Answer Me This! - Answer Us Back: Naughty Elves and Same-names

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Hello! Here is this month's edition of Answer Us Back, full of your feedback on AMTs old and new - mostly pretty new. On today's menu: Olly Mann himself has a change of heart about Elf On The Shelf since AMT392. Laura found a variety pack of stock, as yearned for by Olly in AMT407 - although is two flavours enough to count as 'variety'? Several people wrote in to chip in on AMT412's discussion of people with your same name using your email address; here we hear from Margaret and Daniel. After hearing AMT411's question from Charlie from Canberra - whose mother had lately found out she was the biological child of a prolific sperm donor and thus has 600+ siblings - we heard from many of you reflecting upon your similar experiences of finding you were the child of a sperm donor, or your parent learning that they were. David, Breanne and Jo share some remarkable responses.  If you’ve been storing thoughts about AMTs 1-412, send them to us for future episodes of Answer Us Back.  And as always, send in your questions, in voicenote or written form to [e-mail], for all new AMT413 which will be in your podfeed 24 December 2025.  And keep AMT going by signing up at patreon.com/answermethis, where highest tier gets access to our ENTIRE back catalogue, including the paywalled episodes, the special albums, the Bonus Bits of Crapp on the AMT App (RIP) and all the Retro AMT episodes. Thanks to Naked Wines for sponsoring AMT, and for providing bottles straight from world-class winemakers, cutting out the middleman, delivered to your door. Head to nakedwines.co.uk/answer to get a £30 voucher on your first 6 pack, including free delivery.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to this month's episode of Answer Us Back, where we feature your opinions, listener, about the questions recent and long past in Answer Me This. But before we get to your emails, actually, something I have feedback on, Helen. And that is, you may recall in episode 392, the last festive edition of Season 1, 2007 to 2020, one. You say I may recall, but I don't. Oh, well, wait, you don't know what I'm going to say. When I say it, you'll be like, oh, yeah, I do remember that. I talked about my dislike of elf on the shelf. Elf cop. Right. Actually, I hadn't even heard of Elf on the shelf when we recorded it, but then I found out what it was in the course of making the show and voice my obvious displeasure for this consumerist monstrosity. And now you have children of elfin age. Yes. And I have

changed my ways. Really? Because you want an elf cop in the house. What happened is my nine year old Harvey, accompanied me to the supermarket the other day, and basically to stop him being a massive bell-end because it's not his favorite place, Morrison's. I said, if you're good, at the end of this trip, you can choose something to buy, right? I mean, within reason. He then got very excited when he saw the, he calls it a naughty elf. That's what kids his age call it. It's not even, I think they're a rip-off elf on the shelf copycat products now. And he was like, I want one of these. And I was like, okay, yeah, I was looking. looked at the price tag and it was like four quids. I was like, all right, fine, well,

if it keeps him quiet. He was like, do you know what it does? And we've had the Santa chat. So I was like, yeah, it's, it's an elf model that you move around the house in different positions. And he looked at me like, no, it does it on its own. I was thinking that's so interesting. Like, we're very clear on Santa, but moving elves, definitely a thing. Okay, fine. And he gave me the look as if to say, I think he knows really, but he was like, I'm going to play this game with you. It moves by itself. He wants to believe. Yeah, exactly. And actually, it's been super fun. The laugh of two young children coming downstairs of a morning in their pajamas to witness their toy taking a shit is worth its RRP. Do you have like 24 scenarios in mind or do you improvise

each night? We improvise each night. And that's genuinely part of the fun as well. I'm a bit worried that by the 20th of December he'll want a full miz en sin you know he'll want a diorama at the moment he's settling for it has its hands on a different cupboard or it's relaxing on the picture frame it's not being that naughty is the thing at the moment yeah it's not like full flower all over the floor not yet little crashed toy plane but like i say positioned on the toilet clearly trying to take a poo that's naughty enough for them big ripple of laughter and i was like well this is actually quite nice there's a nicer way to start the day then i don't want to put on my shoes. Yeah, they can save that for the second thing to do in the day. Exactly right, yes. Just a little

thing that makes life a little bit more fun, like my gin and tonic advent calendar, which I'm also enjoying very much at this time of year. At breakfast time? I do open the door at breakfast time. I don't consume it until the evening. Okay. It's quite moderate because they alternate the tonic and the gin. Oh, really? It's a pairing calendar. So actually it's only every two days that you get a gin and Jesus would be livid. Well, here's some exciting news for you, Ollie. Courtesy of Laura, who says, as you discussed in Answer Me This, Episode 407, please see my attached photo of a mixed box of stock.

I was shocked. She was shock-stocked. Because, Ollie, you were yearning after a mixed box of stock cubes. What Laura has sent is those little oxo stock pots where it's like a little goo packet. Yes. Yeah, a little tub of gelatin. Something that the elf on the shelf could use as a footbath, that sort of size. In rich beef and succulent chicken flavours.

So what she sent us is a picture of, I mean, they're calling it. Does it say variety pack? Does it say variety pack? I mean, it's not a variety pack, is it? It's two. I'd say you need three for true variety. Correct. As we discussed in the episode that she's referring to,

questioneer Lindsay suggested a whole rainbow of stocks that could go into a variety pack. I don't think two beef, two chicken counts as variety. That's, I mean, it's a conservative coalition is what it is, isn't it? Well, keep on searching, Laura. Perhaps Joy will await you at some other time. But for now, Oli Man could not rest on this stock variety pack. No, but it's interesting, isn't it? Because we had feedback after that discussion saying,

oh, no, my wife works in the catering industry, and they'd never do that because they'd lose money. Well, here's the proof. It is possible. And maybe an indication that someone from OXO is announced me this listener. Well, they've not dreamt big enough. No, exactly.

Not dreamt as big as Ollie Man. It's a good start, though. They need to dream as big as Cliff Richard. Did you see this meme last Christmas? No, I'm fine for Cliff Richard memes, I guess. Well, he has a Christmas gravy, as revealed to Women's Weekly in December 2024. Cliff's Christmas gravy. I'm not making this up.

No, why would you? I wouldn't be able to. He fries onions with dried, mixed herbs until it goes soft. That's a decent start. It's a reasonable start. It gets weird. Classic opener. He then crumbles eight.

oxo stock cubes over the mix two beef two chicken two vegetable and two lamb do you think he's experimented to get the perfect proportion he's like no two two two that's the best you want three lamb you don't want no beef

he then adds boiling water and this this is the finale which is impressive okay I'm scared yeah I you should be a teaspoon each of terriarchy sauce soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce.

Okay, that's a salty concoction. That is a salty mix, isn't it? Okay, Cliff. I mean, happy it's working for you. Do you think if OXO, though, said, we want to do the Cliff Variety Pack with your face on it so that people can buy it with all the ingredients ready portion,

he'd be like, yeah, I'll do that. I think he would. I think it's nice when celebrities offer a recipe to these things that is clearly one that they actually do. Because I remember, like, when I used to be a secretary at BBC News, that people would send in stuff all the time asking for recipes for a charity book.

And there were just these standard ones you send back. Oh. And it's always like for a grilled chicken salad, something boring like that. But Cliff's gravy sounds genuine. And I remember last year as well, something went viral when the author Nicholas Sparks, who wrote The Notebook, was interviewed. And he was making like a chicken salad while the interviewer was there.

And it had, you know, like chicken, bit of celery, mayonnaise, and 16 packets of splendor. That is at least. least 15 and a half too many packets of splendor to have in a house. More recent feedback now, in Answer Me This 412, so last episode, we were discussing Angela and her multiple namesakes, who sometimes inadvertently, sometimes perhaps deliberately, send spam to her Gmail address. Well, it's not spam. It just feels like spam to her, but to them, it's like relevant banking information and stuff. Margaret has been in touch, and can I say this is just a sort of tiny tip of

the iceberg, people related hard to this scenario. Oh, yeah. She says, my name isn't a special common, but during the pandemic, I received several completed math homework assignments to my email address. Oh. The class was studying quadratic equations. Mm-hmm. So I presume she has the same name as a math teacher. I guess.

My math teacher at school didn't have the same name as anybody, but he did look exactly like Matthew Corbett from the Sooty Show. Wow. Like exactly the same. Are you sure he wasn't? Certain he wasn't because Prococious Oli Man put together an awards spoof. show and gave him an award for looking like him and he was not happy. Well, maybe because he was

trying to stay undercover. He was like, I'm just trying to keep the fame part of my life separate from my math's passion. Maybe they were separated at birth and it was his secret twin and he was angry that he'd been outed. Daniel Fenton has also been in touch, who says the most consistent mixed-up text or emails I get are occasional business

loan offers addressed to a dentist with the same name as me, who happens to live about an hour down the road from me in Florida, which as in Angela's email was the heart base. The home of these email mistakes. The home of mislaid emails. I've never been to dentist, Daniel Fenton,

but I wonder if it was just a data scrape from various websites and my phone number got associated with his dental practice for some reason. Maybe. I wonder what happens if you take out a business loan in somebody else's name. Oh my God. I mean, I suppose it's fraud, but if they contacted you, could you say you just thought it was you who was taking out the loan? I suppose it's fraud, but because no one told me not to,

just did it, so you can't prosecute me by... They sound like a legitimate loan service, Yes, sure Daniel says However, the most bizarre time I have come across my own name was after a 10-hour flight from the US back to London

I jumped on the tube and decided to listen to Ollie's excellent podcast The Modern Man to keep me alert Oh, there you go, that's better than being told that people are listening to be put to sleep Well, it didn't work

Though the chat was stimulating It was no match for the rhythmic movement of the train and lack of sleep Which lulled me into a doze I mean well done going to sleep on the northern line if it was. I've never been able to even hear what I'm listening to on there. Yeah. The podcast kept playing and continued on to Alex Fox's sex advice section during which she was discussing pubic lice becoming more prevalent these days as a consequence of more men

having beards. Wow. Thanks for that, Daniel Fenton. What a great way to introduce a new audience to what I do on that show. She cited research by Dr. Daniel Fenton, which immediately jolted me awake. So we were quoting one of his namesakes on my show. That's weird. Yes. Also, Daniel Fenton, our correspondent, points out, why do my namesakes have doctorates? Yeah, Daniel Fenton does seem to be a doctory name. Here in Britain, I see there is a Daniel Fenton who is a principal psychodynamic psychotherapist, and also a gynecologist, Daniel Fenton, who I presume is the one that Alex Fox was quoting. Gosh. There's also an actor, Daniel Fenton, with three acting credits on IMDB, although So not particularly exciting roles.

One was a voiceover for a video game, then a 20-year gap in his career. Oh, but maybe he'll get his real boost in his career playing dentists and gynecologists. That's right. I mean, at that rate, you know, it could be in his 70s that he gets his really big role. You know, sometimes it happens that way for actors. So retrospectors, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of today in history? On Monday, the anniversary of the day female characters on stage could finally be played by female actors. Tuesday how Tim Martin turned cheap beer and curry deals into a national phenomenon.

On Wednesday, start spreading the news when Frank Sinatra Jr. got kidnapped. On Thursday, when Michael Cain met Kermit met Charles Dickens. And on Friday, Magdalene Mania, the medieval quest to uncover Mary's sarcophagus. That's today in history with the retrospectors, 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, in answer to this 411, you may recall Charlie from Canberra's email about how, how their mother had just found out that she had dozens of half-brothers and half-sisters because late in life, she discovered she was the product.

Hundreds. She had at least 600. The product of a multiple sperm donor scandal. Bertold Weisner was the progenitor, as we said it, in the show. But David has been in touch to say, it's pronounced Vizner. Bertold Vizner. I'm sorry, David.

Well, you should be sorry because it was his dad, biologically. Wow, shit. Yeah, David is one of the, Wiesner slash Barton Sporn. And it was, he says, Barry and I who identified him as our donor. Barry was the documentarian you discussed, wasn't it? Yes. Wow. Well, David, I'm sorry for the misnomer. Nice to know that people at the Eye of the Storm are listening to the show. I'm not sure. I hope we did it some justice. That story. I mean, it's such a brain fuck. Absolutely extraordinary. It was. Brian has been in touch with her experience of being the product

of sperm donation. She says, I learned almost exactly. two years ago at the too ripe age of 40 that I also exist because of sperm donation. I'd known something was up with my family for decades, as we had the fairly typical instability of donor-conceived families who choose to lie about the important things for too long, and figuring something out around blood types busted the case wide open. Oh, gosh. I learned my family's infertility journey did not conclude in the way I was told, and yes, they made up a story about how I was conceived and told me a child.

Okay, I did not need to know about my parents getting it on in a tent, whether or not my existence resulted from said tent trist. Or if it was even a real trist or a fully fictionalised one. I mean, things have changed. We do talk more openly about this stuff, as we said, when we discussed this in the episode. Yeah, hopefully. And I'm not forgiving the way parents talk to their children about their conception,

but I see how in the 80s and 90s... Choices were made. Exactly. there was probably just a decision. The best advice is say this line and stick with it, even if down the road it's created all sorts of problems for people. I think in the 20th century, particularly, people were extremely comfortable with lying to their loved ones. Like when, say, someone's wife got a cancer diagnosis and they would be like, well, don't tell her. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's the last one who gets to know.

Yeah. But then also, I mean, as we talked about in the episode, the laws have changed around sperm donation and adoption. And so with all this stuff, you have to be clearer because if you're not, the kid's going to find out anyway and then it's worse. Bayway, Brianne continues. Because of this, in late 2023, I embarked on the journey that Charlie's mum did. I truly hoped I wouldn't end up in a messy pod of 100 plus siblings, which was possible due to my early 80s conception date. The laws you talked through in the episode are even rougher and more uneven in the US. It's still not illegal in some states to swap sperm samples for insemination without telling the parents. What? Yeah. Check out the documentary Our Father to learn more.

horrors. Okay. At that phase, yeah, sure, I'll add it to the watch list right after I get through this entire series of Charlie Brown and Peanuts. At that phase, I most especially hoped I wouldn't learn that a grievous violation had been perpetuated on my mum. Fortunately, it wasn't. Okay, at least there's that. There is that. I did, however, learn a lot about the weird lies told to and between prospective parents. Among them, sperm mixing, still a fairly common practice for various reasons, was done for plausible deniability. Even though sperms tend to attack each other. So, in a way, it's a counterproductive measure.

But parents were also told that the higher glucose content of the healthy sperm samples, often solicited from med students in that era, would help the sperm in the original sample get to the egg. People believe wild things, she says, when they're in emotional pain, and believing the lie gets them closer to something they desperately want. I have a lot more sympathy for people believing the lie them for the people propagating the lie. Yeah, for the medics propagating the lie, exactly.

Again, like with all these things, once they're regulated, it's just so much clearer for everyone, including the people working in the field, isn't it? Yes, the ethics around this has been severely lacking. Yeah, totally. Unfortunately, she says this opened the field, especially in its early years, to a lot of weird shit, including these weirdos with 100 plus or 600 plus kids.

It's where science intersects with breeding kinks, eugenics, and power trips. It's a really weird space even now. Yeah. I want people to get what they want. especially when it mostly doesn't hurt anybody, but I hope I live to see very, very different laws around this. Yes, me and you too. Thank you for sharing that with us. That is super intense. My strongest opinion is that anonymous donation should be illegal because it can result in really complicated emotional side effects for the kids, which brings me to my last point

and what compelled me to write, reactions to discovering that you are donor conceived or that your parent was very wildly. I immediately wanted to know everything about my newly illuminated background, in part because my father of record is awful, so learning we weren't related was fantastic news. Okay, bonus. But my brother may never care to look into it. This is very normal, it's personal, but the terrain is so complex that you can't predict reactions, even your own. It's completely valid that Charlie doesn't want anything to do with this situation and posing it as a favour they might do for her oversimplifies things, I'm afraid. I will accept that critique. If they weren't genetically mixed up in all of it, maybe. But since their mum's family, weird

is also theirs. It's reasonable that they would prefer to be excluded from the narrative. They might also feel differently in a year or five years' time, because it's normal for these feelings to change markedly across time as the new information introduced has time to metabolise. But given the age of the people involved, I suppose the worry is that they wouldn't necessarily have the years to wait for what may come psychologically. And also, I mean, there are ways to support your mum and your aunt in their journey. That's the thing. I mean, they were quite dismissive Charlie in their email, weren't there? And that's why we were kind of like, well, hold on, this is a big deal for them. But it is, it is legit to say, and it's not a big deal for me and I don't

want to do it, and that to be a defence mechanism. I get that. Love a defence mechanism. Well, we've also had this email from Joe on the same topic. He says, my story is a lot less dramatic, but my mum, now in her late 70s, was one of eight children of divorced parents, quite unusual back in the 1950s, you can imagine. Her mother remarried and had one more child, so nine on that side. we always knew her father had another family too but there was no contact with them so anyway about 10 years ago one of her siblings had a DNA test and discovered the family from the father's side they also live on opposite sides of the world but even so there were meetups and my mum's half siblings even came to stay with her for an extended period i felt zero interest in these people who were strangers to me and felt i have enough aunts and uncles and cousins to be getting on with anyway well fast forward to maybe five years ago and for whatever reason, my mother decided to do a DNA test as well and found out her, inverted comma, father wasn't her biological father. So she is biologically only a half sibling to the brothers and sisters she grew up with. This can be backwards engineered as why you didn't get along

then. Perhaps. And no biological relation at all to the long lost siblings that were previously discovered. Oh, that's weird. What do you do if you find out that your long lost siblings aren't related to you? Do you then disconnect from them? like you've made friends and shared things. Well, I'll tell you what Joe's mom did. She has actually tracked down the family from her biological father. Wow. But still keeps in touch with the family of the man she thought was her father as well.

So she's up to something like 20 various flavors of sibling. I mean, at that point, it's just like all your acquaintances are related to or have once been related to you in your mind. Close enough. Yeah. Joe says, I continue to have no interest in any of them. However, instead of thinking of myself as heartless, which I think is fair, you don't have to think of yourself. self as heartless. It shows that, at least for me, family is who you grew up with, not biology. Joe says, my mum took it very hard that she was, inverted, commas, only a half sibling to the brothers

and sisters she grew up with. Don't think she was too worried about the father, who evidently didn't bother staying in touch with any of his children post-divorce. Maybe he's not any of their dads. I have tried my best to convince her that nothing has changed between her and the siblings she's had for 70 years, and hopefully the message is getting through. Okay, good. Well, that's a supportive thing to do. Thought I'd add another way of looking at the question of what makes someone family. Yeah. I mean, the same for me. Like, that's what I was saying in our original conversation. Like, I don't have any contact with my extended family, not because of hostile stuff. It's just

I wouldn't know them if we walk past each other. I think also, you know, thinking about chosen family, which people are a lot more aware of these days, I think that's a concept that more people could get on board with. Well, listeners, you're our chosen family, if that's not too right a thing to say. Well, if you're going to write them all into your will, I'm sure they won't mind. And we love to receive your questions as well as your feedback on anything we've discussed in Answer Me This past or present. And you can send those bits of feedback in the form of voice or written note to our email address, which is listed upon our website, AnswerMe Thispodcast.com. Our next full episode of Answer Me This with fresh questions will be out

on the 24th of December 2025. Which means we don't get to say Merry Christmas yet because we can say that then. So just enjoy December. Do what you like. Do what you like. Do what you like. in December, whatever you need to do to get through. Gin and tonic calendar. It's probably reduced now. Get one for every month of the year. Bye.