Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann, creators of 'podcast of the year'

IT HAS been hailed by iTunes as the podcast of the year, just been nominated for radio’s equivalent of the Oscars (the Sonys) and features award-winning comics like Josie Long and Pappy’s Fun Club.

Yet it’s not recorded in a state-of-the-art studio, but a front room in Crystal Palace.

The first homemade show to be nominated for a Sony (in the best internet programme category), Answer Me This! is the creation of university friends Olly Mann, 27, and Helen Zaltzman, 28.

“We were both doing jobs we didn’t like, I decided it would be a good outlet for our creative juices and a phenomenon was born,” said Mann.

Well, almost. They just wanted to chat, but a friend in TV production had some advice: if you’re not famous, you need a gimmick “otherwise it’s just two friends chatting”.

The format, which mixes the anonymity of the web with the secret-society feel of a burgeoning podcast, encourages listeners to email in questions about anything, which Mann and Zaltzman, using Google and a pile of reference books, try to answer.

For their first shows, they called in favours from friends (the first question was: “Why is it when I’m constipated I can’t think of anything else?”). But by their third week they had 600 listeners, more than enough questions “and it’s just snowballed”. Two years on, their podcast reaches about 20,000 people per episode and was downloaded more than a million times last year.

In that time, they’ve been asked if the Queen spits or swallows (“That was easy – we’ve never even seen her chew gum”), if you can make black pudding from menstrual blood (“Ghastly,” says Zaltzman) and if a 17-year-old boy from Gloucester should “go around and dick” his 41-year-old neighbour who flirted with him (“We decided he should, and he kept us updated as the saga unfolded”).

The most common questions are: “Why don’t you see white dog poo any more?” (“We get that twice a day – we refuse to answer it”) and “Why is Martin the sound man’s voice echoey?” (“Really, leave some things to magic!”). But general relationship advice is the most common topic. “That and people’s bowels,” adds Zaltzman.

“It’s fun and it’s interactive,” explains Mann, noting they attract the internet-generation teens Radio 1 is losing. “People like that they can control where the show is going.” The podcast is free – they break even by selling old episodes, and combine it with paid work.

They admit they’re using it as a springboard to get their own radio show, but say they’d like to continue the podcast regardless.

“I don’t think we’d want to stop,” says Mann. “It’s amazing to be chatting about something in your front room and the next day people in Brisbane are listening.”

“Most of the answers they can find out,” says Zaltzman. “But they just want to see what happens if they ask us.”

www.answermethispodcast.com