I’ve just
finished editing episode twenty-one of the More Than Mostly Comedy Podcast; or,
to borrow the parlance of the sitcom Friends, ‘The One with Paul & Debbie’.
Listening to it
reminded me of how lucky we are to interview the people we do. The conversation
with Daniels and McGee takes up a sizable portion of the podcast - a good
thirty to forty minutes – and covers a lot of ground. It was a privilege to
talk to them in such detail, bringing up subjects and asking questions that
have been on our minds for years. I, for example, was able to tell Paul about visiting
Television Centre as a child to watch him film an episode of Wipeout, and share
an anecdotal joke about it that made him laugh. If you’d told the younger
version of me that I'd get the chance to do that, I would never have believed it.
In many ways, the
podcast is the best and most useful part of Mostly Comedy. It gives us the
chance to have a proper chat with the acts, briefly separating us from the
admin. I like how it runs alongside the gig, as a companion piece to it. It can
be stressful to fit it in (particularly during the early days at The Croft,
when we had to record it standing in the corner of a working kitchen), but I think
this stress will be alleviated when we move to The Sun. Finally, we’ll have the
space to do it in comfort – plus the earlier start time will make it feel less
of a bind for the acts.
When I think of the
people we’ve sat across the table from so far – Paul Daniels, Phill Jupitus,
John Thomson, Arthur Smith and Richard Herring to name a few – it’s a little
ridiculous. This wasn’t meant to happen, but I’m glad it did. I think we’re
getting better at it. Hopefully we’ll have more interesting interviewees to add
to the list in 2016.