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I know I am the last person who should be saying this, but you really don't have to write down every single thing you think. Believe me I think a lot of stuff that I'd never commit to paper or audio. Which when you consider the things I am happy to say must really make you wonder what kind of dark shit is going on in my head. It's the same dark shit that is going round in yours. What one has to love about people is their capacity to judge others for the things that they themselves are guilty of. Often more guilty of. Sometimes I think we should give ourselves a break. Or at least reward the people who are successfully perfect, rather than punishing the occasional person who does not live up to the impossible standards we set for ourselves.
If you can keep your selfish prickdom to under 50% you're probably in the top 1% of human beings.
I say this as someone who has to daily delete comments under t
he brilliant Adam Pearson RHLSTP clip, most of which start, "I don't mean to be rude..." before then being incredibly, childishly offensive.
My day started not with a sneezing child, but with an email sent at 7.34am. It's not that terrible an email - I've certainly had worse- but it was weird that someone had (presumably) started their day feeling the desperate need to send this to me, rather than just kept the thought to themselves and made their own choices.
This is it, like I say, it's not that unreasonable
"Why did you stop having famous comedians on your podcast? I understand your desire to promote new talent, but without a few names that listeners know, listening becomes unattractive. I've gone from listening to more than half of your episodes for years to very rarely now. Close to unsubscribing."
So it probably caught me at a bad time (though 7.30am is probably always a bad time) as I am already wondering about the future of the podcast and how long that might be. We're attempting to run a business in a very competitive market and it's tricky to make ends meet, but we are doing our best to bring out two brand new podcasts every week, plus a retro one and a Newsround compilation. I am certainly not expecting anyone to listen to every single thing I put out. I'd be a bit freaked out if they did.
So, there are a few problems with the argument of the emailer. Firstly I don't know what their line for "famous" is. In the last four months we've had brand new eps from Richard Osman, Richard Ayoade and Mat Baynton, who I suspect they'd consider big names enough (but maybe not), but also legendary producer John Lloyd, legendary writer Doug Naylor, huge US star Paul F Tompkins, incredibly successful podcaster and writer Danny Robins, Edinburgh comedy award winner Sam Nicoresti and Taskmaster stars Fatiha El Ghorri and Stevie Martin.
Now, my guess is that the correspondent doesn't consider those names as being as famous or exciting as I do, but it's hard for me to take that into account unless he sends me a list of all the people he thinks are acceptably famous.
Secondly, I am putting out around 100 new podcasts a year. With the best will in the world, even if I wanted half of those to have a sufficiently famous name then that would be a big ask. That would be 50 A listers. I probably manage roughly 25 (again depending on your definition of A list - I am not getting many movie stars). How many people are on your list of famous names? There probably aren't over 100. So it'd be tricky to get that many even if everyone was keen to do the podcast and happy to come back on an annual basis. The thing with very famous people is that they are pretty busy.
But thirdly, in the early days I could probably get reasonably big names at every show, because a) I was doing maybe 25 podcasts a year and b) no one else was really doing interview podcasts. There are so many more podcasts now and it's not such a novelty to be asked on one. It's incredibly difficult to get people to sign up to it (along with the added difficulty that I tend to record on specific dates in a theatre, so the guest not only has to want to do it, but also be available).
I am very keen to get big names, especially for the live shows, because that helps sell tickets and increase downloads which means I might not end up doing all this work for free. Also I have to think of the team of people who work behind the scenes, who I want to pay fairly.
And yes, over the years I have seen a big part of the podcast's job is to introduce people to brilliant comedians that they've never heard of. This will be very rarely someone who has been doing the job for less than five years, mainly because it's a much harder gig for the guest than people realise. We're improvising a funny hour long conversation. I need to be sure that the guest will be capable of doing that. To get them on too soon can actually be detrimental to them. And it's a shop window for the industry and still a fairly big deal (maybe not as much as it used to be).
I am also conscious of keeping a balance of different kinds of acts and representing all kinds of people, even though my mainly single, male IT-working audience mainly want to listen to middle-aged white men. And the live podcasts don't go as well if there isn't a decent sized crowd (and we also lose money on it).
It's a massive pain in the arse to book this thing and I do it mainly on my own (though producer Ben helps). I am not paying the guests much. I can usually only get a guest back every couple of years max and for the big names it's usually more like every five to ten (and with the really big names it's unlikely I will get them on more than once).
I am though, committed to booking people who I think are funny and who deserve a bigger audience (or who have written a good book). I don't think it would work if I had comedians on who I didn't think were funny. Occasionally, when on tour, I have less choice about who the guests will be as not everyone will travel to Hull (though Bob Mortimer kindly did), but I always work hard to get someone who I think will be interesting and amusing and I nearly always have.
It's fine for you, as a listener to pick and choose, but it's nice to have as many as possible for you to pick and choose from. And I hope that occasionally you'll take a chance and discover someone new. Obviously some of the comics I had on earlier in their career went on to be huge stars.
I think the correspondent is correct that perhaps recently there have been a few more guests that the public at large might not be aware of. This is partly because we aren't getting many sponsored reads at the moment (none right now) and that's how we make money, so I've seen that as an opportunity to promote acts I like rather than ones that will get loads of downloads and earn us revenue. So we're holding on to some of the bigger names for a few weeks so we can hopefully put them out when we might make some money. Money has never been the motivating factor for the podcast (I did a clear decade of podcasts without trying to profit at all). So we've got upcoming podcasts with David Mitchell, Jameela Jamil, Andy Hamilton, Matt Forde, Alex Horne and Traitors star Harriet Tyce. How many of those are famous enough for me to keep this occasional listener?
Ultimately, none of this is my choice. It's up to the guests whether they choose to come on. It's not like I'm sitting here rejecting requests from George Clooney to appear. If you want mainly "famous" guests then there will be a lot of weeks when there is no guest at all. Or we could do what we do at the moment, I put out a podcast with someone I like and you choose to listen or not. If you choose not then it's the same from your perspective as me not putting one out. But someone who isn't you, might be happy to hear that one. So seems worth doing it. Even though, sadly that means the world isn't revolving around you.
So has this correspondent hit a nerve - just a little bit. Like I say, I have to decide how long I am going to carry on with the project and am feeling that maybe it's approaching its end. It's more the fact that what they are asking is ridiculous and beyond control, like when a relative finds out you're doing stand-up comedy and says "Have you thought of going on Live at the Apollo?" "Oh, no, ta. I'll do that. Good idea."
"Can't you get more famous people on? Remembering that my idea of famous might differ markedly from yours?"
"Oh right, good idea. I'll do that."
I know that there's still loads of people out there who appreciate what we're doing and this isn't a plea for you to all comment about how much the podcasts mean to you and how you don't want them to stop. I will keep doing them whilst I still want to and whilst I can still pay the people who help me, though I also have to consider whether I could do something else with the considerable time the podcasts take me to do.
I love doing them - don't love booking them. I don't mind if people don't like them or me or my comedy - it's an absolute necessity that most people don't. I don't even mind you emailing to tell me - maybe don't start the day with it though and think about whether your comment is in any way helpful. Feedback is important. But it's very much built into this job - if people don't laugh I am failing, if fewer people buy tickets or download the podcast I am failing. If no one wants to put ads in the show I am failing (that last one only in terms of paying the bills- though it's also a metric of how successful or relevant the podcast - or podcasts in general- are perceived).
Anyway I did reply to that guy, but not at this length. I thought I would blog about it, just in case anyone else was wondering (and also to help me work out where I am on all of this. RHLSTP will continue to the end of 2026 at least. I will be 59 by then. Maybe I should spend a few years doing stand up and writing more. Maybe I will just do a smaller amount of them. Or maybe I'll fucking double down, do 7 podcasts a week and fill them up with people you've never fucking heard of, just to spite this early morning caller.
And why not join the gfs club or buy something there as a thank you for all this incredible man has done. He's such a fucking idiot he won't even spend the money on himself, just making more ridiculous crap for nerds.
