Customer Reviews

Answer Me This

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Answer Me This! is a humorous question and answer book filled with interesting anecdotes from Helen and Olly. Many of the questions have been posed in the podcast but to read over them in this book and hear some new stories is such a great experience! I would highly recommend this book to EVERYONE!!

If you are familiar with Helen & Olly's altogether brilliant podcast, you will know what to expect from this book. Wit, humour, and intelligence - and Olly writes a few pages as well! The tone of the podcast is present throughout. Dip into any page and you will find something to enjoy. There are also plenty of visual features to delight the eye as well as the mind that are by definition unavailable in a podcast. If you're not familiar with the podcast - why not?! The book is sure to bring Helen & Olly many new fans and hopefully even more of the recognition they deserve. It would make a great Christmas gift and there are going to be lots of happy giggles and laughs on ChristmasDay and Boxing Day from the happy recipients. It's the sort of book you can dip into time and time again and still be thoroughy entertained, and it's a bargain at this price. Buy one for yourself and a couple for your friends and share the joy.

Even though a lot of it is just answers from the podcast, there's plenty of new stuff and for [...] it is brilliant value. Very very funny as well.

I recommend you to line Helen & Olly's pockets to reward them for their continued existence.

Until now I've been happy to listen to Answer Me This! in stereo but buy this book, open it to a double page spread, sit back in your EasyBoy recliner and enjoy the immersive experience of Helen and Olly in very nearly 5:1 Surround Sound (with Martin in fabulous Reverb-O-Rama). You'll truly believe you are in a front room in Crystal Palace.

Few know, because they are so modest, that Stephen Fry has the Answer Me This! team standing by on a 24/7 direct Bluetooth link (he is in reality a bit of a thicky). Or that Stephen Hawking has recently scaled back his research because he feels sure Helen and Olly will get there first and has instead decided to have a bit of `me' time.

We've all been tempted at some point to live our lives by Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man philosophy but in this book there is another option. For a year I have been making every decision in my life based on the advice of Helen and Olly and I can honestly say it is a richer, more fulfilling existence in every regard. I've also made considerable savings on groceries and council tax now that I am incarcerated.

I can only hope that following what must surely be the huge and deserved success of this book (will it be the new Little Book of Calm?) that the AMT team set up a community in Mid Wales perhaps or San Francisco. Here acolytes will follow their teachings before Helen and Olly retire to a more tax efficient location and spend their free time cooperating fully with the authorities in respect to their activities at the Answer Me This! Centre.

Well where do i begin, the moment i read the first page, i decided to keep reading. And on and on i went until i had read the whole thing! For anyone who listens to the podcast this book is a must and it also makes the perfect gift for any non-listners too! would =say that this is one of the greatest pieces of toilet literature of all time, i'd even go as far as to say that it's in the same league as the "Great lies to tell small kids" and "Bunny Suicides" series!

Answer me this: WHY HAVE YOU NOT ORDERED THIS YET!!?

Thanks Helen and Olly

Will form Ipswich

Anyone who has ever listened to the Podcast and liked it should buy this! Helen & Olly (and of coure Martin The Sound Man ). Really good Christmas pressie and if you do buy this...download the free podcast - my question about xmas presents was answered on episode 155!!

Buy it!!!!!!!!!!!!

This book is brills! I raced through it in less than 24 hours - partly due to the excellent writing (such wonderful use of vocabulary) and partly due to the format. It's almost impossible to finish reading one hilarious answer without taking a sneaky look at the next question and the next hilarious answer and so on. For two people who've made their names by being funny talkers it's delightful to discover that they are as good - if not better - writers.

I'd gladly devour one (hell, maybe 2) of these a year. Keep it up Helen and Olly.

P.S. I've been reading Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda since AUGUST and I'm still only 150 pages in - whether or not that makes them better writers than the twice-Booker-Prize-winning Australian is not for me to say. Buy a copy and draw your own conclusions.
Answer Me This

Really funny book from the podcast duo.

Bought as a present now I'm now wondering how to read the book without marking it.

Perhaps they could tell me the answer this.

I was not familiar with the Answer Me This Podcast. In fact I came across this book, when I bought Does Anything Eat Bankers?: And 53 Other Indispensable Questions for the Credit Crunched, written by Helen's brother, Andy Zaltzman.

Broken down loosely into chapters, it details some of the favourite questions that came in to the podcast along with irreverent, funny, and occasionally insulting answers. Questions range from the "Yeah, I always wondered about that..." to "Ewww, who thinks of a question like that?". It's a great little book, with facts loosely disguised by random bursts of surrealism and dips into student years past.

I feel like Helen and Olly are old friends, their half hour podcasts have been a regular companion to my commuting. They are over-educated, under-employed, over-opinionated and very funny, perfect company.

Basically their podcast is a sort of smutty radio four type thing, with listeners posing questions, which Helen and Olly then proceed to answer or not. This can provoke humorous stories from their past, rants, or even an informative answer.

Before criticising, I would like to say that writing comedy is one of the most difficult forms of writing to do well, iambic penatameters in latin are probably more difficult to get right, but after that written comedy must be a close second. This book is consistently amusing, and had me laughing out loud in numerous places. It is like Stephen Pile's Book of Heroic Failures. Ideal for reading when you are visiting the smallest room in the house. So that is one of the places where I was laughing out loud. Learn from my mistake, don't lend it to anyone else. My copy of Heroic Failures legged it was enormous speed when I let someone borrow it, it must have felt like a drunken inter-railing student with an enviable trust fund.

Having said all that, some of the stories are not quite as funny as they were on the podcast. The book could have been broadened out slightly, I would have loved to see the place where the podcast is recorded, and a little more biographical detail. The dominant voice in the writing is clearly Helen, so the banter aspect did not translate readily to the printed page. If you, or a possible recipient, are not intrigued to learn how to fart unobtrusively while in bed with a spouse, then this book is possibly not entirely appropriate.

Helen and Olly deserve our love and support, buy this book to read, or give away to poor people.