Rub-a-dub-dub, two nuns in a tub – but what the blazes are they getting up to in there? Find out in Answer Me This! Episode 236:
Today we consider:
Roman wine
Roman semen
flamenco dancing
Roger vs. Wilco
wet bars vs. dry bars vs. swim-up bars
the Moorish influence on Span vs. Frank Muir’s influence on Spain
polluted peanuts
Sarah Palin’s password
laundry fragranczzzzzzz Pfalz Historical Museum drink options
the oldest continuously producing Cabernet Sauvignon vine
airport shopping
and
double disk drives.
Plus: Olly is a bit disappointed by his holiday hotel’s drink facilities, in that they did provide kettles but didn’t serve drinks through boobs; Helen doesn’t think you should trust Password Wallet any more than post-it notes; and Martin the Sound Man is never going to make it as a wedding singer if his set is just ‘Heartbeat‘ four times followed by ‘Magic Dance‘ as encore.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Olly reminisces about the time he had a wet bar in his student bedroom. People always think wet bars are so ritzy, but the Olly Mann twist on MTV Cribs fanciness can be yours for only £20 from Millets.
We are, as always, agog to receive your QUESTIONS, so please email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
By the way, if you’re curious about spiders after today’s episode, our pal Jim Bell of Geekpop podcast is your spider man. NB Jim is not Spider-man, he is a normal man who doesn’t wear spandex and seems fairly unwracked by angst. He is just very keen on spiders, as his website demonstrates – in an entirely safe-for-work way, we assure you.
Less safe for work is our photo of Olly demonstrating that, like today’s questioneer Brad’s wife’s student, he is the bollocks. Click here to see. Don’t be scared – it’s much gentler than all that nasty Staplenuts business last year.
Anyway, rest assured, dear listeners, that we think you are all the bollocks. So please bring your beautiful bollocky selves back here next Thursday for AMT237.
Holed up in the Holiday Inn in Salford Quays, we contemplated holding a Bed-In for Peace. But then we realised that if we did, the already oversubscribed lifts would become clogged up with press and peaceniks, leaving all the other hotel guests feeling far from peaceful. So, sorry, peace; we made Answer Me This! Episode 232 instead:
Today we consider:
the Virgin Trains slow reveal
personal massagers
naughty Amazon
animal blood donation
magic oily fish
Les Rosbifs
immature students
maths vs. emotion
cottaging
Ping (who?)
and
the Holiday Inn pillow menu.
Plus: Olly would like to reverse decades of progress in gay rights just so he’s got something to read when he’s on the loo; Helen is unlikely to renew her wedding vows, unless the magazine deal is lucrative enough; and Martin the Sound Man goes off to have a rest in the rest room. He’s a very well-rested man.
Check out this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) if you’ve been wondering what happened next in the tale of vengeance from AMT231 and/or why your pineapple jelly won’t set.
We’re relieved to tell you that our Skype problem seems to be fixed, but if you used Skype to ask us a question in August or September, we never got it, so please ask it again by dialling up answermethis. You don’t need to worry if you sent a QUESTION via email (answermethispodcast@googlemail.com) or the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877); it’s safely swimming around with all the other questions in our question tank.
See you next Thursday!
Helen & Olly
Martin the Sound Man has a little alone time with the personal massager in the Holiday Inn.
Of course we love being right. Even when we’re right at the expense of somebody else’s happiness. So we were delighted to have the correctness of our answer confirmed by questioneer Fiona from Busan, South Korea (formerly from Golden, Colorado):
I wrote in a few months ago asking for advice on what to wear to my friend’s Renaissance Pirate-themed wedding.
After I had picked out my awesome pirate wedding attire I have to say you were right. One of them turned out to be a massive twat and left the other a few weeks before the wedding. Unfortunately, it was the one who had originally been my friend.
She now is married (to a different man) and is pregnant now with his child.
Good grief; Fiona’s query was featured in AMT211. Her friend sure works fast. I wonder how she even managed to decide a new wedding theme and seek out an appropriate costume in such a short space of time.
What we learn this week is that you people are not very good at sharing. Sharing milk. Sharing beds. Sharing in the joy of an imminent birth. But by all means share in the joy of Answer Me This! Episode 231:
We share thoughts upon such subjects as:
Julius Pringles vs. moustache champions
Thor’s hammer vs. dress codes
baby poo vs. Norwegian cheese Special K vs. Special K
drawers full of dead butterflies
baby showers of cunts
Dr Faustus in the SMS age
soy milk
and
Queen Victoria’s wedding.
Plus: Olly thinks that the biggest problem he’ll face if his loved ones die is having wasted money on their birthday presents; Helen accepts no responsibility for Prince Philip’s bladder trouble; and Martin the Sound Man offers the sophisticated insult to end all sophisticated insults.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) follows the baby shower gift theme to its natural conclusion: death.
Meanwhile, keep AMT alive and well with your QUESTIONS: email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877. We’re relieved to tell you our Skype problem seems to be fixed so answermethis is the ID you need, but if you’ve used Skype to ask us a question in the last two months, we never got it, so please ask it again. If it was a good one.
This week’s obligatory wedding question is, for once, not a spin on “Why has the bride become such a cnut?” Instead, Katie from Christchurch, New Zealand asks:
I agreed a couple of years ago with my best childhood friend that we would marry each other if enough time passed and we both remained unattached. I would say we agreed on 40 as an appropriate age, but honestly I don’t remember if we even agreed an age.
That lack of certainty may make the whole thing not binding (I’m sure otherwise it would absolutely be enforceable in court), but my question is this, do you know anyone or have you ever heard of anyone actually following through with their backup? Do backup pacts serve any purpose other than reassurance when you’re lonely in your twenties?
My friend is a wonderful man and we have a deep history of love and loyalty, and I have no doubt he would make an excellent husband. Nevertheless I can’t imagine my fortieth birthday rolling around and suddenly deciding that the single life was up and it was time to settle down with him.
Good point Katie – is this something which ever happens outside of a Jennifer Aniston film? Readers, please go to the comments right now and let us know whether you are now happily/unhappily married to your backup.
Obviously this hasn’t happened to any of us, because all of our friends contemplated the prospect of marriage to us and realised that the single life is really not so bad after all.
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.
Time for our weekly wedding-related question, which today issues from Nick from Colorado:
During a wedding ceremony, the question is asked, “If anyone knows any reason these two should not be joined in matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.” What the hell could somebody say that would make everybody stop what they’re doing and leave?
Say for instance, it is revealed that the groom has cheated on the bride; does the bride not have the right to say, “Go on with the wedding”? What kind of system is in place to proceed ceremoniously after such an interruption?
Nick has omitted some important words: ‘lawful impediment’ (/modern-language equivalent). Though of course poor form, the groom cheating on the bride is not actually unlawful. Remember one of literature’s greatest examples of someone not forever holding their peace: in Jane Eyre, when [SPOILER!] the heroine and Mr Rochester’s wedding ceremony is scuppered by Mr Mason turning up and mentioning that Mr Rochester already has a wife up in the attic, and their marriage is still legally binding even though she’s a bit nutty and no longer good-looking.
Aside from bigamy, lawful impediments might include the bride and/or groom being underage, or too closely blood-related; although in Britain at least, these possibilities have to be discounted beforehand else you will be denied a marriage licence. I assume that our registrars have nonetheless kept the phrase in the script because the audience would be disappointed to be denied the famous moment of tension, followed by either OMGOMGOMG SCREAMING TEARS WEDDING CATACLYSM or relieved nervous giggling.
Actually, let’s push aside Nick’s questions for a more interesting one: readers, have you ever attended a wedding where this happened? Or where the bride and groom split up at any point during the proceedings of the day? Speak now (in the comments) or forever hold your peace (until our next call for your responses).
Of course I don’t wish misery upon any of the people I know, but I do think it would be a bit amazing to see, and admit it – so do you. You’re tired of all these weddings where everyone’s happy and well-behaved and no relationships go down in flames, aren’t you? AREN’T YOU?
We’re picking up good vibrations (good, good, good, good vibrations, oooh bop bop, good vibrations) in Answer Me This! Episode 219, thanks to one of our listeners sending us a Groupon offer for Power Plate sessions.
This week we consider:
gratuitous nudity
sexy playing cards
bomb shelters Sliding Doors, alternative version
abetting child criminals
Joseph ‘Giuseppe’ Pinetti
Apple Paltrow Martin
subtitles Slendertone vs. exercise for cosmonauts
and
Ceefax.
Plus: Olly believes china shops should tolerate, nay welcome, his unapologetic vandalism; fun-hating Helen eschews murder mystery parties, entertainment at weddings, and jiggling in public; and Martin the Sound Man is still imploring you to enter his competition to be the Science Songwriter of the Future, which sounds a bit like being the artist-in-residence on the International Space Station, but is in fact much more straightforward and does not require you to urinate into a funnel. Although, the prize includes a trip to the Green Man festival, so a funnel might prove more hygienic than a Portaloo.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) recounts some incredible facts about jubilees, such as how they used to lead to famine, and how the Queen was probably wasted on hers. This seems a suitable point to mention that the Answer Me This! Jubilee is at last available to buy on Amazon. You may think it a bit late for Jubilee Fever now, but we’ve got a £50 bet on the Queen reaching her Platinum Jubilee, so consider the album 15 years ahead of its time rather than two weeks behind.
If you want more AMT next week, send us a QUESTION: emails should be sent to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and voicemails left on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
We sure do receive a lot of wedding questions here, so if you’d like to relieve us of some of the responsibility of answering them properly, take yourself to the comments and advise our next two correspondents. First, we hear from Ben from Britain:
I am a man and in the summer my female friend is getting married. At this wedding I am to be a ‘bridesmaid’.
I have already rejected the idea of carrying a bouquet, which she wasn’t that amused by.
My first question is, am I wrong to not want to be instantly labelled as ‘the gay one’? As it’s pretty obvious already, me being referred to as bridesmaid.
My second question is, she has raised the issue of suit hire and said to me ‘We will leave your fitting for last in case you want to lose weight.’ I am 6ft and have a 38 inch waist. Am I within my social right to not go at all or should I instead intensively eat nothing but chips until the suit fitting?
1. Of course you’re not wrong. Why should your sexuality and/or gender be the defining factor about you? However, when you agreed to be in the bride’s band of indentured slaves, you were effectively signing up for whatever degradation and subjugation the bride wishes. And that includes carrying flowers, wearing a dress, participating in the choreographed dance down the aisle for YouTube, assisting with the bride’s pre-show colonic irrigation…
2. Stuff a pillow down your shirt for the fitting. And, for funsies, a cucumber down your trousers.
All too often, people who are getting married think they have free rein to treat their loved ones like crap, don’t they? (Coincidentally, since my wedding day, my friends now regard me with a mixture of terror and disgust! They’re probably just jealous, right?) However, our next questioneer Laura from Australia seems to be trapped in a cycle of mutual consideration:
As a single lady, if I get invited to a wedding could I take a friend along as my ‘plus one’? Or is it poor form as I know weddings cost a lot and they probably don’t want to pay for an extra meal for my friend. Making small talk to a bunch of people I don’t know over dinner fills me with genuine anxiety and having a friend there would make things less awkward as I’m not great at that sort of thing. Your thoughts?
Well, if the couple actually stated on your invitation that you were welcome to bring a cohort, then they are acquiescing to the possibility of paying to feed someone they don’t know in exchange for your contentment (or bulking up their audience). But if they didn’t, then I don’t think you can bring along a freeloader – and if you yourself don’t know anyone at the wedding, then the person who is only going along because you’re making them is unlikely to have a particularly good time in a roomful of strangers and salmon en croute.
It’s fine to fly solo, and if you really expect that there will be no mutual friends at the event, allay your worries by asking the couple if they can seat you amongst nice people who are easy to talk to. Hopefully they will be considerate of their friends’ social requirements, but as per my point above, it’s far from a given. So maybe take a good book along, as back-up.
There are a lot of really weird stories in the news at the moment – cannibals, dismembered bodies, Octomom doing a porno – but fortunately this week, AMT218 is a largely horror-free zone:
Today we talk of:
marriage licences
the Pitcher and Piano
expensive clothes
actors’ motivation Fifty Shades of Grey vs. The White Hotel vs. Wuthering Heights
Mario vs. Lazarus
moist Jo Whiley
Tinky Winky, live in Luxembourg
outlet stores
death by giant snail
and
#.
Plus: Olly doesn’t want to get married in Vegas; Helen doesn’t want to have to watch embarrassing bodies on Embarrassing Bodies; but Martin the Sound Man DOES want you to enter his science songwriting competition, so click here to find out how to enter before you dash off to your zither-room to compose.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) involves Claudia from Melbourne asking whether you can text the police rather than calling them. With all the cuts to public services, unfortunately the police have had to lay off their full-time team of interpreters waiting to figure out what you mean by HLP pls sum1 tryn2 mrdr me non-LOL srsly >:-O
If you still have proper command over vowels, send us a QUESTION for next week: deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Also, if you’re especially interested in what goes on around here, you can hear us being interviewed on the latest episode of Podcast Squared. We hope that the demystification of our Process doesn’t spoil AMT for you. If not, we’ll see you back here next Thursday.
We get many questions about weddings; they are a mine of problems. Such as the one suffered by our next questioneer, who wishes to remain anonymous:
I have recently been invited to the wedding of a friend from university. We haven’t really spoken much over the last couple of years, for various reasons, but we were, previously, very close.
The wedding invitation came with a request that I bring with me some cake to add to their wedding supply, which I found odd, given the not-spoken-much thing, but never mind, I enjoy baking.
Answer me this: on the basis of the invitation, plus my expected assistance in supplying said wedding with cake, is it acceptable for me to reply asking that I get a plus one? (It should be possible as I know others who are turning down the invitation.) My friend has met my boyfriend a couple of times, briefly, so it wouldn’t be like I’d be bringing a stranger, but it would give me some sane back-up in yet another wedding.
Also, if I take cake, I’m excused from present-buying, right?
Before you make your official acceptance, call or email your friend asking whether you can bring your boyfriend. Though it may seem to you that your boyfriend can take the place of one of the non-attenders, your friend may have budgeted the wedding according to an expectation that a proportion of invitees would not be able to come.
Or, he might not have invited your boyfriend outright because, not having seen much of you recently, he might not have known whether you were still together, and didn’t want to stir up something painful if you weren’t.
Or maybe he just doesn’t like your boyfriend.
By the by, I think the cake thing is quite nice! It means you get to eat cakes that are much tastier than wedding cake, which is nobody’s idea of a tasty cake. But, if you really want to stir the pot, Cake Wrecks has plenty inspiration.
Wedding planning! So fraught. What if the band doesn’t match the chair-bows? Who has to sit next to racist Aunty Denise? And now Ross faces a problem that Queen Victoria didn’t have to consider prior to her nuptuals. He says:
I’m getting married in December and my girlfriend (we don’t use the ‘f’ word) and I both want quite a relaxed, non-traditional wedding that’s fun for us and our friends. However, I think some of her plans might have gone too far that route so please answer me this: should I let her book the bouncy castle that she wants for our reception?
I’m firmly in the ‘no’ camp because the men will be in suits, the women in dresses, they’ll all be hammered and I don’t want to have to clear vomit off a bouncy castle.
Also it’ll be December, and anyone who has ever bounced on a bouncy castle covered in rain and icicles knows THAT IS WHEN BROKEN NECKS HAPPEN.
Now, I’m all in favour of fun at weddings – everyone at mine thought that sitting mock Maths A-Level papers between the dinner and the dancing was a neat idea! – but I agree with Ross’s qualms about how this might not be the optimal type of fun. For a bunch of adults. Formally dressed. Who have been drinking for six hours already.
Instead I’d recommend diverting the bouncy castle funds towards the cheeseboard. The cheeseboard at my wedding was EPIC. Ask anybody who was there (apart from the two vegans).
In the interests of democracy, however, I invite you readers to vote:
vs. exercise for cosmonauts
vs. 
vs. 
Answer Me This! Podcast 