Gentle podcast-listeners, cast your minds back. To a time before The Rest Is… anything, back when Radio 4 ruled speech audio in an era when any podcast discussion included phrases such as “but what is a podcast?” and “it’s like a radio show on the internet”. Return, in fact, to 2 January 2007, when the first episode of Answer Me This! With Helen & Olly came out.
Answer Me This! – a podcast that had 26-year-old Helen Zaltzman, a book reviewer and comedy club promoter, and 25-year-old Olly Mann, a researcher on BBC Two’s The Culture Show, answering offbeat questions from listeners – might have launched at a time when few people knew what a podcast actually was, but it was a success from the off. There was something about the combination of Zaltzman and Mann’s personalities – Mann, a giggler with a vast knowledge of Disney and musicals; Zaltzman, a more alternative and acerbic wit – that appealed to anyone searching for a funny substitute to radio’s phone-ins or scripted comedy. Like a next-generation The Adam and Joe Show, Answer Me This! was nerdy and warm, celebrating what were then still seen as cult interests, such as Star Wars, with an equal co-host dynamic far from the serious male and giggling female cliche of the time.
