We know some of you like to listen to the podcast with your little children, so just to warn you, Answer Me This! Episode 256 contains some bawdy-talk. But by all means go ahead and listen if you’re happy to field such subsequent questions from your progeny as, “Mummy, what’s a sex party?” and “Where’s a clitoris?” They were bound to find out at some point anyway, most likely from the school library’s copy of Meg and Mog go Swinging.
Today we discuss:
crunching on the quiet carriage
black tie and board shorts
seals vs. sea lions
holes vs. flaps
owls vs. Bruce Springsteen
fat Fred Flintstone
hot tub ming machine
pants sandwiches
swinging seven days a week
LinkedIn fashion fails
and
the etiquette of revealing your genital piercings.
Plus: Olly’s very happy to be the only man in a jacuzzi, unless it’s at his local sex party house or crawling with children; Helen retroactively destroys your childhood, one bloated dead duck at a time; and Martin the Sound Man would cast Holly Hunter as Harry Potter, Gandalf, Katniss, Edward AND Bella AND Jacob, Luke Skywalker, and his wife in the film of his own life. (Holly Hunter: “Er…sorry Martin, I’m busy.” (Busy changing her locks.))
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we worry further about the Flintstones’ health, what with the imbalanced diet and the smoking. They’re like a bunch of prehistoric cartoon Don Drapers, aren’t they?
We invite your ears to bend around more podcasts this week: Helen’s new venture Sound Women; the newest pony in Martin the Sound Man’s stable of podcasts, Brain Train; our weekly excursion on 5 Live’s Let’s Talk About Tech; and our recent guest appearance on episode 56 of Ian Collins Wants a Word.
And as ever, we invite you to send us your QUESTIONS for forthcoming episodes: leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
We hope you enjoyed the Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part I last week. If you did, you’ll also enjoy The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II, and if you didn’t, maybe you’ll prefer The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II. Either way, you should listen to The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II:
Wherein we meet again our auld acquaintances:
Phantom of the Opera
Hamlet Hamlet
Prince Philip’s bladder Killer Net
Angela Lansbury fantasies
R Kelly’s fancy parties
the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
Devon vs Cornwall scone wars
sex Jenga
the Owl and the Pussycat
the 21st-century Sweeney Todd
Olly’s solo sex tape
Helen taking an off-brand fruit into the Apple store
and
Charlie’s Angles.
And there are more previously unheard bits of AMT, which you can have more of every week if you posess the AMT App, available for iDevices and Android – on which you also get our Best Of episodes from the past five years, if you trawl through diligently enough.
Please be generous with your QUESTIONS for AMT in 2013: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
We’ll be back on 10th January 2013, but you can still hear plenty of us before then:
• We’ll be running through the year’s biggest online events on Saturday Edition, BBC 5 Live 8pm 29th December or available shortly after as the Let’s Talk About Tech podcast.
• Olly will be Manning the microphone on LBC 97.3 FM, 1-4am most nights from Xmas Eve to Jan 3rd – check lbc.co.uk for the schedule, and rouse yourself from your festive stupor to give him a call and keep him company.
• Helen will crop up on BBC 5 Live’s Radio Review of 2012, hosted by Jane Garvey and Mike Sweeney, which will be broadcast on at 11pm on Christmas Eve, repeated 4pm on Christmas Day, or, if you want to listen at a more sensible time, it’ll be available on the 5 Live website straight after.
• You can hear us discussing Christmas gadgets and songs on Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2 on 20th December. UPDATE: Here’s the link to the item on iPlayer.
• And we wrote some bits for the Celebrity Juice Christmas Specials; part one is already on ITV Player and part two will follow on tonight.
We hope you have very happy festivities, and we’ll see you next year!
Helen & Olly
PS if you need more noise to drown out the sound of sleighbells and Wizzard, direct yourself to our Jubilee and Sports Day albums, as well as AMT1-120.
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.
Happy wedding anniversary, Henry VIII! Verily on this day in 1543, he married Catherine Parr, and as they say, sixth time’s the charm. According to the Big Book of Weddings, the traditional gift for the 469th anniversary is ‘MP3′, so here’s Answer Me This! Episode 223 for you, you loved-up kids:
Today we contemplate:
speciation
bloody Mary
pub lighting Def Leppard videos vs. Duran Duran videos
Bieber vs. dopamine
pride vs. prizes
curry house atmosphere
crisp etiquette (US translation: potato chip etiquette)
farm-themed restaurants
sepulchral Hollister
and
that bitch Tinkerbell.
Plus: Olly is mistaken for someone even lower on the celebrity ladder than he is; Helen breaks the bad news that Cain and Abel were motherjeffers; and Martin the Sound Man has something in common with the Queen, other than his fondness for shiny jewels and waving.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available on iDevices and Android) demonstrates how Martin paid a woman to write his name on her body. For ‘charity fundraising’, allegedly. Good ruse!
Another good ruse is to send us your QUESTIONS by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leaving voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis). More questions, more podcasts, see?
And don’t forget to click here to check out our latest album, the Answer Me This! Sports Day – the best 59 minutes and 33 seconds of all-new sporty-talk we have ever produced.
Jon Ronson’s breakfast with Pocahontas
butternut squash
Tate & Lyle’s decomposing lion
Lulu Going for Gold
‘Imagine’
the theme from Requiem for a Dream
claret jugs
character M&Ms
Martin’s wedding pants
the Fat Controller’s wife
Owl City
Reg Grundy nepotism
staplenuts
Avril Lavigne fans
Anna Paquin
and
sexy Jews.
Plus some more Previously Unheard Bits from the bin.
Help us concoct more podcast for you to hear in 2012 by sending us your QUESTIONS: fill our inbox by emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, and deluge our Question Line with voicemails (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
And you can also fill our big empty box – our PO Box, what did you think we meant? – with some 5th birthday goodies:
Answer Me This!
PO Box 53587
London
SE19 9BQ
We’ll be back with episode 201 on January 19th 2012, so it merely remains for us to wish you all a very happy Christmas/atheist substitute and New Year, and to thank you very sincerely for listening to us in 2011.
Brush your teeth extra-assiduously before bed tonight, because Answer Me This! Episode 198 is super-chocolatey. We learn about literal death by chocolate (not carob, as if!), wonder at the untold stories of Oh Henry! bars, and invoke the name of chocolate behemoth Helge Rubinstein, again. Hear here:
Amongst the subjects tumbling out of our mouths this week are:
Plus: Olly wants to take down Annie Lennox, gently; Helen declines ‘pie’ (in the linguistic sense, rather than in the sense of turning down pie); and Martin the Sound Man teaches us an important lesson about diversity in evolution. We also recommend you check out the illustration which accompanies the final question in the episode, which can be found HERE.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App recounts where Olly had the Time of His Liiiiife – at his bar mitzvah in 1994. Have the time of your lives by firing up your iDevices or Android to get it.
We implore you to send your QUESTIONS to us, by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis) and emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com; but we also yearn for your hard-copy, old-fashioned postal correspondence to celebrate our forthcoming 5th BIRTHDAY! So please do send us something celebratory, to the following address:
Answer Me This!
PO Box 53587
London
SE19 9BQ
We really will be beside ourselves with joy to receive something from you, with which to festoon AMT Towers for our birthday extravaganza.
We love you, you big diverse bunch. We love the fact that, in the space of Answer Me This! Episode 186, we go from a wannabe Olympian to a sexual Olympian (with a gold medal in Making Shit Up). With a meat-loving Aussie, an excitable pair in Harrods, and a crispy Dave from Smethwick in between:
Plus: Olly admits to having watched Eurosport without his eyes throwing up, but only because it reminded him of Jake Gyllenhaal films; young Helen was dazzled by Wingdings; and Martin the Sound Man is a pioneer of the Banjo Slap Bass Afrobeat genre – if you want to know what the hell that sounds like, click here to listen to the latest episode of his musical podcast. This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone and iPad, or Android) is a question from 16-year-old Joe from London. Despite his tender age, he has a very adult romantic problem: he can’t remember his new girlfriend’s birthday, but he knows it’s approaching fast, along with a ton of trouble if he forgets it. Pray for him.
We’re fully aware that the rest of you have problems of your own, so please send them to us and we’ll try to make light entertainment out of your pain. Leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis), or send emails answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
It’s been a long holiday, but huzzah, we have returned intact. Since last we spoke, Olly has entered his thirties, and Helen and Martin entered the matrimonial institution (with each other, don’t worry!), so as you will hear,Answer Me This! Episode 176 is all mature and responsible right from the off:
Conversation-nuggets in today’s gold-pan include:
divine disapproval of Helen’n'Martin’s legalised union
Gordon Ramsey’s Cambodian eggy treat
phallic salad
the Pringles saddle
Madonna as Cruella de Vil
Pamela Anderson as cola bottle the tragic life of Mr E Forever Plaid
freedom of the city
aldermen
grungers vs. lumberjacks
caviar vs. frogspawn
and
Peppa Pig.
Plus! If you’re looking to pull, just take Olly out on the town with you; Helen bemoans the public interest in whether her womb is available to let on a nine-month contract; and Martin the Sound Man does not want to sound Dickensian. Spoilsport! This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android) is about the only meme to involve high-end millinery (that we know of): Princess Beatrice’s fancy hat.
It may have been a while, but you still know what to do: ask us QUESTIONS, in the form of voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. As a reward for your diligence, you can have free audiobooks and half-price Audible membership at answermethispodcast.com/audible until June 5th. Lazy people who don’t bother asking us questions are allowed those too, as an incentive. Carrot not stick, right? And carrot sticks best of all. Blend a metaphor, get a crudite, as our great-grandmothers used to say.
Welcome, listeners, to the first Answer Me This! of 2010:
In which we speak of:
the Next sales Sherlock Holmes
sweetbreads
condominiums
the son of Sam
Golden Wonder
Stanley Kubrick
the Queen’s Speech
Scotch woodcock
Johnny Carson
snake lungs
Anne Frank
and
the best public lavatories in Balham.
Furthermore: Olly manages to draw comparison between Lolita and Match of the Day; Helen manages to draw comparison between estate agents and kidnapped children; and Martin the Sound Man manages to draw comparison between a suitable Christmas present for his girlfriend and a DVD boxset about serial killers. Let’s hope he didn’t buy it for research purposes.
We’ve a list of chores for you to do this week:
1) click here to get yourself a free Audible audiobook;
2) share your neuroses, like shark-fearing questioneer Bunty did, in a comment on this post;
3) decide for the world whether humans are red meat or white meat by voting in this poll
4) if you’re still steaming about Walkers Crisps’ packet colours (and frankly, we aren’t), sign the petition;
5) listen to Martin the Sound Man’s latest music podcast;
6) and, of course, send us YOUR QUESTIONS for future episodes, via answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or the question line 0208 123 5877.
So, after you’ve done all those, we’ll see you next week for Episode 122!
