Does a place make a man, or in this case a Mann? If today’s questioneer decides to move his young family to Stanmore, will he find himself raising his own curly-haired cat-obsessed musicals lover? Or will he just benefit from convenient Jubilee Line access and a nice Lebanese restaurant? We consider the benefits of the burb that birthed Olly in Answer Me This! Episode 251:
Today we ponder upon:
morning sickness
Pimms
poisonous plaster
flirting
the Wiki Wiki Shuttle
wiki wiki Ward Cunningham
phone sex vs. sex
carpenter-style jeans
Nupedia
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
human chorionic gonadotropin
the only non-singing, non-dancing part in West Side Story
and
the sanitary iPad.
Plus: Olly needs to learn to speak Bloke; morning sickness won’t put Helen off having a baby, but everything else will; and Martin the Sound Man is a big hairy flowerpot, and no returns.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we continue our discussion about equine actors; it moves on to child actors, then somehow to Olly having sex with a Battenburg cake. Which is the inevitable end of any discussion if you continue it long enough.
Next week will be a Special Guest Episode, and if you haven’t listened to the episode yet to find out who it will be, here’s your SPECIAL GUEST SPOILER:
That’s right, Dobby from Peep Show/Esther from Shameless/Isy Suttie from Isy Suttie’s comedy shows will be joining us to answer your QUESTIONS. So send them to us: leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Poor old B from Montreal is complicit in a right pickle:
I have a bit of a situation right now. I recently moved into uni with a girl I graduated with. When we graduated we weren’t that close, we were just acquaintances; now that we live five doors away from one another we have become really close and that’ss all well and good!
The only problem is that she has a boyfriend (who graduated with us, and is also my friend) who lives quite far away and I know something about him that she doesn’t know. Before we graduated they were dating and he cheated on her several times and never told her! All her friends knew but no one ever told her because no one was ever close enough to her to tell her.
So basically they are still dating now and she is going to visit him in the US pretty soon and she doesn’t know. We keep getting closer as friends and she keeps telling me about him and how he is so good to her and how he never cheated!!! I feel as if I am keeping something from her and even though it’s not my secret to tell I feel like she should know (because he also cheated on her recently).
So answer me this: should I tell her about her cheating boyfriend and risk him not being my friend anymore and risk her getting hurt, or just shut up and forget about the looming guilt that this secret is crippling me with?
Since this sounds like one of those situations where no outcome is likely to be happy for all three of you, I’m taking the coward’s way out and deferring to you readers. Go to the comments and advise B, because B has a pained conscience even though his infidel friend does not.
So many wangs in Answer Me This! Episode 205. Big ones. Little ones. Extended ones. Stone ones. Religious ones. Cold ones. Coal-fired ones…
We also consider:
Cillian Murphy in Batman
Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert
cemetery etiquette
snowman conformity
scarecrows
steam-power
phallus-power
naked shame
vibrators for health
Akzidenz-Grotesk
prudes vs. exhibitionists
traffic lights vs. policemen
and
pirated story tapes.
Plus: Olly doesn’t pull in Pret A Manger; Helen explains why Death By Vagina was a pretty unavoidable option for the sexually active Victorian lady; and Martin the Sound Man strips off at festivals, because he likes to evoke the bacchanalia of Burning Man all over the place. Or, rather, because he wants to go on the waterslides.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android), Olly explains how he could have prevented a decade of war, had the pull of literature not been too strong.
Next week, all going according to plan, we will be joined by a special guest: legendary comedian Jackie Mason! So send us QUESTIONS for him, marked ‘For Jackie’: email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave a voicemail on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
You guys are probably already camping on the pavement outside the cinema waiting for Twilight IVa: They Finally Boff. However, if you have a little room left for things other than Bella’n'Edward, allow it to be filled by Answer Me This! Episode 196:
There are no babies chewing their way out of wombs in the episode, but there is talk of:
Frozen Planet Riverdance
fun with magnesium
Scooby Doo: talk show host
Sammy Davis Jr vs. Jimmy Constable from 911
Akon vs. Shakespeare
flapjacks vs. fun cakes Scrappy Doo vs. Scampi
candles vs. ‘wax-filled tins’ Sophie Wilcox
scaring off the Mongol army The Works
Mario Balotelli
the scent of Jelly Belly
and
medical circumcision.
Plus: [Olly] Mann cannot live on raw cake-mix alone; Helen did not spend her childhood in the back of the wardrobe with Aslan; and Martin the Sound Man wishes the whole world was scented with synthetic rhubarb.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone, iPad or Android) is a treatise on Movember, starting with Martin’s recent facial deforestation, and ending up at Craig David’s current career choice, via Robert Mugabe and Halle Berry, because where else could such a discussion possibly go?
Next week’s episode is going nowhere without your QUESTIONS, so send them in: leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis) or write emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
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:
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.
Are you keeping calm? Are you carrying on? Because this week, in Answer Me This! Episode 164, we wonder how a morale-boosting WWII poster spawned all of this shit (nb by ‘this shit’ we don’t mean the episode here):
But before we get onto that, we talk of:
the G6 Summit
Bruce Wayne’s toilet Jingle All the Way
Muffin the Mule
bingo wings before bingo wings
kleftiko
Levi Strauss
Tinie Tempah
Club Med vs. opera
synergy vs. symbiosis
pranks vs. sexual harassment Tape
the fresh air suburb
domesticity, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-style
Groupon’s discount slaves
Shingai Shoniwa cutlets
and
bat guano.
Furthermore: Olly sees what could have happened to X Factor alumni G4, given a Sliding Doors-style alternative existence; Helen scripts Downton Abbey without ever having seen it; and if you catch Martin the Sound Man scrutinising your crotch when you’re at a public urinal, don’t worry – he’s just conducting a survey. At least, that’s his story, m’lud.
And if that weren’t bad enough news for your genitals, this week’s Bit of Crap on the App is a cautionary tale of how if you go orienteering, you’ll most likely get a stinging nettle on your reproductive organs. Heed that warning on iPhone or Android. Those of you with elderly phones, just remember to keep your pants on AT ALL TIMES. For nature can be so cruel.
Happily, you don’t have to keep your pants on in order to ask us QUESTIONS: all you have to do is send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by dialling 0208 123 5877 or Skyping answermethis.
Actually, it would be better if you kept your pants on. Sorry. We’ve got such sensitive constitutions.
See you next Thursday!
Helen and Olly
PS. If you’ve ever done anything particularly G6-like yourself, by all means show off about it in the comments.
Thanks to everyone who has already bought our book and/or reviewed it on Amazon. And thanks to all of you in advance for listening to Answer Me This! Episode 156:
Amongst many other things, we consider:
the Augean stables
Green Shield Stamps
Miami Fried Chicken Gavin Bryars
home economics vs. cookery class
cowardice vs. gullibility
Sperm Wars
Littlewoods Index
Cerberus
The Shadows
peppermint creams
Gauls
Take your Child To Work Day
Jerry Yang and David Filo
scaredy chickens Hercules played by Mel Gibson
Richard Tompkins
Jules Leotard
Sarah Harding
and
heaven on Earth in Canada.
If that’s not enough, this week’s nugget of bonus content on the app, we marvel at the young Olly Mann’s love of theatrical PR. A wickle Cameron Mackintosh, how cuuuute! His parents must have been so proudconfused.
You know what would make us happy? YOUR QUESTIONS! Deliver them to us via the Question Line (0208 123 5877), Skype (our handle is answermethis), or email (answermethispodcast@googlemail.com). You know what else would make us happy? If you can pop along to one of our forthcoming book events, the first of which is 6pm Thursday 18th November at Waterstone’s Gower Street. You know what else would make us happy? A nice cup of tea. We’ll sort that out, while you work on the other two happiness-makers.
We are delighted to announce that our book is out TODAY. As is, similarly delightfully, Answer Me This! Episode 155:
This week we mention such things as:
premature poppies
‘Barwick Green’
Abi Titmuss Essential Modern Classics – The Phantom Tollbooth
Banana Skins Slippage Committee
herrings
the edible Fleshlight
hostess trolleys
spinning cakestands
marrowfat peas
ten pin bowling, North London Jew-style
British population density vs. Canadian population density
and
Vince Neil’s eggy crotch.
Plus: Olly laughs and laughs and laughs at poor dead squirrels, because he is a Bad Mann; Helen wishes she still had the rushes of her unofficial audiobook of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret; and Marti(a)n the Sound Man lays down the law about lasers, which is roughly the same law that Perseus observed when taking on the Gorgons.
This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Becky from Westerham about the TP button in her car. What the blazes is the TP button? Toilet paper? Telepathic powers? Total paralysis? Find out only on the app! (Or your own car.)
If you require a bigger dose of our voices than today’s episode provides, then you can hear us on the Guardian’s Media Talk podcast on Friday 5th, the Shaun Keaveny Show on BBC 6 Music at 9am on Monday 8th, and the Late Show with Ian Collins on TalkSPORT at midnight on Tuesday 9th. That enough for you? Hmmm?
There are only fifty shopping days until Christmas*, and seven more shopping days until next week’s episode, so hesitate not to pose your QUESTIONS, by leaving a voicemail on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis, or by firing off an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. We look forward to them immensely.
See you next week!
Helen and Olly
*but you don’t even need those, because the Answer Me This! book is the perfect gift for everyone in your life! So thanks to us, you’ve a spare seven weeks to fill with hobbycrafts or waterskiing rather than schlepping round John Lewis. You’re welcome. Don’t say we never do anything nice for you.
As promised, we’re back from our little break – Olly at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Helen at the Wizarding World of her own living room – and without further ado, it’s time for Answer Me This! Episode 151:
Rusty from our hiatus, we try to remember what that ‘conversation’ thingy is that we used to do, and harness the following subjects in the hopes that they’ll cumulatively become one:
dental floss sticks
inflated pig bladders
Mark Lawson
sexy Humpty Dumpty
minstrels Porn: The Musical vs. Les Mis
truth vs. not lies Tycoon with Peter Jones Terri Hall (not to be confused with Terry Hall) the Spitting Image Chicken Song
unequal phone relationships
crows
Stewart Lee
Paul Daniels
stoned assassins
the sack of Troy
the Hogwarts Express conductor
invisible dog leads
and
Brian Krakow.
Plus: Olly finally understands why he’s booked in for so many appointments at the GUM clinic; Helen wants praise for her more obscure career avenues, thanks; and Martin the Sound Man wants to see a bit more of Ian Holm. Quite a lot more, in fact. But if he can’t get Holm’s pants off, Caitlin Moran’s would be a welcome consolation prize.
This week’s bonus bit on the app is a question from Catherine about why a kitty is called a kitty. As in a financial kitty, not a cute wickle cat, though just the linguistic similarity is enough for Olly in his now inevitable slide into becoming one of these.
We crave your QUESTIONS for the new series, so deliver them to us in the form of a voice mail left on the Question Line 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis; alternatively you can deliver them emailwise to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And, as we announced on today’s show: everyone who gets their question into an episode this month wins a copy of the Answer Me This! book! Yes, we’ve bloody well written a book. It comes out on 4th November. You can read a sample of it here where there are also links for pre-ordering it, if you are inclined to be an early adopter.
See you next week,
Helen and Olly
PS Here’s a family-friendly(ish) clip of Alice in Wonderland – An X-Rated Musical Fantasy. If you can make it past the actors speaking in rhyming couplets to anything even faintly stimulating, we salute you.
If, like Olly, you are delightfully innocent and pure-minded, listen with care to Answer Me This! Episode 144; for, like him, you will probably be SHOCKED TO THE VERY CORE to understand what the heck that mucky broad Britney Spears was on about in her ‘If You Seek Amy’ ditty. We don’t know which was more shocking: the blatant sauce of the double meaning, or the topsy-turvy grammar of the single meaning.
Delicious Miss Dahl’s dirty martinis
skate’s dirty parts
Sea Pebbles
citric acid
‘Scotland the Brave’ vs. ‘Greensleeves’
the MTV Cribs diet
carbonated champagne
matzo meal
Clamato
kosher fish
those child-hating bastards Cybercandy
strawberries
the spoon trick
Hatch End
fizzy cola bottle inequity
and
modern marginalia.
Plus: Olly compares his pioneeringderanged snacking habits to Heston Blumenthal; Helen ruins Olly’s favourite delicacy, tipple, and high school sing-song tv series; and Martin the Sound Man does a rap, gives insight into the dairy consumption of tramps, and otherwise disgraces himself.
We also peer beneath the frilly underskirts of Great British Questions Episode 3: Romance, exposing some mild disappointment in the world’s biggest coloured pencil, and wondering whether the Cerne Abbas giant has been slacking on his fatherly duties thus far. Meanwhile, over on the fair shores of the AMT app, we speak of marginal things we like. Nothing pervy, unless you are aroused by the shoes of elderly Jews.
Now it’s time to give us your QUESTIONS; please bestow them upon is in the form of a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype IDanswermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. How thrilled we shall be to receive them!
See you next Thursday for Episode 145, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Four of Great British Questions, in which we glug down sufficient tea to rehydrate the Kalahari.
ELECTION ELECTION WINEHOUSE’SBROKENBOOBS ELECTION ELECTION ELECTION KATONA. That’s all we’re hearing about this week, and frankly it’s wearing us down. Listeners, perhaps you feel the same; or perhaps you don’t live in Britain and therefore didn’t even know there was an election on. And now that you do, you couldn’t give a tortoise’s bra about it. But hopefully we can all agree to settle down and listen toAnswer Me This! Episode 133, before returning to deface Tory pamphlets/whatever the hell you non-Brit-residents were up to:
This week we speak of:
Tory tax breaks
Smith Kendon travel sweets
Kenneth Tynan
Scotney Castle
Birmingham Selfridges
Tate Modern
satnav wipes
sphygmomanometers
sexting vs. proper infidelity
Facebook vs. Friends Reunited
syntax vs. inflections
souvenir pencils
the Paris Expo
James Citizen Kane
Sarah Kane Hamlet II In the Night Garden
and
Ozwald Boateng.
Plus: Olly yearns for the rural life, tilling the soil and raising livestock; Helen is shocked by the potty-mouth affecting Woman’s Hour; and Martin the Sound Man seems to know more about blood pressure than the average district nurse. And some news that might be more exciting to us than to you, and more exciting to our mums than anyone else.
You know what’s definitely exciting all round, though? Your QUESTIONS! So give us a thrill by sending them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, Skype IDanswermethis or our question line 0208 123 5877. Our timbers are shivering in anticipation.
Here’s a situation none of us have ever been in, because we’re too boring/unattractive – thanks for rubbing that in, Fraser! He asks:
Recently I’ve been seeing two women who I fancy, one who I really connect with and another with ROCKING TITS!!!
Last weekend I was feeling adventurous and decided to rotate them over the weekend such as one Friday then the other on Saturday and so on. I did this to finally figure out which one I wanted to be with. Well, over the course of dinner on Sunday (with the one I connect with), I accidentally called her by the wrong name. Which led to questions which then led to a very smooth lie which I miraculously pulled out of my ass.
This lie was so well-crafted that now I have to make sure to remember it so that if it ever comes up in the future I don’t screw things for myself. My question is this, have you ever been in a situation where you’ve told a lie that then had to become truth in order to save face?
As we might have some lie-truths still in play, we’re reluctant to declare our deceits in a public forum that our lie-victims might peruse. But fearless readers, are you less chicken than us? Tell us your fibs in the comments!
We’re choosing to be proud “@gourenina: Catching up on this week’s podcast. Lengthy, civil & earnest discussion of dickbags. Well done :-)” 2 hours ago
RT @lbc973: Coming up with @theollymann: 35% of Americans don't have a passport - Is holidaying abroad overrated?How important is it to tra… 16 hours ago
. And thanks to all of you in advance for listening to Answer Me This! Episode 156:
; and Marti(a)n the Sound Man lays down the law about lasers, which is roughly the same law that Perseus observed when taking on the Gorgons.
