EPISODE 246 – if Alex Parks sat on my face, I wouldn’t recognise her

Happy Valentine’s Day, listeners! We know how you love to celebrate the feast day of the patron saint of plague, epilepsy and bee-keeping, so we’ve got a wonderful gift for you: A FREE AUDIOBOOK FROM AUDIBLE! Gallivant to answermethispodcast.com/audible right now to get it, then as a warm-up to your many hours of free audio content, listen to half an hour of free audio content, ie Answer Me This! Episode 246:

This week we consider:

the Chinese zodiac
the longest queue ever
Lemar
premium cinema seats
stop-motion water
baby clothes
asexual koalas
Mike Leigh vs. Red Dragon
Les Miserables vs. Undercover Boss
Mary Poppins vs. The Sound of Music
Pete Doherty vs. Peter Brame
and
the point of kissing.

Plus: Olly’s going to build his business empire on XXX fortune teller fish, whilst Helen’s looking into a range of mouth condoms for slimmers; and Martin the Sound Man is a shrivelled little short tongue man. But at least he’s not the only one.

This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is further contemplation upon the masterwork of David Sneddon, star of Fame Academy series 1 and AMT245. It’s a song which bears many hours, nay months, of interpretation. This week’s lesson: what’s up with your sleeves, Sneddon?

Instead of whatever Valentine’s love token you were planning to give us, please send your QUESTIONS: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis. (Although, when we say ‘instead’, we do mean ‘as well as’, if the token was heart-shaped boxes of Ferrero Rocher. Keep ‘em coming.)

See you next Thursday,

Helen & Olly

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Great British Questions Episode 2: Film

We’re delighted you all seemed to enjoy last week’s video of us tooling around Britain in search of cheese; and we hope you feel just as well-disposed towards Episode Two of Helen and Olly’s Great British Questions:

Where is Britain’s Hollywood?

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Starring, in order of appearance:

• Princes Street, Edinburgh, where in 1995 the iconic opening sequence to Trainspotting was filmed, and in 2010 our iconic looking-like-total-dicks sequence was filmed.
• Crystal Palace Park – come for the Victorian dinosaurs and the biggest maze in London; stay for the swimming pool which is 20cm too short to be used in the Olympics.
• Stonehenge, where the banshees live and they do live well.
• Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, where Sir Anthony Hopkins lived in Remains of the Day – before he got into chewing off human faces.
• Antony House, Cornwall. Too bad that, blinded by giant plastic mushrooms, we missed its ‘national collection of daylilies’.
• Burghley House, Lincolnshire – home to a herd of deer, the horse trials, and Queen Victoria’s marital bed.
• The Cars of the Stars Museum, Keswick – not the average Lake District attraction.
• Carnforth station, Lancashire. They play Brief Encounter on a loop in the waiting room, which would be a pleasant distraction when your train is running 40 minutes late because there’s a cow on the tracks.
• Oxford, including Christ Church College and the Bodleian Library. Not including kebab vans or getting run over by drunk students on bikes.
• London, playing multiple roles:
• Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross;
• Postman’s Park out of Closer. The Julia Roberts’n'Jude Law film, not the telly thing starring Kyra Sedgwick.
• The church of St Bartholomew the Great – oy, no need to brag, Bartholomew!
• Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, which star on the BBC Parliament channel all day, every day.
• also, nominated for the award for best supporting location: St Paul’s Cathedral, the O2 Arena, the London Underground, Notting Hill, County Hall, and Tower Bridge (out of that Fergie video about a different bridge entirely).

But let’s not forget all the behind-the-scenes crew: the cinematographer, the craft services, the key grip…OK, it was just me and Olly with two camcorders. But we couldn’t have made this film without the invaluable assistance of:
Jill Collinge – if ever you want to spend a very entertaining and interesting afternoon looking around the beautiful historic town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, Jill is your woman.
Philip Gompertz, for showing us around Burghley House. It’s really not too shabby.
Chay Allen, for allowing Olly to nestle his head in his crotch.
Shalini Jadeja, for risking life and limb running backwards with a camera through Edinburgh – and before breakfast, too!
And the Weinsteins of this operation: Tess Longfield and Rachel Aked at VisitBritain.

Please return next Tuesday for Great British Questions Episode Three: Romance.
For more VisitBritain finery, join their Facebook page; and for more of our tomfoolery, peruse the photos below.

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