MISSING: 35-year-old man, answers to the name ‘Nelly’. Last seen wearing a backwards cap and a T-shirt 5 sizes too big for him. If anyone has information leading to the safe return of Nelly, please call 0800-555-RECENTWORKDIDNOTMAKEANIMPACTINTHEUKCHARTS.
Then, while you wait anxiously for news, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 167:
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 not just Nelly missing. Where’s Wally? Where’s Waldo? Where’s Walter? It’s an epidemic of missing men… But not missing podcast-topics, which this week include:
electoral register unfairness
fake tan lines
John Krasinski
D-locks Martin Handford
Lake Havasu City
TK Maxx vs. TJ Maxx
Walkers Crisps vs. the American War of Independence
the kingdom of Mercia vs. the kingdom of Wessex
Roger Federer vs. William Tell
Harry Potter vs. Queen Victoria
inappropriate poetry corner
massivesnouts.com passive-aggressive chairs
Soulwax the wrong London Bridge
the Ponte Vecchio
and
Mark Foster (whoooooo?).
Plus: Olly touches himself up – just in Photoshop, of course; Helen enjoys her own smutty courtroom drama; and Martin the Sound Man tells you what is cool – this is. So that’s 70s revival and spindly bridges on the style list for spring/summer 2011, OK?
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iPhone or Android) is a question from Ken in Brooklyn about the pickelhaube, one of the few headgear-styles yet to be revived by hipsters. Give them a few more weeks.
Now rack your brains for QUESTIONS, then send them to us in voicemail form to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or findanswermethis on Skype) or as emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Then we can weave more podcasts out of them. Score!
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.
by Ian McEwan. We hope this scene doesn’t give you nightmares.
