Funny For The Ears

Over the last five or six years, the podcast has become a mainstay of modern cultural life. It caters for niche audiences which, while still of a reasonable size, are not substantial enough for mainstream radio. It also offers the chance for the podcast creator to get an unfiltered slice of whatever it is they’re trying to offer. As will come as no surprise, I tend to veer towards the comedic in my listening tastes so here are some of the poddy goodnesses that fill my earholes on my regular commute (as someone who, on his standard commute to the office, can have around 90 minutes of listening time per day, that’s a lot of earhole hours to fill).

Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast
Probably the biggest of the UK-based comedy podcasts, Herring has had most of the big names of UK comedy as well as the medium names and the smaller names. It’s this variety that’s very appealing and often, someone who you’re not expecting much from can turn out to be immensely entertaining. Herring has an intentionally juvenile and silly style of questioning that often disarms people and seems to get some honest and occasionally revelatory answers from his guests.

The Adam Buxton Podcast
I was a huge fan of the Adam and Joe radio show on 6Music and this podcast keeps some of that same vibe going. It has a more varied mix of guests than Richard Herring’s, branching out into musicians, authors and just people that Adam Buxton is interested in, meaning that you get a good mix of funnier podcasts along with some serious / reflective ones. Some of the highlights for me include a couple of interviews with Louis Theroux in which Louis reveals a much sillier side than we normally see as Adam and Louis have known each other since secondary school (including repeated attempts by Louis to sing the falsetto parts of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie).

Athletico Mince
This is a recent one for me and may seem like an odd choice given that it’s ostensibly a football podcast and, as we all know, sport is generally a four letter word to me. However, the actual football content in each episode is pretty minimal and it’s largely an excuse for Bob Mortimer and his mate Andy Dawson to go off on weird flights of fancy. Probably the most Marmite-y one on the list - depends on how funny you find Bob Mortimer (very for me).

No Such Thing As A Fish
In which the QI elves (the researchers on the show) run through a load of weird and wonderful facts that they found that week and didn’t use in episodes of QI. It’s basically four nerdy people amusing each other with silly facts and some dreadful puns and is just good fun to listen to. Mainly as some of the facts are so very bizarre.

How Did This Get Made?
One that I dip in and out of depending on the film - three American comedians pick a terrible film each week and rip it to shreds, sometimes with a sense of fondness for the source material, sometimes with genuine bafflement that it got made. I like a good bad movie so this can be quite fun but only if you've seen the film.

There are quite a few others that I listen to intermittently as well but those are probably the main ones. So there you go - if you ever need to fill up the old lugholes with some funny, interesting or just plain silly stuff, you wouldn’t go too far wrong with any of those.