Apologies for the unscheduled absence of a fresh episode in July, listeners: Helen’s neck had other plans for the past few weeks. But hooray, Helen is out of hospital and all new Answer Me This! Episode 364 is here! WARNING: there’s a bit of Medical Stuff in the first few minutes of this episode, so if you’re sensitive to that, skip to the 4-minute mark, after which you can hear about:
Paw Patrol vs the football World Cup
post-swim communal shower etiquette
cosmetology Cast Away
jesters’ staffs
cranberry farming
lost birthday presents Bram Stoker’s Dracula
and
an inflated bladder on a stick.
There is more cranberry-chat in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices. We discover a previous, more ferocious name for the fruit, and reminisce about The Delia Effect (not a euphemism for a UTI or the soothing thereof with cranberry juice).
Check in with our other work: Olly hosts The Modern Mann; and Helen and Martin are performing the Allusionist live show on stages in the UK, Ireland, the US and Canada this autumn – check where and when at theallusionist.org/events.
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show, and for making it so easy to set up a good-looking website for your projects. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
The Bluffers’ Guides are back! Rapidly become passingly well-informed in subjects from cats to fishing to social media to wine at bluffers.com.
Send us your QUESTIONS: any time, deliver a voice memo or a written question by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. You can still use the old ways of calling the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, but a lot of those messages haven’t been reaching us lately. So emailing a voice memo is the safer bet.
When you’re trying to make new friends, what’s the best icebreaker? One of today’s questioneers thinks talking about death is the way to go. See if you agree in Answer Me This! Episode 293:
We also consider less morbid topics, such as:
Viagra calorie content I Love Lucy
Wayne Rooney’s new hair vs Kyle Beckerman’s old hair
Vancouver vs Pinner
chocolate vs chocolate flavoured chocolate-esque solids
fire hazard fiances
Jason Biggs
jetlagged hamsters Crystal Creams
Russian Roulette
giving references
borrowing a cup of sugar
and
fucking a pork pie.
Plus: Olly explains the difference between Jewish front gardens and gentile front gardens; Helen will be hibernating all summer (correct term: ‘aestivating‘); and Martin the Sound Man has a restaurant ratings system that will render Michelin stars obsolete.
Since this episode kicks off (yes I went there) with football, one of our least favourite topics, we address another in today’s Bit of Crap on the App: zombies. We could scarcely feel more ambivalent, but since so many of you love them, do your special zombie walk over to the app store in order to listen on your iDevice, Android or Windows toy.
••• AMT293 Child-Friendly Rating: Squeaky-clean first third, then a question about Viagra. This is alright, until around 19 minutes into the episode the conversation turns to American Pie, whence it degenerates horribly. The rest of the episode is fine aside from a few swears, but realistically you’ll already have had to switch over to Fun Kids, so overall we have to rate this episode as 27%. •••
Today, one poor tired questioneer asks how to stop being kept awake by their mum’s sex noise. Any advice for them? Apart from cranking up Answer Me This! Episode 291 for forty-three minutes of respite?
We speak of:
hat world records
rodeo clowns
bank robbery
converting to Judaism
baht vs Bitcoin Craig David’s Toffee Crisps vs Busta Rhymes’ Courvoisier
Papal holidays
presidential golf Castel Gandolfo
Chequers
webuyanycar.com
the pronunciation of ‘niche’
shaking like a Polaroid picture
and
$.
Plus: Olly will SEE YOU IN HELL if you use Shazam during the pub quiz music round; Helen has a terrible confession to make about Pitbull; and Martin the Sound Man is panicking about what to talk about if he is ever invited on a lads’ holiday with the Pope. We smell an odd couple sitcom…
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we contemplate the wellbeing of the boys brought together as McBusted, and of Jason Orange’s tearducts. Hear it and not-weep on your iDevices, Android or Windows gadgets.
It only remains for us to thank Squarespace.com for supporting this episode. They’re also supporting your own website-building enterprises by offering you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer. Gawd bless’em.
And gawd bless you, listeners! We shall return on Thursday 19th June with AMT292, barring terrifying and unforseeable acts of gawd.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT291 Child-Friendly Rating: 54%. A few F-bombs. A clip about the clap. Question about parent’s sex life, the very notion of which may traumatise your child. •••
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.
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?
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.
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