Answer Me This!
With my friends Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick, I co-hosted ‘Answer Me This!‘, an interactive comedy podcast, from 2007-2021.
After 15 years, 45m downloads, and 1000s of enquiries from our amazing Questioneers™, we chose to end our record-breaking run when we reached our 400th episode. (In 2023, we re-united for a one-off special, and hope to do more occasional surprise returns!)
We twice won the ‘Best Internet Programme’ Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards, and to commemorate the end of our run, the British Podcast Awards presented us with a special Lifetime Achievement ‘Gold Award’ in 2021.
Occasionally we featured special guests, who included Jon Ronson, Isy Suttie, Tony Blackburn, Sarah Millican and Jackie Mason.
“Funny, snappy, and popular... Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann have risen above the morass of homemade radio shows on the internet”
“Witty, inventive and moreish ”
“A great listen: witty, warm and winning. Time flies as you listen, and you smile as you do. Ace.”
“A great podcast that makes me miss doing one”
We were named ‘Critic’s Choice’ in The Times, Time Out, The Guardian, Q Magazine, Radio Times, and The Independent, and had an average rating of four-and-a-half stars across more than 1000 review on Apple Podcasts.
In June 2012, our first hour-long special, Answer Me This! Jubilee, reached the UK Top 20 album chart, following which we recorded five other albums on specific areas of trivia. We were the first ever non-musical act invited to perform at the iTunes Festival, we made a video-series for VisitBritain and Faber published a book of the show.
In 2012 we were invited to speak at Next Radio about ‘The Perils of Podcasting’. You can watch that video here, and, if you enjoyed that, there’s more of us talking about podcasting in this special Radio Academy event recorded in 2014, on the tenth anniversary of podcasting.