THE DAY HAS ARRIVED! Answer Me This! Episode 300 is here, in all its tricentennial glory!
You’ve deluged us with questions about AMT300, for example:
“Will it be your last episode?”
“Is it going to feature Gerard Butler and be directed by Zack Snyder?”
“Did you guys ever…you know…?”
“Is it possible to polish a turd?”
“Yeah but seriously guys, is it going to be your last episode?”
Discover all these answers, and many more surprises, by listening to the episode right now via one or all of the following methods:
Don’t read below this point if you don’t want spoilers! Listen to the episode first, then come back here and revise its contents.
Alright??
On the slate for AMT300 are such topics as:
our alternate realities if AMT had never existed evidence of our life of crime
long-term relationships
bumhole problems
mashed potato vs nutmeg
Peter Jackson vs Raymond Carver
bases
nasal honking
hiding your rubber fetish gear
and
garnish.
And the wonderful special guest answerers bending their wisdom to your questions are:
✮Adam Buxton, the man who made us want to do this podcast. He doles out excellent advice on giving your children The Talk, ridding your kitchen of mouse turds, and changing your whole life to avoid minor annoyances. Enjoy more of Adam’s work on YouTube, on Twitter, and at live shows including BUG.
✮Sarah Millican, who even manages to make questions about anal fissures sound charming and wholesome. It’s a gift! Her new DVD Home Bird is available for pre-order; she’s writing for the new online magazine Standard Issue, and she dispenses Sarahmillicandour at twitter.com/SarahMillican75.
✮Jesse and Theresa Thorn, the first couple of podcasting, the power behind the Maximum Fun throne (at MaxFun, they record everything sitting on thrones). Tackling questions upon Americana and parental embarrassment, it’s a rare treat to hear them on a podcast together – but it’s a regular treat to hear them on their own podcasts, which include One Bad Mother, Bullseye, Jordan, Jesse, Go!, Judge John Hodgman… Yeah, it took us nearly eight years to churn out 300 podcasts; they probably do more than that a month. And just in case you needed even more podcast-related excitement on top of this, it’s MaxFunWeek right now, so you can have maximum fun with other podcast aficionados around the world.
✮Josie Long, who delighted you in AMT84 and returns to do the same, on such matters as losing your virginity, beating procrastination and Lord of the Rings – the latter with the help of her boyfriend Simon of the Picturehouse Podcast. We hope this important matter doesn’t come between them… As well as seeing Josie on stage, you can hear her on her Lost Treasures of the Black Heart podcast, and the new series of Radio 4’s Short Cuts.
✮Tony Blackburn. TONY. BLACKBURN! Answering YOUR questions and sounding off about wandering eyes, Hobbits and nutmeg! He was the first voice on Radio 1 in 1967, and he currently has shows on Radio 2, BBC Berkshire, BBC London, BBC Three Counties, KMFM, Magic…phew! Switch on a radio, and Blackburn will probably be talking on it. You can also read him at twitter.com/tonyblackburn.
✮ Today’s new email jingle is by the Hackney Colliery Band – because there are few things more stirring than a brass band. To see them live and listen to their records, including their new EP Common Decency, visit hackneycollieryband.co.uk.
Our special guest answerers supplied such a lot of marvellous material, there’s a bumper tricentennial Bit of Crap on the App today – extra questions about tattoos, pineapples, balloon animals, taramasalata, adventures, wedgies, and there’s even a cameo from AMT190 superstar Jon Ronson. The app is available for your iDevices, Android or Windows playthings, but since it’s an ‘appy day, you appless can also stream or download it via SoundCloud. Or just play it here:
We could not have done these 300 episodes without you, listeners: without your attention; without your support, financial and emotional; and particularly without your questions. Please keep sending those in: call the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And do celebrate with us at facebook.com/answermethis or twitter.com/HelenAndOlly.
Thanks so much for joining us today! We’ll be back with business-as-usual non-landmark AMT301 on 30th October 2014.
This week, we learn a few very important lessons about sheep: not to underestimate them intellectually and emotionally; what they have in common with Margaret Thatcher; and what they also have in common with Helen’s mum. Discover these things right now in Answer Me This! Episode 261:
In which we also learn about:
emogothpunk style Casper the Suicidal Ghost
small-talk with accountants
the losers’ cafe in The Apprentice
BHS Dr Martens
free sunglasses
pony-drawn rollers
the Cabinet vs. the Divine Right of Kings
iced coffee vs. cold coffee Olly’s face vs. Richard Gere’s face
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
hair-blindness
and
advice from Paul Ross.
Plus: Olly had to go cold turkey on the brown, by which we mean Mr Brown drinks, not heroin; Helen sounds and looks and smells like an old fart; and Martin the Sound Man’s emotional needs are not going to be met by sheep. Let’s not even contemplate whether they can meet his sexual needs, please. But you can meet Martin’s needs by going to his website or YouTube to watch his spectacular new music video (/visual evidence of his nervous breakdown).
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Helen expresses her ever-unrealised desire for unusual-coloured hair. She may have wimped out of having an experimental phase in her teens, but when she’s a geriatric she WILL go full-bore Marge Simpson. Promise.
Promise us to send us your QUESTIONS for our next series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We’ll be back with AMT262 on 11th July, so please join us then; in the meantime, check back here for our imminent album, the Answer Me This! Holiday, our all-new follow-up to our Top 20 (no really!) albums Jubilee and Sports Day, available for your delectation at answermethispodcast.com/albums.
Byeeee!
Helen & Olly
AMT261 Child-Friendly Rating: 90%.
References to hiding pornographic magazines; very mild profanity.
Happy Special Guest Episode day, listeners! For today, in Answer Me This! Episode 252, we are delighted to be joined by Isy Suttie:
With Isy we discuss:
allowable celebrity shags
A Level revision tips (caution: may not work)
buying condoms
slapping your thighs with mirth
emu pasta
Twitter by osmosis
clean-up dogs
neighbourly mysteries
the curious habits of Seann Walsh Dans le Noir
cheese vs. butter
online bingo vs. offline bingo
otters vs. bears vs. gummy bears
the ‘Roseanne Barr type’ beetle drives
and
Roald Dahl’s Magic Finger.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we learn more about the pitfalls of fantasy crushes – especially when they’re on Isy – then address a question from James about why girls wear school ties when adult women rarely wear ties (Diane Keaton and Janelle Monae notwithstanding).
If this episode makes you wish for more Isy, her new series Love Letters is on Radio 4 Extra and will be on Radio 4 at the end of April; the latest and last series of Shameless is airing on Channel 4; her recent Sky Living musical comedy Miss Wright is still available on your Skyboxes; and Peep Show is always worth a rewatch.
It’s always worth sending us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Furnished with those, we shall return next Thursday with AMT253.
Answer Me This! Episode 206 is an exciting one, because we’re joined by legendary comedian and erstwhile rabbi Jackie Mason!
We snuck backstage to talk to him at the Wyndhams Theatre, where he’s performing his farewell show Fearless – click here to find out more about it and buy tickets – and we learned many things: real people are better to watch than Caddyshack II; Lucozade has yet to break America; and Madonna is a sick person (well, we did have an inkling of that already).
For more wisdom, listen:
Before you get to hear Jackie, though, you have to listen to us waffling on as usual, about such matters as:
legless frogs
the legal smoking age limit
litotes
sex vs. Buckaroo
Roman numerals Snog Marry Avoid?
proxy servers
and
heirloom gobstoppers.
Plus: Olly exposes The Artist complainers as FRAUDS; Helen’s inner Russell Brand is unleashed; and before you ask, the reason Martin the Sound Man didn’t come with us to meet Jackie Mason is NOT because no goys were allowed, but because he had to go to work! Science waits for no man.
There’s more Jackie in this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, where he holds forth upon the upcoming US election and Harry Redknapp’s dog, so fire up your iDevices or Android.
AMT is back to its normal guestless state next week, but we’re not alone so long as we have your QUESTIONS; so leave a voicemail on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) or send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Hey, it’s Groundhog Day! The day where a large rodent prognosticates the weather, and also the day when Answer Me This! Episode 203 enters the world.
Hey, it’s Groundhog Day! The day where a large rodent prognosticates the weather, and also the day when Answer Me This! Episode 203 enters the world.
Hey, it’s Groundhog Day! The day where a large rodent prognosticates the weather, and also the day when Answer Me This! Episode 203 enters the w- OK, I’m bored of this joke now. On with the show:
Today we talk about:
cats up trees
hemp seeds iTunes Ping (anyone? Anyone?)
‘Affirmation‘ vs. Baz Luhrmann vs. ‘If‘
gamekeepers
too much texting
Mark Zuckerberg’s businesswear Cowboys and Aliens
national stereotypes
lessons in love from Sleepless in Seattle
and
the hat that won the West.
Plus: Olly explains the reason for the famous British emotional stuntednessstiff upper lip; Helen says “Nooooooooooo!” to apple eugenics; and Martin the Sound Man generously doles out songwriting tips to Savage Garden. If you want to hear what makes Martin such an authority on the topic, direct yourself to his latest music output HERE.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from Alex from Northampton about calorie-counting bores. Talking about calorie-counting makes you put ON weight, dullards!
Thankfully you lot are the opposite of dullards, if your QUESTIONS are anything to go by: send those to us as voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis) or as emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. No questions, no show! We’re not too polite to resort to blackmail.
Welcome to Answer Me This! Episode 201: the first episode of the year, and the first since the podcast turned five years old. Helen’s niece Matilda turned five the other day too; she celebrated by eating a plate of spaghetti with her hands, and we’re only moderately more civilised:
Wherein we consider:
cake pops
Al Capone
moon plots The Gun Seller (or should we say Le Gun Seller?)
pease pudding Catch-22
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie
supermarket trolleys Ready Steady Cook
pushy parents
the North Wales Police
and
Anthony Worrall Thompson.
Plus: Olly harks back to when he won an election – he claims democratically, but then so did Putin; one day, Helen dreamed a dream of becoming Brian Turner, but never did it come to pass; and after twelve and a half years in the dark, Martin the Sound Man finally hears the sad news that the Two Fat Ladies will not be returning to his television screen.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) concerns the only thing we don’t like about Mexican restaurants: the unwelcome phenomenon we like to call ‘Guac Tax’.
Well, that’s the new series begun, but please help us make it an absolute corker by sending us your exquisitely finely-honed QUESTIONS, as emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
And although our birthday has passed, we’re stuck with the PO Box for another four months, so do please send us a token of esteem if you are so moved:
Answer Me This!
PO Box 53587
London
SE19 9BQ
Also, if you want to be moved to tears of derision like John, the final caller in the episode, scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the pictures of our parents (oh alright, Olly’s lovely mum).
We love you, you big diverse bunch. We love the fact that, in the space of Answer Me This! Episode 186, we go from a wannabe Olympian to a sexual Olympian (with a gold medal in Making Shit Up). With a meat-loving Aussie, an excitable pair in Harrods, and a crispy Dave from Smethwick in between:
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)
Plus: Olly admits to having watched Eurosport without his eyes throwing up, but only because it reminded him of Jake Gyllenhaal films; young Helen was dazzled by Wingdings; and Martin the Sound Man is a pioneer of the Banjo Slap Bass Afrobeat genre – if you want to know what the hell that sounds like, click here to listen to the latest episode of his musical podcast. This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from 16-year-old Joe from London. Despite his tender age, he has a very adult romantic problem: he can’t remember his new girlfriend’s birthday, but he knows it’s approaching fast, along with a ton of trouble if he forgets it. Pray for him.
We’re fully aware that the rest of you have problems of your own, so please send them to us and we’ll try to make light entertainment out of your pain. Leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis), or send emails answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
In Answer Me This! Episode 178, we finally discover the point of marriage. It’s not for the love, or for religion, or for the kids. It’s not even for the presents or the party. So what the flap is it for?
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)
Therein we mention:
the universal train ticket
Eliphas Levi
Buzz Aldrin’s pants
Helen’s slutty mum
the goat of lust
the shittest ride at Thorpe Park
pentagrams
Tetley Tea
McPizzas
Helen and Martin’s divorce settlement
and
the price of nuts.
Plus: Olly wouldn’t want to be the centre of attention on The Happiest Day of His Life (because that would make it too similar to all the other days of his life); Helen operates an equal opportunities policy for animals – she’s happy to cook and eat the ugly ones AND the pretty ones; and Martin the Sound Man tells you how to trap an evil spirit. All you need is a pair of compasses, a ruler and some chalk.
In this week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android), a question from horticulturist Stephen makes us go all Gardener’s Question Time. It must be the smell of manure on the rosebeds that makes Olly hallucinate about a time when we’re wealthy and successful, because if you want your own country pile with 100 acres, don’t ever go into podcasting. EVER.
We do love to hear from you, so please get on the phone (0208 123 5877), the Skype (look for answermethis) or the email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and ask us your QUESTIONS. If AMT were a sausage, your questions would be the minced pigbits, we would be the rusk and additives. And I think we’ve all just learnt why analogies involving sausages are not a good idea.
If, like Olly, you are delightfully innocent and pure-minded, listen with care to Answer Me This! Episode 144; for, like him, you will probably be SHOCKED TO THE VERY CORE to understand what the heck that mucky broad Britney Spears was on about in her ‘If You Seek Amy’ ditty. We don’t know which was more shocking: the blatant sauce of the double meaning, or the topsy-turvy grammar of the single meaning.
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)
Delicious Miss Dahl’s dirty martinis
skate’s dirty parts
Sea Pebbles
citric acid
‘Scotland the Brave’ vs. ‘Greensleeves’
the MTV Cribs diet
carbonated champagne
matzo meal
Clamato
kosher fish
those child-hating bastards Cybercandy
strawberries
the spoon trick
Hatch End
fizzy cola bottle inequity
and
modern marginalia.
Plus: Olly compares his pioneeringderanged snacking habits to Heston Blumenthal; Helen ruins Olly’s favourite delicacy, tipple, and high school sing-song tv series; and Martin the Sound Man does a rap, gives insight into the dairy consumption of tramps, and otherwise disgraces himself.
We also peer beneath the frilly underskirts of Great British Questions Episode 3: Romance, exposing some mild disappointment in the world’s biggest coloured pencil, and wondering whether the Cerne Abbas giant has been slacking on his fatherly duties thus far. Meanwhile, over on the fair shores of the AMT app, we speak of marginal things we like. Nothing pervy, unless you are aroused by the shoes of elderly Jews.
Now it’s time to give us your QUESTIONS; please bestow them upon is in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. How thrilled we shall be to receive them!
See you next Thursday for Episode 145, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Four of Great British Questions, in which we glug down sufficient tea to rehydrate the Kalahari.
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!
My girlfriend and I have been going out for a good while now, and it looks like it’s getting thoroughly serious.
We talked a little about the future one time, and since then, I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my head.
So, High/Secondary school romances, can they actually work after school is over?
Well. Judging by our various friends (because of course, we only keep up our various acquaintances to use them as specimens in our studies of human behaviour), yes, they can: many of our contemporary school couples are still going strong a decade and a half later. In other cases, however, circumstance/the inexorable march of time/inconvenient geography/Growing Apart/other people/boredom intervened; but frankly, all parties were probably better off as a result.
Just as you might no longer adore Ivor the Engine quite as much as you did when you were six, what you want from a relationship is likely to be quite different when you’re forty than when you’re fourteen. So the best scheme is really just to enjoy what you have right now and see how it pans out, because you will get to spend more than enough of the rest of your life worrying about the future. There’s something to look forward to, young man!
But readers, please do recourse to the comments to chip in with your opinions as to what Bob in Lincoln should do, or if you would like to satisfy our nosiness by spilling the beans about your own school romances. Lest you care, our own experiences of such went thus: Olly is now shacked up with the lucky lady whom he first dated when they were at school, although she did get a few years’ respite in between; Helen jettisoned her long-term boyfriend a week before going to university, which proved to be a thoroughly good idea; and Martin the Sound Man never even saw a girl till he was nearly twenty.
In Episode 119 young Ed from Market Harborough sought our advice regarding his fake girlfriend. They’d only been fake-going out for a week and a half at the time, and she was already causing trouble! We said he should dump the fake-bitch, or that he should say she dumped him.
I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT MY FAKE GF AND WHY I CAN’T DUMP HER!
1) IF I DUMP HER ILL BE A TOTAL PRICK FOR DUMPING HER!
Who cares, Ed – what’s the worst that can happen? Is her fake father going to come round to your house with a baseball bat?
2)IF I SAY SHE’S DUMPED ME THEN I’LL GET JEERED AT FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO KEEP A GIRL FOR MORE THAN A MONTH
Your friends are probably fresh out of jeers, having expended them all last week when you invented a girlfriend.
3)I CAN’T SAY SHE MOVED TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY BECAUSE SHE ALREADY LIVES IN JERSEY
Let’s not forget, Ed – YOU MADE HER UP! YOU put her in Jersey; YOU get her out of there! One of the numerous benefits of fake girlfriends is that they are highly portable, so invent her an interest in South American ferns and send her off to live in a remote part of Chile or something.
Buck up, young man: this is the only relationship you will ever have where she does exactly what you say. The only limit is the breadth of your imagination. Now, go away, and don’t you dare reject our sage advice again until you’ve stopped being such a silly sausage.
RT @HelenAndOlly: 🎵I gotta question
📧Email your question
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(or should we say Le Gun Seller?)
‘. Heck, listen to it even if you have no beef with Grease.
Answer Me This! Podcast 