called a cradle snatcher, amongst other things so offensive I dare not put them in this email for fear of upsetting Martin the sound man. So answer me this, What do I do?
Courage, Amelia; we think if you go for option 3, the potential teasing will abate pretty quickly – show no shame, and the haterzzzz really won’t have a great deal to go on. And actually, their reaction might be less bad than you think: thanks to Halle Berry, Demi Moore et al, being a cougar is all the rage these days!
But readers, what do you think? VOTE!
We’ve got an alternative suggestion too, if none of the above work: tell everyone he is in fact two years older than you, but was held back in school because he is very stupid.
Here’s a charming story from James, entitled ‘My Friend Recently Shit Himself’. Can you guess how it’s going to go? Well done, you are correct:
Yes it was quite an epic tale, cram packed with adventure, tension and embarrassment.
The story began on Saturday morning when we were having a bite to eat before catching the train to Sheffield from Grimsby. My friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, claimed to be feeling ill about halfway through the journey. When we arrived he insisted (in a rather flustered manner) that we find the nearest toilet which at the time happened to be a McDonalds, so off we went. He ran in barging people out of the way (we followed closely behind to see what hilarities would unfold) and just as he was going into the toilet he shat himself.
But the worst thing about this is what he did to ‘solve’ the situation, he started by frantically wiping his pants and arse with toilet paper until they were as clean as they could possibly be at that time…………not very clean. He then put them back on inside out and continued his activities for the rest of the day.
I found this odd/sickening and was wondering what would you do in a situation like that?
To be frank, we found it pretty odd/sickening as well; therefore, as we’ve just had our lunch and are reluctant to throw it all up, we thought we’d open the question out to you instead. So please comment below and answer us this: what is a failsafe means of rescuing yourself should you wind up in a similar situation?
by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares.
Answer Me This! Podcast 