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!
Recently, VisitBritain sent me and Olly on a trip around Britain in order to answer the nation’s most pressing questions in the form of five short videos.
So prepare yourself for Episode One of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions:
Here’s where we went in our pursuit of cheesiness:
• Paxton and Whitfield cheesemongers in Bath, part of a 200-year-old cheese-purveying business. • Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, where you can take a tour of the cheese caves, ride an open-topped bus through the gorge, visit the museum of prehistoric cheese, and of course, eat a whole load of cheese. • The Leagram Organic Dairy near Chipping, Lancashire, where you can not only buy some classic Lancastrian cheeses, but also be taught to make cheese by cheesemaker extraordinaire Bob Kitching. He can turn milk into cheese in the blink of an eye, and also has more naughty jokes about cheese than you ever imagined possible. • The annual Stilton cheese-rolling. Get your entry forms in now to compete in the 2011 roll!
We enthusiastically recommend all those places. See below for photos of our antics; and please tune in next Tuesday for Episode Two: Film. For more VisitBritain finery, join their Facebook page.
We also owe massive thanks to Bob Smart at the Cheddar Caves, cheese enthusiast Warwick Davis, Uncle Henry’s for the cheese and treats, Tebay Services for not minding when Olly threw a pot of lime cheese everywhere, and, most of all, Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked at VisitBritain.
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Click here for the other episodes of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions
Dry those tears, untie those yellow ribbons round the ole oak trees, because we are, as promised a month ago, BACK. We’ve had a lovely sort-of-holiday (which you can find out more about next Tuesday!), and are raring to go with Answer Me This! Episode 141:
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)
It’s a corker of an episode for fans of older ladies, with appearances from vintage hotties Merle Oberon (phwoar!), Marguerite Patten (schwing!), Joan Hickson (hubba hubba!) and Angela Lansbury (fapfapfapfapfap), along with unrelated topics of conversation including:
Sea World
the brains of Tostao
Brad Meldhau vs. jazzercise, Jazzles and Jazz apples
Cantona vs. Sartre Polar Bear vs. music for polar bears Gone with the Wind vs. Bollywood the Azerbaijan Film Institute’s top 100 movies? Being Erica
the Big E agricultural festival
kiiking
kiwi fruit
and
the best Miss Marple.
Plus: Olly reenacts The Wrong Trousers at a posh wedding (say, do any of you want to bid on a pair of 38″ Hugo Boss trousers, worn once?); Helen is a philistine when it comes to Citizen Kane and ball ponds; and Martin the Sound Man must have grown up a bit over the break because he manages not to cackle at the phrase ‘ball pond’. Meanwhile, over on our new app, this week’s extra content is a merry tale of gazpacho. Soup-er!
Cover your kiddies’ ears during Answer Me This! Episode 139. Not just because of the usual effing and blinding (although that can’t be wholesome for them, surely?), but because this week, we talk about [whisper] Where Babies Come From [/whisper]. Shudder!
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)
Aside from the role of birds in the human reproductive process, we speak of:
Sauron’s bird feeders
Billy Kennedy’s fluffy dice
posset
turkey farming
‘shimmering apricot mould’
bloodworm
Kia-Ora
the Virgin Mary vs. pelicans
Ted Heath vs. Hugh Grant
chum salmon vs. chambermates
Chambourcy Hippopotamousse
and
the correct classification of pasta salad.
Plus: Olly turns his fishbowl into a scene from Cannibal Holocaust; Helen busts out another member of her Nauseating Cookery Book collection; and Martin the Sound Man seems to know more than the average sound man about clinical trials, although he was born and raised in a petri dish in a GlaxoSmithKline laboratory…
Now don’t get upset, but after next week’s episode, we’ll be taking a month off to rest our voices. So get your QUESTIONS in, quick! Call 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. See you next Thursday, and we’ll make that precious time together count, ok?
We see a dark blot on the horizon. A dark, sports-shaped blot. Wimbledon AND the World Cup football in the next month? It’s too much for our sensibilities. We can’t stop it; we can’t pretend to like it; but we can prepare ourselves, so we try to limber up with a bit of tangentially sportif chitterchatter in Answer Me This! Episode 138:
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)
Don’t worry, the majority of the content is non-sportular, including:
Project Runway
Jacques Chirac G8 Fail
Hobbycraft
Wenlock and Mandeville vs. Banksy and David Shrigley
Ped Egg vs. fungal nail infection in the Battle of the Turned Stomachs
Yoshiaki Shiraishi
massage
sitting shivah
the obscure early life of Jools Holland
NASA entry requirements
and
bacon bras.
Plus: Olly finds the present day to be lagging behind in meeting targets set in The Terminator; Helen reveals the secret that made Neil Armstrong the first man on the moon; and Martin the Sound Man is quite quiet and well-behaved because he’s really thinking about getting back to playing Red Dead Redemption. A podcast cannot come between the man and his PS3. Harrumph.
We’re looking to you to keep our spirits up in these tryingly footbally times, so please send us QUESTIONS with which to distract ourselves, in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Ta for that.
Rejoice, listeners, for in Answer Me This! Episode 132, your prayers have at last been answered! Well, some of the prayers of some of you, specifically those asking if we could get Andy Zaltzman onto the show. Any other prayers will continue to be in vain, unless we’re backing the wrong horse atheism-wise.
Anyway. It took a lot of form-filling, tear-drenched phone-calls to his agent, and complaining to Mum; but here Andy 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)
Inevitably, whenever and wherever Andy speaks, he speaks of sport. But we also manage to shoehorn in:
Wine Gums
Gordon Brown
Denise Van Outen
cricket vs. blogging
Andy vs. Liverpool
curry vs. Martin the Sound Man
surveyors vs. honesty
football hooligans vs. Johannesburg
Beth Ditto
Kim Jong-Il
the Sistine Chapel
pebbledash
and
the real problem with George W Bush.
Plus: Olly decries the cuisine of Spain; Helen tells you how best to decide your vote in the forthcoming election; Martin the Sound Man lines up a new band name for when in-fighting rends The Sound of the Ladies apart; and Andy comes up with an all-too-literal means of how to ask for a lady’s hand in marriage. His wife’s knitting career was brought to an abrupt end when he plighted his troth.
If you want a bit more of Andy in your life, then you can: go to see him do stand-up; listen to his podcast The Bugle, co-starring John Oliver; read his cricket blog; and buy his book. Or you could try marrying in to the Zaltzman family, but almost all vacancies have been filled.
The AMT service returns to normal next week, so please send in your QUESTIONS for the usual treatment – email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave a voicemail on Skype IDanswermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. No sport, we beg of you. This episode contained more than the entirety of the rest of our lives combined.
The general election hasn’t even been called yet, and we’re already a bit bored of our tellies and radios yakking on about it! If you are too, rest assured that any mention of politics in Answer Me This! Episode 128 is purely incidental:
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 the agenda this week:
more dysfunctional chair-throwing
Her Majesty’s hidden talents
targeting aids
dildonics Kirsty’s Home Videos
melon ballers
Ryan Parry Countdown
Pheidippides
olive forks
draught-exclusion
caves
and
our self-esteems being variously bolstered and broken by the results of last week’s poll.
Plus: Olly sheds light on the Chilcot Inquiry; Helen studies at the Kristen Stewart School of Performing Arts; and Martin the Sound Man perhaps says too much about marginal-interest gentlemen’s mags. Also, if you, like most of us, doubt that anything good can come out of a high school production of Grease, we must direct you to AMT jingle stalwart Gavin Osborn’s song ‘Charlie’s 18th Birthday‘. Heck, listen to it even if you have no beef with Grease.
It merely remains for us to remind you to send us YOUR QUESTIONS, so please do so by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving a voicemail on Skype IDanswermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. Go on, make us (even more) happy!
After a refreshing month in the Podcasters’ Rehabilitation Facility, we’re back with springs in our step, twinkles in our eyes, and most importantly (as far as you’re concerned), Answer Me This! Episode 125:
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)
Into which vessel we pour such conversational juices as:
Jason Orange
henbane
Carl Perkins
the Sugababes
John Steinbeck
psoriasis vs. cirrhosis Voodoo Doughnut fail
Boney M x4
Columbia Law School
Duffy by proxy
the truth and Alan Titchmarsh
Rickrolling
deuce (not the band!)
and
the sex life of E.M. Forster.
Plus: Olly opens up a can of whup-ass on a listener who is an even more massive pedant than Helen; Helen yearns one day to be given the sack; and Martin the Sound Man has a practical solution for all you flatulent yoga-practicing types out there.
For more solutions, practical or impractical, to YOUR QUESTIONS, send us an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, or leave a voicemail on Skype IDanswermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. If you do that, we can come back next week to answer yet more of your questions, see? How splendid! See you then!
Helen and Olly
PS. Help yourself to a bit of Olly’s birth-song ‘Stand and Deliver’, why don’t you? And head to the comments to tell us what was the Number 1 song on the day you were born, too!
Seems Canada survived Olly’s recent skiing trip intact, but did Olly himself? Did you have a sweepstake on just how long he would succeed on the slopes? Find out whether he was a natural snowMann or pisspoor on the piste in Answer Me This! Episode 123 [or just ask his doctor]:
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)
Wherein we talk of:
Pinocchio’s nose: logical tool or moral tool?
the pain of childbirth The Wedding Banquet one SICK PUPPY (mildly NSFW, unless you are happy for your colleagues to think you are a bit of a perv)
keratin
driving with Homer Simpson
cod liver oil
bums vs. sharks
the wrong way to achieve the work/life balance
and
fugu.
Plus: Olly finds himself uncharacteristically bashful at being the centre of attention; Helen outlines the original sense of ‘no glove, no love’; and Martin the Sound Man thinks that a really intelligent question is one about pissing into a jug. Incidentally, last week he was setting exam questions for Physics undergraduates; so if you happen to be sitting one of Dr Austwick’s papers, by that standard you should sail through.
Now, don’t be upset, but this is the penultimate episode in the current series of Answer Me This!; we’ll be back on 4th March with renewed question-answering vigour. But tune in next Thursday for Episode 124, in which we have a very exciting announcement. No, none of us our pregnant. Guess again. No, we’re not undergoing gender reassignment either. Shut up.
So until then, chop chop and get your free Audible audiobooks HERE – and please ask all your friends and enemies to take up the offer as well! You could also tell them to ask us a QUESTION for next series, by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, or leaving a message with Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877. And in return we’ll…um…dedicate a bench to you?
See you next week!
Helen and Olly
PS As promised, this is for all you toenail fetishists out there:
***WARNING: This episode contains spoilers
about the 1994 Coen brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy***
Undaunted? Then by all means listen on, but don’t complain to us when you get to the 19th minute and discover that 15-year-old plot twist:
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)
This week we bang on about:
Philip Larkin’s debut novel
the three second rule
Tom of Finland
Sir Patrick Mayhew
Jason and the Argonauts
Lorraine Kelly, record-breaker
Stephen Fry’s Paperweight
Sir Menzies Campbell
Rick Witter
the Milton Keynes Snow Dome
Vince McMahon
Porthos
urethral openings
raw chicken Brewster’s Millions
and
travelators.
Also: how Olly breaks wind stealthily; how Helen’s congenital squint ruined Up for her; and how bananas work, according to Martin the Sound Man. You’d been wondering for years what secrets those little bastards were concealing, hadn’t you?
As ever we’re greedy for YOUR QUESTIONS, so ask ask ask via answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877. We’re very grateful to all of you who shared your stupid nicknames last week – which everyone else can enjoy here; this week, you have the easy task of leaving a comment with your answer to Jorge from Mexico’s question, telling us what you would like to do for one day and one day only. Nothing too blue, please; the shock could kill us.
Also, if you are planning on doing any pre-Christmas Amazon orders, would you be a tremendous dear and log onto their site via this link first? Your Amazonian shopping experience will be 100% the same; however we will then get approx. £0.0000001, which we can put towards a new microphone, or the high-class courtesan we’ve been saving up for. Much obliged to you.
At the time of writing, two urban foxes are noisily copulating outside AMT Towers. It really is the most unheavenly sound. Hopefully Answer Me This! Episode 117 is rather kinder to the ear:
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)
Today we talk of:
the Ban The Bang campaign
book tokens
war memorials
Subway flouting ancient Jewish food laws
bananas The Shadow Of The Wind
FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL
Sir Walter Scott
coloured bow ties
poor nervy birds
and
pineapples up the arse.
Plus: Olly offends Andrew Lincoln but stands up for the meerkats; Helen exposes her brother’s audacious present-recycling tricks; and Martin the Sound Man tries out his common touch, but fails to convince. C-, Martin!
As ever, we want YOUR QUESTIONS via answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877; and this week we would also like you to comment upon this post with your top tips for godparents (are you one? Do you have one? And aside from the obligatory birthday tenner, have you ever actually been deployed in active godparental service?). Alternatively, you can share stories of the worst present you have ever given, in an attempt to amuse us whilst assuaging the guilt that will NEVER LEAVE YOU. Win-win.
Oh dearie dear. Our coverage in Episode 115 of Reggie’s epilepsy dog/girlfriend dilemma seems to have resulted in a resolution – but not a happy one. You lot voted, while Reggie’s girlfriend voted with her feet. Commiserations, Reggie, although you’ve still got the cat to comfort you, eh?
Anyway, let’s hope that we don’t destroy any more relationships in Answer Me This! Episode 116:
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)
Wherein we discuss:
Tesco Finest creamy fish pie
Hugh Laurie’s face trumpet our Helge Rubinstein campaign
Maidstone
Stingy Jack
things to do in Rye
Russell Howard vs. William Hague
salmonella
politicised Peter’s Friends
freestanding baths Bliss Magazine
Harry Potter
and
the world’s grossest bikini.
Plus: Olly has a novel method of keeping those trick-or-treaters away; Helen blurts out the Sensational Secret that her family revealed just 29 1/2 years ago; and Martin the Sound Man sets a challenge for the Olympic Committee. He’s got pluck, it’s true.
As well as sending us YOUR QUESTIONS – which you can do by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or voicemailing Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877 – this week we also want to hear your stories of your finest ancestors and your own best moments of fame. Dazzle us all by posting a comment below!