The Low Level Joy of Comedy Podcasts

The Low Level Joy of Comedy Podcasts 

Doing the washing up is dull. This, I think, most of us can agree on. Doing the washing up is dull. Tidying the lounge is dull. Travelling on a National Express coach is dull. Falling asleep is dull. Walking from your bedroom to the toilet is dull. Life is an overgrown jungle of low hanging vines of utter tedium and boredom that we must wearily hack through with whatever entertainment we can grab before finally arriving at the blessed jungle clearing of death...

Which is why I like comedy podcasts.

I am more or less incapable of doing any task on my own without plugging my ears and brain into an ipod and literally hearing voices in my head. Pretty much always the voices of better, more successful comedians. I started in 2008 and they've been a staple of lunch breaks and solo drinking and gently weeping sessions ever since. The problem is that comedy podcasts seem to be running out of steam. Most of my favourites are either finished or on indefinite hiatus. To be clear, what I mean by “comedy podcasts” is independently run audio content released for free online, I am not including podcasts that are just the highlights from a radio show top and tailed by the presenters and then lazily slung onto itunes for people too asleep or disinterested to tune into the live show. I probably should include these as a lot of them are really good and also make up 90% of the audio podcast chart, but I don't consider these to be “in the spirit” of the podcasts that I love.

It is probably reasonable to say that professional stand up comedians are quite self indulgent people, which is fair enough since being self indulgent is literally their job. Podcasts are therefore the perfect medium for comedians as they offer the opportunity to release content that is absolutely uncensored and unmolested by commissioners and editors. Apart from libel and copywriter infringement anything goes. If the result turns out to be offensive or rambling then the podcast won't get many subscribers and will fail.

The best example of this is probably Richard Herring's fantastic As it Occurs to Me (AIOTM, AIOTM) which was a stand up and sketch show recorded in front of an audience and put online for free. This format negates the need to pitch to the BBC or a production company who would cut the bits too offensive or obscurely referential for the radio. The result is a brilliantly rude and hilarious long running sketch show that would never work in any other medium. Like a lot of good comedy the real gold comes in the later episodes when the audience have a huge set of shared cultural references from earlier episodes.

Podcasts will only really appeal to a particular kind of comedy nerd. The world of stand up comedy in particular is very polished and refined at the moment. This is obviously apparent in stuff like the Comedy Roadshow and Mock the Week but the trickle down effect means a lot of open spots are very aware of being slick and having a career plan. Podcasts are a brilliant antithesis to this, anarchic and rambling and often inaccessible to new listeners. Part of the charm of improvised podcasts is that some of it will be rubbish, there is a perverse joy in finding a hilarious skit having listened to 20 minutes of material that doesn't quite work.

But they seem to be petering out, which is perhaps to be expected. Podcasts are after all free and, aside from the occasional live edition, generate no income for the “writers and performers”. It is an unusual situation to regularly receive a free episode of something with no threat of cancellation, and for the longer running podcasts there seems to eventually come a sense “well, what now?”

 Obviously they are done for love but if there is a “point” to comedy podcasts then it's to generate interest and add to an audience. The best thing about the medium is that anyone can do it and if the result is any good then it will attract listeners. However there must come a point when a podcast has built up a fanbase all it is going to and perhaps then there has to be a time to stop.

So with that in mind here are my top 10 favourite podcasts, hopefully the many, many, many readers of this incredibly successful and popular Blog will all download an episode and the ones that have stopped will be so taken aback by the Earth shattering groundswell in listenership they'll start podcasting again and once more help drum the tedious silence out of my life.

1) The Trap Sodcast/Event Horizon Crescent

2) Collings and Herrin

3) Peacock and Gamble

4) Utter Shambles

5) As it Occurs to Me

6) The Perfect Ten

7) Precious Little

8) Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe/Leicester Square Theatre Podcast

9) The Ricky Gervais Podcast

10) Do the Right Thing