At the bottom of the post are the photos you’ll need to picture Olly’s mum’s erotic occasional table with detachable stiffy, and listener Erica’s sweary embroidery and butt planter. Oh, and beware, the pics are NSFW unless you work at the Saucy Decor Factory.
We also consider:
Cheesecake Factory’s most ordered item Cheesecake Etc cooking slugs gifts that the recipient asked for then never uses those cow sculptures that are all through town sextons Torajan death rituals (CW for this link: images of death) Spotify making you gnash your teeth when you just want to play an album too many boules not noticing that your home is full of clowns and how to own a cemetery.
Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you. Next new episode will land in your podfeed Thursday 28 August 2025.
Paying patrons hear from us before then, though: not only will you receive a compilation of Bonus Bits halfway through the month, and an ad-free version of the episode, AND our live video question-answering series Petty Problems tackling some some not so serious problems. Catch up with previous editions and be ready for the next by becoming an AMT donor at patreon.com/answermethis.
Check out our other work:
Olly handily lists most of his work at ollymann.com, where you’ll find his several podcasts including his news show The Week Unwrapped.
Helen will be appearing at Nerd Nite in Vancouver on 10 September, talking about mysterious surprises in Scandi versions of Dracula – tickets are on sale here – and if you’re the kind of person who appreciates sweary embroidery in the home, check out the Allusionist’s Four Letter Word season. Some of the episodes are about swears; some are not; and a recent one featured a familiar special guest…
…Martin! Singing a new song about poisonous plants, which you can get from his Bandcamp, along with his other songs. And keep up with his Beatles covers project at instagram.com/MartinAustwick.
OK are you ready for the NSFW decor photos?
Here
they
are:
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.
If your neighbours want to set up a catering business but you don’t want them to waste their money because think their food is sludge, can you stop them? Should you stop them? We face this question along with other matters, including:
taking butter from a cafe Popes learning Italian Danish wedding traditions morning suits “pip… pip… pip… pip… pip… piiiiippppp” on the radio “young, dumb and full of cum” in Point Break David Bowie emerging from a church wall and dropping your phone into a toilet at a festival.
Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethisto help with the continuing existence of AMT, and to get an ad-free version of the episode, plus bonus cuts from the show, AND you get our new Entertainment Experience: Petty Problems, a live YouTube version of the show where we are only answering questions that are trivial, unserious, minor. And the best part is, because it’s live, and you can hang out in the sidebar chat, you can weigh in on the problems in real time – and if it’s your Petty Problem, give us instant feedback. It’s going to be fun! The first edition will be 10pm UK time on Sunday 15th June, so go go go to patreon.com/answermethisto sign up so you can attend, and pose us a petty problem.
Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you. Next episode will land in your podfeed 26 June 2025.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.
Helen‘s entertainment podcast about language, The Allusionist, returns in early May with a season about four-letter words; she and Martin are also doing live shows in Toronto on 1 June and Montréal on 9 June, get tickets via theallusionist.org/events.
What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever found in your food? A worm? A lung? Arsenic-laced hundreds and thousands? Gird your stomach for Answer Me This! Episode 355, in which we discuss:
food hygiene ratings
pig nipple bacon
Stanley Mann style
dating your dadalike
shipping it
Larry Stylinson
stans
stoners
Agatha Christie’s cornflour
store detectives
and
that Subway smell.
Plus: Olly shows up a logical flaw in ‘Stan‘; Helen went on an evening out, once; and Martin the Sound Man’s fragile guts are the only restaurant hygiene rating you need.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App is a question from Michelle about the phrase “How’s your father?” Get the app for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices.
Want to hear more from us? There’s the retro AMT episode that lands your feed mid-month – right now you can hear AMT222, in which we learn about Battersea Power Station and the Brighton Pavilion, and coin a phrase that will chime in your mind forevermore every time you pass a branch of Giraffe. To get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. All of our back catalogue is available from answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums.
Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Go forth and build yourseelf a website! Play around during the two-week free trial, then get 10% off Squarespace’s website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
We’ll be back with AMT356 on 2 November 2017, and with a Retro AMT episode on 19 October.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT355 Child-Friendly Rating: 55%. Questions about sexy fan fiction and Tinder dating, but nothing too lewd. Discussion of drugs, albeit an incredibly square one. A couple of swearsy. •••
Had any good celeb-spots lately? However good yours are, there’s no way they’re as good as the celeb-spot hat trick Olly scored last week. “Who who WHO?” you wail! Find out in Answer Me This! Episode 352, along with problems regarding:
two laptops
two red barstools
two subtitle generators
sofabeds < sofas < beds
breakfast bars
Dothraki grammar Better Late Than Never Naked Attraction (NOT to be confused with Naked and Afraid) – NB both links are NSFW
hotel turndowns
electoral returning officers Answering Wankers’ ProblemsCorrespondCuntsPoints of View
and Indian cress.
For today's Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – Olly takes a crap at a place of artistic significance. Perhaps his crap could be interpreted as HIGH ART. One day. Not this day, though; it’s just a crap.
Want to hear more from us? There’s the retro AMT episode we throw into your feed mid-month; to get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. All of our back catalogue is available from answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums including the AMT Sports Day.
Thanks to our sponsor Squarespace.com you can build yourself a very spruce website. Play around during the two-week free trial, then get 10% off Squarespace’s website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Ten years. Ten years! TEN. YEARS. Ten years we’ve been doing this show. TEN.
In that time, technologies have waxed and waned; world leaders have come and gone; yet here we still are, answering the questions that you supply, just as we did in episode 1 all the way back in January 2007, and in every episode in between.
To celebrate the show’s birthday, in Answer Me This! Episode 346 we provide a thrilling glimpse into the AMT Process, receive a gift from a musical hero, and tackle a question on Olly’s favourite third favourite subject. We also discuss:
Mickey Mouse
sentimental dehydrators
rubber fetishes
grown-up purchases
Helen’s lost engagement ring vs Helen’s lost copy of Heathers
Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans vs Campbell’s actual soup cans
graphic design vs fine art vs graphic design
file-in-cake-based prison breaks
British bears
British beavers
and
why you should never lend things to friends if you ever want to get those things back.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – we consider another problem for a Mickey Mouse reboot: the voice. Disney, if you’re listening, we have a suggestion for who should play Mickey. Go on, give it a go…
You should give our album AMT Love a go, if you want to hear an hour of us talking about sex and relationships. It’s available from the AMT store – you can also get it from iTunes and Amazon, if you prefer – along with our other albums and our classic episodes. We can’t pretend that listening back to the first episode today didn’t make us wince, but for just 79.9p it’s a good price for a wince.
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
Bigger thanks to YOU for listening and sending in questions and supplying kind messages and buying our stuff and generally supporting us during the past decade.
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.
Mouche, Van Dyke, jazz dab, goat tuft: in AMT315 we learned many synonyms for the reviled facial hair style commonly known as the soul patch. And there are even more! Martyn writes:
Is it only ‘oop North’ where the little bit of face fur that sits below the lower lip is referred to as a ‘taste keeper’, due to the probability of food getting caught up in there?
If you seek similarities, Martyn, look to the far south, towards Gemma in Tempe, Sydney, Australia:
In Australia the Soul Patch or Jazz Dab is often called a ‘flavour saver’. I assume because if you dribble your curry in it you can save it for Ron (later on).
Adele adds:
I’m surprised you didn’t cover the term ‘lady pleaser’. This is also used to describe a soul patch. That bit of friction just under the bottom lip.
That explains why so many people persist with them, because it can’t be for the look.
Do you have any vernacular terms for the jazz soul flavour pleaser? Let us know in the comments. If we get enough, we’ll compile a study of geographical differences and submit it as a masters.
Remember the AMT303 question about an online dater seeking handjobs with cheese, and the feedback in AMT304 about the notorious aficionado of such, the Swiss Cheese Pervert?
Well, even if you don’t, the above paragraph probably filled in the blanks.
Kate from Pennsylvania has further news of such:
I was amazed that the local story of the legendary Cheese Pervert reached across the pond when Liz in Brooklyn asked how a cheese hand job would be performed. It seems this man cast a wide net on dating sites, as one of my best friends told me the same story about five years ago.
It turns out that the man in question grew quite desperate and was arrested in Philadelphia for, well, “presenting” himself to women with cheese in hand. The story made the local news, and it turns out that I actually have several friends who received similar messages, and there is a definitive answer to the question from the man himself.
Liz was correct, and his preference is slices of Swiss cheese.
Thanks for the confirmation, Kate, that the correct medium for the cheesy hand job is sliced Swiss cheese. It would be terribly embarrassing for our listeners if they greeted their online assignation with a Mini Babybel or luscious Vacherin. What a boner-killer.
If there are any hairdressers, trichologists or mythbusters reading this, please go to the comments ASAP to answer this question from Hollie in Reading:
My boyfriend is adamant that hairdressers never wear flip flops because if they get cut hair on their feet it can attach itself and grow!
Is this true?
We have been arguing about it for 5 years and he is wearing me down. It sounds so ridiculous but he is certain and even got a hairdresser friend to tell me ‘the truth’ and she agreed with him! Is he right? Can hair attach itself to other people’s skin?
I would imagine that hair trimmings, particularly short ones, could stick like a splinter into a hairdresser’s foot, hence them choosing more protective footwear. But, just as a splinter in your foot won’t grow into a sapling, NO OF COURSE SOMEONE ELSE’S HAIR TRIMMINGS CANNOT TAKE ROOT AND GROW OUT OF A HAIRDRESSER’S FOOT.
I’m not a scientist, so maybe I’m wrong. But cut hair is dead, so surely I’m not.
Next question: if someone has particularly sweaty feet, could you grow cress inside their damp trainers?
Does anyone know of an earlier instance of a baked bean bath than this one supplied by Drew from Knoxville, Tennessee? He writes:
With twoepisodes now discussing baked bean baths, I’m shocked no one had referenced what arguably may be the first verifiable instance of the practice: Roger Daltrey reportedly risked pneumonia shooting the cover for The Who Sell Out in 1966. Apparently the beans were cold. Daltrey does look dazed and uncomfortable in the photo. Of course it was for parody, not charity.
The Who did in fact include on the album a jingle for Heinz Baked Beans. Eight years later, Ken Russell forced Ann-Margret to swim in baked beans (and soap suds and chocolate sauce) for several days of filming a scene for The Who’s Tommy.
Warning: this scene is harrowing viewing. Like a dirty protest in a bikini.
Ben in Edinburgh is not speaking our language (our language being the sound of rolls of squidgy lazy flesh slapping against one another):
I am into obstacle course running: tough mudder, rat race etc.
I am due to compete in an event this year called ‘The Unknown‘, a 48-hour event which is basing itself on telling the competitors nothing about what will be expected, and whose aims are ‘to get you to quit before the end’ thus the psychological element of the event is huge.
I am fit and train regularly for 20-mile obstacle course events!
So, answer me this…
How can I train for an event whose obstacles, events, skills required etc are completely unknown and how can I prep myself mentally for such an event?
GUESS WHAT? We are totally unqualified to advise on how to prepare yourself for the Krypton Factor minus the fun! But we’d imagine a lot of readers have put themselves through such events, and/or are currently planning to with the early January fitness fervour. Run (up a cliff, through a snakepit and over embers covered in broken glass) to the comments to advise Ben.
Seems Zora in Los Angeles failed to notice an invitation to become the third in a couple’s relationship. She writes:
I work in a grocery store and I was cashiering one day. A couple came through my line and spent the entire 300 dollar transaction kissing loudly, grinding and looking lovingly into each other’s eyes. At one point he opened a bag of coconut chips and fed one to her and said, “Wrap those luscious lips around that.”
I stood, bagging their groceries and attempting to ignore all of it, but obviously, that didn’t work super well. They kept looking over at me, and trying to engage me in conversation, but then they’d continue kissing a lot.
So, what should I have done in this situation, that would have made things more comfortable but allowed me to be cool cashier lady and keep my job?
You should have acquiesced to their attempt to converse with you – it’s much more difficult for people to tongue each other, or feel sexy at all, during discourse about whether they need their parking ticket verified or if they want to take up today’s two for one offer on dishwasher tablets.
Answer Me This! Podcast 