Welcome! We hope you’re doing OK. We’re keeping AMT a pandemic-free pod, so if you’re looking for content to take your mind off things for a bit, Answer Me This! Episode 384 can provide, with topics such as:
shitty spinach
Tamworth (again)
speaking slower
ghostwriters
badger repellent
young person repellent
leopard print
lion poo
that old mining town your dad bought
a fortress of toasters
and
getting your head stuck.
Hear more about Macaronis in AMT324, and if you want to try making crumpets using discarded sourdough starter, here’s the recipe Helen and Martin used.
This month there is a double dose of Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – where we discuss the most famous ghostwriter AND the most expensive toaster.
Hear our other work!
• Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning. Season two just begun.
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including The Week Unwrapped, The Media Podcast and The Modern Mann.
• Martin recently released a bumper new album, which you can hear palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. You can also join him in contemplating the work of Tom Waits in Song By Song, which has just got to the end of Black Rider.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Buy AMT episodes 1-200, our five special albums, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
Ever run over a fox and thought, “Mmm, maybe I could cook that up for dinner – but how?” No? Well, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 350 anyway. You never know when survivalist recipes might come in handy.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – cats square off against their greatest adversaries: cucumbers.
Thanks jolly much to today’s sponsors Squarespace.com. Get 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Martin just won a BRITISH PODCAST AWARD for his Tom Waits podcast Waits Waits Don’t Tell MeBut Waits There’s MoreSong By Song! Well done Martin!
You can also hear our past selves in the retro AMT episode we throw into your feed mid-month; to get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. Or if you want more of them at the time of your choosing, they’re all available at answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums.
Your mother’s been given some free space cake but she doesn’t want to fail her workplace’s random drug tests. What should she do? In Answer Me This! Episode 338, we tackle this question as well as such issues as:
Plus: Olly’s interest in sport is exhausted for another four years; Helen would rather be left with a yolk than an eggwhite; and Martin the Sound Man’s feet are irresistible to Harvey Mann. Another Fergie-style scandal in the making?
If, like Harvey, you can’t get enough of Martin the Sound Man, get our app – available on iThings, Android and Windows devices – because today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App is the tale of Martin’s recent triumphant mission to Coinstar. Guess how much! Go on, guess!
The album features a whole hour of love, sex, dating and genitals, and it’s all completely new AMT material that has never appeared on the podcast. Such as:
♥ Is it appropriate to buy sexy clothes for your mum? ♥ How do you make putting on a condom fun? ♥ Just what is in that liquid squirting out of your girlfriend? ♥ When you’ve lost your engagement ring, how best to style it out? ♥ Is your partner’s schoolgirl fetish something you should worry about? It’s not like he’s a teacher – oh, he is? Oh. ♥ How do you set up a blind date when you’re a blind dater? ♥ How can anyone feel horny at the prospect of a vagina bristling with sharp, spiky horns? ♥ What’s the best point of a wedding ceremony to call it off? ♥ How do they come up with all those lines on Take Me Out? ♥ What is your exhibitionist housemate really trying to show you? ♥ How many holes should there be in a penis?
Here’s a little preview:
Any further questions?
♥ Is this album suitable for me if I’m not at all in the mood for love, sex, or interacting with humanity at all? YES. If all these people were having such a great time, they wouldn’t be writing to us, would they?
♥ Is this album child-friendly? HELL NO.
♥ Will this album teach me what it’s like to have the Olly Mann Valentine’s Experience? YES.
♥ Will Helen say the word ‘urethra’ so many times, I will feel a bit sick? MAYBE.
You can get it from iTunes and Amazon, but if you want all of your money to go to us and none to Megacorp, buy it directly from the AMT Store.
Today’s questioneers have family troubles: troubles with their parents’ TMI; troubles with being an egg-peeling mother; troubles with having spawned a kid who’s a bit of an arsehole. Oh, the truth hurts.
You know what else hurts? Being a chicken at an 18th century fairground. Find out why in Answer Me This! Episode 324, in which we also discuss:
Disney jail
clock memes
peanuts vs monkey nuts
coconut shy vs cock shy
lard Oreos
omelette stations
oversharing parents
Yankee Doodle vs Pretty Fly For A White Guy
historical hipsters The Eggstractor (approach with caution)
boners
and
BONGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!
Plus: Olly delivers TMI about both breakfast buffets and boners (separately, not together, although we wouldn’t put it past him); even after 30 years, Helen is still in the grip of the Brownies’ indoctrination; and Martin the Sound Man has a new podcast, and the whole first series is OUT NOW at songbysongpodcast.com, so go and listen to it (after you’ve finished AMT324 first, of course).
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iThings, Android and Windows devices – we wonder where all the diabolical pop covers of Yankee Doodle are. And before you say, “Careful what you wish for,” NB we are NOT wishing for this. Stand down, Pitbull. Zip it, Rednex.
However, there is no need to exercise such restraint when it comes to trying out today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Use the code ANSWER to get 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year, which include a URL, loads of storage and 24/7 support. Go on, stop talking about it and start making the website of your dreams.
We’ll return on 15th October 2015 with AMT325. BONGGGGGGGG!!!!!!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT324 Child-Friendly Rating: 70%. We weren’t being especially vigilant about swears, but nor were we being particularly sweary. There is talk of boners, but in an educational more than XXX manner. •••
Listeners, who is the bigger idiot: the questioneer who is too big an idiot to make toast, or the podcasters who talk about that big idiot for nearly ten minutes?
The only way to decide is to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 292:
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we delve deeper into the grotesque and terrifying world of novelty toasters. Join us if you dare on your iDevice, Android or Windows toy.
If you’ve invented your own amazing multi-functional toaster (“Guys! It can heat soup at the same time as cutting the toast into perfectly equal croutons!”) then build yourself a snazzy online store through our benevolent sponsors Squarespace.com, deploying the code Answer for 10% off their services for a whole year.
We shall return on Thursday 3rd July with AMT293 – but we’ll also be appearing on this Radio Academy panel about podcasting on 25th June; and as we mentioned, we’re also available at our side project podcasts The Media Podcast, Sound Women and Brain Train. Furthermore, to accompany all the SPOOOOOORT that seems to be happening at the moment, you can hear us talking as sportily as we are able on the AMT Sports Day album, available now at answermethisstore.com.
That’s it! We’re off to make some toast. We could be gone for some time.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT292 Child-Friendly Rating: 40%. Swears. Cartoon phallic noses. Kicks off with feedback about parental sex, the very notion of which can be traumatic for your progeny. •••
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.
It’s odd that in his ode ‘To Autumn‘, Keats never mentioned amongst the swelling gourds and clammy cells that it is also the time of year where the images of schoolchildren are harvested for posterity in the annual school photos. See above, then while your eyes recover, hear Answer Me This! Episode 230:
In which we speak of:
sharing a bedroom
Dorian Gray Liz Jones
the Meg Ryan Game
glamping Olly’s friend Chay in a Britney video
sleeping arrangements
dehumidifiers
the Titanic Memorial Cruise
grey water vs. black water
big baggy clothes vs. Joseph Gordon-Levitt Aaron Paul vs. Aaron Paul
court artists
Ocean Colour Scene
and
relationship advice via Neil LaBute.
Plus: Olly has had enough of these mother-fighting snakesDaily Mails on this monkey-liking plane; Helen’s Kentish childhood was nothing like the latest Wand Erection video (see below); and Martin the Sound Man did not do a William Hague, honest.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (get it for iDevices and Android) involves further discussion of cruises, namely why haven’t hipsters taken them up yet. Surely it’s only a matter of time, though – after all, nobody ever thought bowler hats or the A10 would ever make a comeback, and look at them both now.
As we said in the show, do share your most memorable birthday in the comments; and as always, share your QUESTIONS by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or sending emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Also go here if you want your own Answer Me This! mug. It’s so big, you could probably go for a week-long cruise in it.
Yeah! We’re celebrating big-style, because against all our expectations (and common sense), we bloody well made it to Answer Me This! Episode 200. As befits such a landmark, today’s podcast is a bumper edition, featuring some of our favourite people in the world. Hear:
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 of this special edition are subjects including:
World of Warcraft
bro code Toadie from Neighbours
glühwein
giant peppermills
Dean Martin: boob man
La Roux: lazy
Pamela Anderson the Beavis and Butthead reboot A Child Called It
AMTfans vs. puberty
paramedic studies vs. media studies
Lassie vs. Bagpuss
Olly’s junior business cards
Switzerland 4eva Armand Assante
Cadbury’s Chocolate Eclairs
Malibu’n’barbecue sauce The Three Musketeers panto
and
hot tubs.
Plus: Olly measures himself on the Frasier yardstick; Helen impeded her mother’s career (look, she never ASKED to be born, OK?); and at last we discover multitalented Martin the Sound Man’s weak spot – deficiency at Warhammer.
This week there’s an especially Big Bit of Crap on the App, wherein we learn: how to make a fake G&T; where dolls store their Christmas decorations; at what age you should not accept gifts of pants from your mother; what the hell DFS stands for; the benefits of child labour for a wedding reception; finding love at the kosher butcher’s; the perils of a brown rice diet; and seeing the PG Tips chimps live.
The app is available for iDevices or Android, but on this occasion, the Bonus Bit is available to all of you, smartphone or not; click here to download the MP3, or play this player:
There’s more! If you require some borderline-horrific visuals to accompany this episode, check out the Gallery of Munt.
We couldn’t have made it to 200 episodes without the affection and support of you listeners, so please give yourselves a pat on the back from us, especially if you are one of the legion who supplied us with QUESTIONS. If you aren’t, what are you waiting for? Send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
We’ll be back next week with the Best of AMT2011, part 1,
Not to blow our own trumpets, readers, but we really solve a SHITLOAD of mysteries this week. What’s with carriage clocks? What’s Cher Lloyd on about? Why do people bother toiling away to earn money through honest means when they could just throw themselves in front of a moving car and rake in the compensation? Find out all in Answer Me This! Episode 184:
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)
We also speak of:
Facebook for babies
the great lost Arctic Monkeys single
the Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention
Parky’s Parker pens ‘Swagger Jagger’ vs. This is England The Simpsons Movie – X-rated
David Cronenberg’s Crash, reimagined
bears’ pre-hibernation precautions
compensation culture
Prince Edward
bulk-buying Tampax
and
the Hairy Moment award.
Plus: Olly is already preparing for the minutiae of his life to be immortalised in a museum; heretical Helen sees the World Cup as a prosaic, nay ugly, object; and Martin the Sound Man at last clears up the common History exam question about what was the primary trigger for the Second World War.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from Naomi about bathtime luxury, which unfortunately leads Helen to recall a magazine’s truly misbegotten sex tip involving pasta. Try it, then let us know whether we’re all missing out thanks to our reluctance to add spaghetti to our sexytime.
Hold up, we’re still not done! We recently guest-hosted an episode of the RadioTalk podcast; click here to hear it and find out more. And in high contrast to that serious podcast about podcasting, we also have the following: video evidence of the anonymous caller in AMT181 who thought his testicles, a stapler and the Keith and the Girl book would be a happy combination. If your curiosity really can’t resist, click here to watch. But we absolve ourselves from any responsibility for the consequences upon your psyche if you choose do so.
Something which has few negative consequences is sending us your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Come back next week to see what we’ve done with them in AMT185. We promise we won’t staple them to our testicles.
We, you, and everyone else in the world with functioning ears should be celebrating following the joyful news this week that the Black Eyed Peas are cancelling their subscription to What Sample? magazine, hanging up whatever contraption it is that makes their oeuvre so appealing to people who enjoy shit parties, and taking an indefinite leave of absence from generating that infernal racket.
Yes.
But if, for some reason, you start to miss the sound of puerile nonsense, simply fire up Answer Me This! Episode 183:
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)
No booms, pows or lumps, we promise; just conversation upon the following:
Christmas in July
BBC1’s Coast Shakespeare in Love
Queen Middleton’s off games excuse
sample groups
substitute swears
baseball
Caroline Quentin
Annabel Chong
Anna Paquin
Neal Street
Canadian cricket
verticals
and
Danny Baker’s Dozen.
Plus: had he not been thwarted by the onset of puberty, THIS could have been Olly; Helen gives Tesco some much-needed advice to raise their game or lose their festive glove market share; and Martin the Sound Man blackmails petrol stations with his bowel movements. Concede to his demands, or face the direst consequences on the forecourt.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from Simon from Beddington, who has one problematic nipple. But which one? You have a 50% chance of guessing it correctly!
You have a 100% chance of sending us a QUESTION if you properly employ the usual means, which are leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emailing to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Our new intern Apl.de.Ap looks forward to sifting through them all.
This week we, like you and every other breathing humanoid on this planet and the next, are transfixed by Wills’n’Kate’s working holiday in Canada. WHOSE HAND WILL THEY SHAKE NEXT? The suspense! Yet somehow we have torn ourselves away from the 24-hour royalwatch Jumbotron long enough to bring you Answer Me This! Episode 182:
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 our tour of topics, we respectfully nod at the following:
literal popcorn entertainment
Latin puns
orgiastic decor
the Leaning Tower of Pisa vs. the Windsor Crooked House
Jaws vs. Jurassic Park
Frank Gehry
top-down social change
moviedeaths.com
careless fingering
pocket fraud
and
Wetherspoons trainer snobs.
Plus: Olly doesn’t care what he looks like from behind, so hairdressers, let your imaginations run riot; Helen feels the full benefit of Olly’s wonderful manners; and Martin the Sound Man tells you how to customise your underpants for free. This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android) is a treatise on why James Cameron’s forthcoming Titanic 3D must be stopped, and not just because nobody needs to see “I’m the king of the wooooooorld!” any more vividly realised.
We’re keen to collect as many QUESTIONS as Queen Middleton has bouquets from Canadian children – and to present them to us, you don’t even need to line the streets waving! You merely need to leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. But by all means imagine us clutching the questions affectionately to our bosoms, asking you a polite question about your charitable works, then moving on to the next prole.
RT @HelenAndOlly: 🌴@What IS a wonderwall?
🎥@What was the first movie to have a director’s cut?
🐘@What’s with the big wooden elephants in Le… 1 day ago
RT @Erin_MFA: @HelenAndOlly Was having a particularly low moment, put on the latest retro episode, heard the news that you have a new album… 2 days ago
RT @OllyMann: Liven up your weekend by discovering how much Justin Timberlake got paid by McDonald's, and what a 'cereal facial' is. @Helen… 2 days ago
RT @OllyMann: If a comedy show containing roughly 1/3 'Neighbours', 1/3 barmitzvah preparation and 1/3 wanking appeals to you...
you have u… 3 days ago
