This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘Rosie Holt: Turning viral views into podcast popularity’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello, and welcome to PodPod, the podcast all about podcasting. My name is Rhianna Dhillon. And I'm joined this week by Matt Hill who runs Rethink Audio and is the co founder of the British Podcast Awards. And Adam Shepherd, editor of PodPod; hello to you both.
Adam Shepherd
Hello.
Matt Hill
Hello.
Rhianna
Hello. How's it going?
Matt
Yes, very well, I'm actually I'm just looking at my Wrapped for Podcasters thing from Spotify. I know we're going to talk about it now. And I suddenly thought, Oh, I could actually see how things like Happy Place are doing on Spotify.
Rhianna
And?
Matt
Well, you've got to click through quite a lot of stuff, don't you? And it's all very fancy graphics. So I'll give you an update later.
Rhianna
Right. So we'll leave you to keep clicking.
Adam
Yes, it is Wrapped season.
Rhianna
So what did you get, Adam, new Wrapped?
Adam
So I love Spotify Wrapped. I think it's a wonderful piece of kind of data storytelling from Spotify. Sadly, my Wrapped is purely music because I am a devoted Google Podcasts man, for my personal podcast listening. So it's only ever a handful of Spotify exclusives that come up on my Spotify Wrapped for Podcasting.
Rhianna
So what were you listening to music-wise? What was your top song?
Adam
My top song was Warren Zevon, because I am a transplant from the 70s, evidently - as anyone who's seen my hair can probably attest. But I really like Spotify Wrapped as a concept. I think it's it's actually really valuable sort of framing of, of data for people that that haven't really dug into sort of analytics as a kind of concept, it's a really nice introduction to that side of things.
Rhianna
I mean, I know you didn't ask, but mine was Music For A Sushi Restaurant by Harry Styles. So that just shows how cool I am. The most listens, apparently, was on August 28 2022, which is my wedding day.
Adam
Aww.
Rhianna
No, now this really confuses me, because I had some music going in the morning when I was getting ready. Did my phone just keep playing Harry Styles on repeat while I was at my wedding? Without me? Do you think this is what happened?
Adam
I think possibly. Or maybe it's later in the evening, after a couple of rounds of toasts.
Rhianna
Yeah, this was the only song that I would allow people to dance to. Just that one.
Matt
I do urge people to have a look at their Spotify for Podcasters account this week though, because there are some really interesting insights for people who are creating podcasts and are kind of on the front end of the publishing side. So as I said, sort of just looking at the happy place one, you just get a few more insights than you might have noticed throughout the year. So they've got this slide, which is something magical happened between January ninth and January 15th, you had 59% more listeners compared to your average week. And when I think back to that time, we did a feed swap with High Performance Podcast at the time, and did a massive churn of audience between those two shows. So on Spotify alone, 59% more listeners compared to the average week. And that actually changed the kind of demographics of both podcasts, interestingly, over that time. So one was more female heavy and one was more male heavy, and actually that kind of evened out. And they're both quite gender neutral shows now. So really interesting to see how that kind of gets reflected in the year on Spotify.
Rhianna
And what else can we learn about the charts Adam, because that's kind of been released, as well as kind of top performing podcasts.
Adam
Spotify, as part of this published the most popular podcasts both globally and for individual countries, and for the UK, half of the top 10 were Spotify originals or exclusives, which is up from just two out of 10 last year. So clearly Spotify's strategy of kind of going hard on acquisitions and on exclusivity deals with podcasters is paying off in a big way. So the top five in the UK were The Fellas at number five, Call Her Daddy, Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster, which is a fabulous podcast, Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. And of course, the Joe Rogan Experience at number one which continues to be an unassailable juggernaut in terms of popularity.
Rhianna
Absolutely incredible.
Matt
You have to say though, it is very much a shopping list, that top 10 for Spotify. So you can imagine throughout the year, they look at their top 50 and say, Well, what should we acquire next? So so there's it's sort of no coincidence that so many exclusives are in the top 10.
Adam
In fact number seven on the top 10 is Parenting Hell with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdecombe, which of course Spotify picked up as an exclusive last month, I think.
Matt
Yeah, you can look at it and go, well, Shagged Married Annoyed is at number eight. So did they approach both? And Keep It Light Media were the ones that kind of went for it? Do they need two effectively parenting podcasts? Probably not. So to have bagged one from the top 10 is probably very shrewd.
Rhianna
So we talked, I think, on the podcast before about how Spotify has taken over pre existing podcasts and moved them over to Spotify as Spotify exclusives, originals, and then change them or swapped over presenters or, you know, really kind of moved things around. But actually, the charts at the moment are implying that the ones that are still performing incredibly well are the ones that have not changed, they still have the same presenters that still have the same setup, is that right?
Adam
It certainly seems to be.
Matt
I think Spotify's position as both a platform and a publisher has allowed it this really great opportunity to be able to take the best performing shows, and then put a rocket under them by giving them front page access on the app and everything. And you look at other players in the space, and they don't really have that unique position that Spotify do. You know, you could argue that BBC Sounds if it were to open up to more podcasts on their player could have a similar way of spotting talent and bringing them into the BBC, that would be an interesting thing to happen. Audible potentially could do something like that as well. But really, Spotify has led the way in terms of being able to identify what's up and coming and then supercharging it.
Rhianna
That's some really interesting food for thought actually, with how other platforms can look at what Spotify are doing and perhaps do it in a slightly different way. So we haven't introduced yet who we're going to be speaking to on the podcast today. It's Ed Morrish and Rosie Holt from the NonCensored with Rosie Holt podcast. So comedian Rosie Holt embraces the far right political commentator, Harriet Langley-Swindon, in this interview series, which is kind of in the same vein as satirical characters like, I don't know, Ali G or Borat, anything that Sacha Baron Cohen has done, basically, Chris Morris, The Day Today, Brass Eye. So there is a kind of long standing history, I suppose, with this kind of interview series.
Adam
And it's very much skewering that kind of right wing sort of talking head punditry, right in the vein of GB News, and, you know, Piers Morgan and those kinds of commentators.
Matt
And I think Ed Morrish is a seasoned radio comedy producer.
Adam
Yes.
Matt
Worked for many years with John Finnemore on his comedy shows for Radio 4. It was interesting talking to him about the way in which he's had to budget his time and resource for the podcast world to make something sustainable, that can be done every week, and still be really funny.
Rhianna
And luckily, Rosie Holt is you know, she's actually I've just seen that she's going on tour, something called The Woman's Hour, so I'm intrigued to see what that's going to be about. But anyway, here they are. Ed Morrish and Rosie Holt talking all about NonCensored.
Welcome, guys, to PodPod.
Rosie Holt
Hello!
Ed Morrish
Thank you for having us.
Rosie
Thank you for having us.
Rhianna
I'm very excited to talk to you in person as Rosie Holt because I'm so used to hearing you as Harriet. Can you tell us a little bit Rosie about the conception of Harriet Langley-Swindon, where she came from.
Rosie
So Harriet Langley-Swindon was the character I came up with originally on Twitter.
Rhianna
Where all the best ideas come up.
Rosie
Where all the best ideas come up, where I put up a video, it was during the Black Lives Matter protests, and I put up a video of a woman getting very angry at the fact that all these statues are being torn down. And she said, they're erasing history just like Stalin did. Who, incidentally, I have a statue of in my garden, and it kind of went viral. And then I did more videos of this woman who was basically a kind of one of these right wing talking heads that you see who have very strong opinions. And maybe their opinions don't make sense. And maybe they contradict themselves from one minute to the next. But they're very strong, and they're very sure. So that was where she sort of originally came from. And I think part of where the idea of her came from was listening to various shock jocks on things like Talk Radio, GB news. And so inevitably, it seemed like a good idea to give her her own show. And that's where the podcast came in.
Rhianna
And so you have another character producer Martin?
Rosie
Yes.
Rhianna
Who is not producer Ed, who is with us here.
Rosie
No, producer Ed is a real producer.
Rhianna
He's a real producer, producer Martin is definitely not. So tell us about how Brendan Murphy and you started to work together then on creating that format.
Rosie
So me and Brendan have worked together before so we're very comfortable working together, we did a show called The Crown Jewels, which was a parody of Netflix's The Crown, where we did it on stage. And we performed all the characters, including the corgis.
Rhianna
Oh my god.
Rosie
And they got very good reviews in London and we were, back before the pandemic, we were about to take it to America for six months, and then that fell through, obviously, because the world stopped, we you know, we work very well together. And we're used to sort of improvising and things like that. So we liked the idea of, of Harriet having a foil who's quite sort of mild mannered and sweet and doesn't want to put his foot in it. And it just seemed like a good dynamic. So the idea being that producer, Martin is a sort of slightly woolly centrist, you could say, but he's, he, he means well, and he's aware that he's sort of looking after this rather explosive, awful character but isn't quite sure how to manage it.
Rhianna
You could kind of think something that goes viral on Twitter might not necessarily make a natural move to podcasting. So how did you decide on that format? And then how did you approach Ed with it?
Rosie
I mean, you're right. But I think with her, it always seemed I think a kind of podcast is actually sort of her natural home. But because the the thing about putting videos out on Twitter is you're not bouncing off anyone really, she just gives these little two minute monologues, which are great, but not terribly sustainable.
Rhianna
Yeah.
Rosie
And the idea of giving her a whole world is quite exciting, and how she'd interact if she was interviewing people or debating issues. I can't remember how we came up with the idea. But I remember when we did, and we got really excited because we thought, we very quickly thought, Oh, God, we could get, we could get, we know so many good comedians and actors we could get in to play various people. And then we could interview real people and, and it just seemed a very fun concept. And then when we came up with that, we approached various people, one of which was Ed, and then Ed was wonderful. And it was just a no no brainer, really - although I have to say that cause Ed's here.
Ed
Yeah.
Rosie
But also, but also it's true.
Rhianna
Tell us about then, from your perspective how easy it was to make something that was so successful in these short viral clips into a podcast,
Ed
What we were trying to find was a sustainable production schedule. Because we're not funded by anyone. There is no money in this. We've started to get adverts. But there's, you know, everything is unpaid. Or, you know, we pay for the time and pay for the music. So we're technically in debt at this point. So you go, Well, if there's no money to pay for people's time, what can we do for free and what is sustainable? And we actually did a pilot, we went to a studio, we were trying to find a way. So if we did like a day a month, and we stacked up recordings, then I can release them weekly. And unfortunately, all the best bits were topical. Like, you just want to hear what she has to say on the news this week. And so we were looking for a thing that we could go, Well, what can we make knowing we've got no money, and we, you know, we can't turn down paid work, particularly, to make this happen. So we've got a very flexible schedule that, you know, last week we recorded Rosie's voice over on Friday morning, like an hour before it went out. And this week, I was out last night. So they recorded the voice over without me and I just stuck it in when I got home. And now that's all sheduled and comedically, I think it's the introduction of the other voices. So Martin and Harriet bounce off each other for you know, a minute and a half between, let's call them sketches. But then we had Paul Dunphy, from Larry and Paul, being one of President Trump's lawyers, we spend about 10 minutes before we hit record going Okay, so the joke is, we're just going to throw legal cases at you, and you're going to explain why they're bullshit. Yeah. And of course, he just threw in a hell of a lot of sniffing. But he's not a real, he's not pretending to be a lawyer. He's a real, one of his real lawyers. He's, we've made up a name. And then Eshaan Akbar who's sort of the third regular, he's always in for a sort of parody of the way that the media presents debates, because he always runs rings around Martin, despite saying, you know, he knows what he's saying is rubbish. But what you enjoy is the debate and it's throwing those other people's ideas that makes it sustainable, if, you know, when Rosie does a video they're two minutes, and that's the jokes that she wrote. Whereas if you go, here are some ideas for jokes, let's bounce them around, they will go off in unexpected areas, and suddenly, you know, we're getting better, but we were recording like 15 minutes, and then trying to get that down to six, seven, right? So that so that we're not giving people an hour long pockets, we've given them 40, 45 minutes. That was really hard. You're you're losing so much good stuff. And now we're getting better and we're only going about 10 minutes, so you only have to like nip out the umm and errs and one joke that didn't quite work out or in the case of Paul, when you lost him. The line cut.
Rosie
We were like, it's the FBI. They've cut him off!
Ed
But yeah, so it's finding that sustainable thing, because you know, we've just got mates so we can text, you know. We set up a conservative leadership debate with Sooz Kempner being Nadine Doris, Charlie George as Suella Braverman. And Ahir Shah as Rishi Sunak; the number of people who tweeted at me to say, I, it took me over a minute to realise that wasn't really Rishi Sunak, despite the fact that Ahir was not doing a voice. He was not doing an impression. He was just doing his own voice. So when he did lines, like, um, people in this country have had a really tough time for the last 12 years for no reason. Like, that sort of joke. I wasn't expecting that, but he threw it in and then you've got something to play with. And I think that's the sort of, that's why it's fun. That's why people will do it for free is it's fun, because you know, get a, jump on Zoom, dick around for 15 minutes, go home, and then it goes out as a seven minute and you sound great.
Rhianna
When you kind of have Rosie Holt as the name for you know, your, that's who you is the selling point for the podcast, but you're marketing it as another character who is hosting it. How does that work? Is that Is there an element of confusion there with how you're trying to market it? Who is going to be aware of who is real and who is the character?
Ed
Yeah, I think because I did a podcast when I worked at Something Else - now Sony - with Katherine Parkinson and Katy Brand called women like us. So it's very similar, it was just the two of them. They were just you know, playing two washed up old hacks who'd lost their columns and decided podcast was way forward. And they had character names and we didn't put Katherine and Katy's names in it, in the the artwork, and we thought oh, it would be really funny if people think it's real and we won't, we won't let on. And we did the things we recorded and it just didn't get the listenership. And I think what we learned from that is, don't do soft launches. Just don't do them. Some will leave. But then you know, you need that impetus. So when we launched NonCensored, I was like, well, we could say, you know, play it with a completely straight face and go, it's Harry Langley-Swindon. But what's that rule? There's nothing on the internet, there's no joke you can do on the internet that someone won't take seriously.
Rosie
Yeah, I know that too well.
Ed
Rosie always opens with these are the highlights of my very real radio show. Which you'd you think is a clue! That was the other thing I was gonna say about the structure is that if you, because it's presented, we do it on a Friday, because that's when people like topical comedy. But also, we present it as of these are the best bits of this week's show. So we can do anything. Like, we can just clip however we want and go, Oh, on Tuesday, we had a conversation with so and so. And if that person's comments are now out of date, don't matter. Because it's like well, that was Tuesday. Yeah, that's the format that gives you the liberty to do anything. Back to the marketing, because Rosie Holt has a quarter of million followers on Twitter, put her name on the logo. You know, it destroys the artifice of the show, but it does mean people will find it.
Rhianna
Well, this is it right, Rosie, because you had so many people on your Twitter, believing that the character you were doing was a real MP or a real horrible right wing woman. And were responding in kind and I really enjoyed going through some of the comments and you going to Larry Lamb, not you too Larry, like, Oh, my God, you got me, you got me good. You know, things like that. It's brilliant. It's so funny. How does that work in terms of the podcast? Have you had a similar experience with that, or are people more engaged?
Rosie
I don't think so.
Ed
The Rishi clip was the most we got.
Rosie
The Rishi was, was the most the most most we got, there was one really funny review, which was like, one star, this should be the new section. Why is it in the comedy?
Rhianna
As you're saying, you know, your format is, you are a little bit in debt. But it's also quite cheap to produce now, everything's on Zoom, people are having to give up their time. Is that something that you really had to consider when you were planning it? You'd like this has to be as minimum output as possible in terms of money.
Ed
Yeah. I mean, it's sort of slightly, you know, very English, not to want to talk about money. But knowing that when you do a podcast, it could not get advertisers and therefore could not make money. And therefore, we've talked about this earlier this week or last week. If some, if one of us got offered some well paid work that was on a Thursday, then we couldn't in all honesty expect anyone, no one could expect the others to turn that down. And you know that we're working round availabilities, Brendan's in rehearsals at the moment, so he can only record in the evenings and then I wasn't available in the evenings. And so we're always compromising and I think the, I would, I would love to lower my standards so much that we just go for seven minutes and then put out whatever we did. But that's not how comedy works. Especially improv, most improv. I mean, your your Brendan's, the proper, yeah, improv guy, but I don't think he'd mind me saying, most improv is awful. Because it's just throwing ideas out. Do it with confidence and people like it. But I think you know you you do You need that editing process to make a good comedy product, rather than just an entertaining product. And because we also have that level of artifice in the show where it's not Rosie, it's Harriet, then you do need to sort of whittle out inconsistencies that sort of detract from the comic world of the show. So I think, yeah, finding a sustainable production model where, if it has to be finished on Tuesday, we'll make It'll be finished on Tuesday, it won't be it has to be finished Friday morning, it'll be finished Friday morning. But none of us, we're all happy to give up our time to do it for now. Because we're not missing out, we are working around the paid stuff that keeps our rent paid. But I think it is really important to think about how much time these things are going to take.
Rhianna
And from your perspective, how much time does it take for you in terms of you know, you are presumably writing from some sort of script, you've got to be across the the week's political events in some form or another.
Ed
Script? There's a Whatsapp group!
Rosie
I mean, um, Ed's right. It's very much kind of fitting around your life at the moment and I think we all well, you have to want to do it otherwise, otherwise, why would you care? You know, obviously, we're hoping to make some money at some point, but we're still relatively new. So we're still kind of building that following up. In terms of time, it takes me... It depends, I think certain things, because I have, there's a section of the show where I interview a real person. I think that that one always takes a bit more preparation. Depending on who it is. Sometimes you can kind of riff but sometimes you have to think a bit more. But I think what's good is, as we get more comfortable in the characters, the less preparation it takes, because now we're kind of, you're more sure about what the characters would say...
Rhianna
You slip into Harriet more easily.
Ed
Yeah, completely.
Rhianna
Terrifying.
Ed
Also, I mean, you build up running jokes. So Eshaan fancies producer Martin's wife. They may have had a relationship...
Rosie
Yes, Jane.
Ed
Yes, that's right. And so that is now a sort of free joke.
Rhianna
There's such a great history that we have of people interviewing other people in character, and then getting them to say off kilter things or things they wouldn't necessarily have admitted to otherwise like Mrs. Merton, and Sacha Baron Cohen, and all of his guises. You've kind of had quite sympathetic guests on like James O'Brien, and Owen Jones was a good one. So what was the intention with that, with getting, you know, you're kind of, you're playing this right wing character, everyone knows that that's not really what you think you're talking to left wing, outspoken, left wing people. So tell us about how you approach those interviews.
Rosie
I think the idea of it was to, to, to get them to kind of express their views. And a lot of the people we've had on often do have to go on things like Talk Radio, or Good Morning Britain or things like that, and often have to deal with quite sort of unsympathetic questions that perhaps are trying to provoke a reaction from them. So I think we were trying to play with that, really, the fun of it being that because they're kind of in on it, they can kind of react, how maybe they'd want to which they can't really in real life. We had Chris Atkins on, who's who's brilliant, who's written an incredible book about being imprisoned and really critical about the justice system. And he got quite angry. When he'd sort of said beforehand, he said, Can Can I can I get angry? We were like sure, yeah! There was one point where we're going is he is he really? Is he really angry?
Ed
I did think, he's not going to let us use this, he's so angry. And then as soon as we went Chris Atkins, thank you, he went, was that all right? Yeah, goodness.
Rosie
I think he found it quite cathartic.
Rhianna
That's interesting.
Rosie
And it's funny, I think it's great. I think we're now really getting into a groove with the interviews. And to begin with, you're you're kind of finding your feet and going, how does this work? And what's the tone? But they're really fun to do. And I think people have fun with them, because you can kind of play it how you want, as an interviewee.
Ed
If we get the questions right, Rosie gets the questions right, cause she writes most of them. It's that if they respond seriously, or stupidly, it doesn't matter. But normally, it's we're going to ask the stupidest possible phrasing of a question, you can respond to the subtext. So my favourite question that you've written is asking, Owen Jones, you say you're a socialist. Is that true? Or do you just like losing? Allows Owen, you know, obviously knows what, what the question is, he gets to talk about is socialism a viable political movement, like, could that ever get elected in the UK? But we've set him up with a joke, that just means the listeners go, Oh, that was funny. And then they listened to 90 seconds of him say, Well, I think there is support for these things, but when it's also, you know, and actually a more nuanced answer. And on the other hand, when Jonathan Pie or Tom Walker who plays Jonathan Pie, what's harder, writing a joke or calling the Prime Minister a c*nt, it could be taken, I I think I told him that one before, because that could be taken as a very pointed criticism of what he does. But then he acknowledged that like base abuse is part of comedy. And actually sometimes it works and, and sometimes you actually want to write a thing. And then he was like talking about how I'm not going to spend time writing good jokes for Twitter, you have to pay for a ticket if you want to see the good stuff. So you get really interesting questions by asking, like, like not expecting them to engage directly with the question, but instead respond to the subtext. And we've had some people who play up to it and we've had some people who, like David Allen Greene decided that he would respond exactly the same way that if he was asked on like, any other show, and it worked really well. In fact, it got more as he refused to be baited. And Rosie was getting more and more extreme about lefty lawyers. And David's just going No, that's not how it works.
Rhianna
I'll listen to that one. What about getting right wing people on...
Rosie
So far, we've had two right wingers on; we've had Ian Dale, who was really, really up for it, and was very funny. He was just really, he was just really silly. And Geoff Norcott, who's just a brilliant comedian.
Rhianna
And plays on that, right?
Rosie
And plays on it. Yeah.
Rhianna
And he almost became more left wing during the conversation. And you both did that.
Ed
Well, Rosie has to outflank them. Because yes, if she is mocking them from one side, then it doesn't quite work. Yeah. So she had to, like she was making fun of Ian Dale. He was saying how some of his hard edge Thatcherite lines have been knocked off him by doing phone in because you're talking to real people. And, you know, it's all very well to have a Thatcherite principle. But, you know, then you talk to real people who are struggling with bills, and you go, Oh, maybe the economy isn't working for everyone. And so Rosie went oh, obviously, you've been radicalised by your audience, you should stop listening to them. So she had to position herself as a more hardline Thatcherite. Which gives him the space to answer honestly, and openly and filthily in some instances, about his political beliefs without feeling like he's being attacked, because he knows that the person in front of him is a cartoon or doesn't have to be taken seriously.
Rosie
Yeah.
Matt
Going right into the weeds. Who, who you hosted with? What's the...
Ed
Audioboom.
Matt
You're Audioboom, okay. And what's the support been like there? But what have they done for you in terms of promoting it? And...
Ed
We gave them a trailer which they put out across their network. I think that's, you know, sort of the launch they did, but obviously, there we're on there, we were immediately put on their host read scheme. So that we weren't waiting to hit a certain, you know, like, I think with Acast, actually with with paid plans, where we were paying for the hosting ourselves. Once you hit a certain number of downloads, they'll go, Oh, do you want to monetize that? And we were put in that from the start, they sort of, we spoke to a couple of people about where to host it with and they were sort of offered the most, as we saw it, support without also any sort of interference.
Matt
That's interesting. I thought, I honestly thought it felt so much - and I know this might sound a bit weird, but it sounded like a DAX show like something in the Global stable just because I saw James O'Brien on there. And obviously, you've got Ian Dale, felt like there was a lot of talent that was coming from Global that you were kind of playing off.
Ed
That that that's the people we're parodying. Yeah. So it makes sense to get those people on.
Matt
And do you feel like you've managed to translate the character into a podcast format that you own? How has it been with the kind of taking the Twitter followers with you, if you've got like a target in mind of how much of a percent? Not all of them are going to come. But like, Do you know how many you kind of looking at to try and bring over from your...
Rosie
Would be great if we could get all of them, wouldn't it?
Ed
That'd be very, very lucrative,
Matt
It's hard, isn't it? Yeah, it's hard. I think Twitter, it feels like there's a lot of interaction about podcasts on there, but actually getting them into followers is harder.
Ed
Helen Zaltzman, who knows a lot more about podcasting than almost anyone else in the country has this theory, you can persuade 10% of your audience to do anything. So Rosie has a quarter of a million Twitter followers, you can probably persuade 10% of them to listen to a podcast. So that's sort of the first benchmark.
Matt
That's the target. Yeah.
Ed
And then, you know, we haven't thought that far ahead. But in Helen's rules, if we were then to like, say, Do you want to fund a Patreon, we'd get 10% of them because it's 10% of the podcast audience who would then be willing to pay and so you're sort of constantly winnowing, but every time you ask people to do something that isn't the easiest possible thing, you lose 90% of your audience.
Rhianna
We haven't yet talked about your background in radio comedy, and about how radio comedy is, is that different from podcast comedy? Because I feel like it's harder to commission comedy on the radio than it is in podcasting.
Ed
Yeah, I think so.
Rhianna
How does that change it?
Ed
The principles of audio comedy are exactly the same, what's different are the parameters you're working in. So perfect example is, if I'm making John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, and the show is 27 minutes and 30 seconds, then if I'm looking at it and going, I could cut that joke. I could cut that joke. No, that's not. But I can't, because I have to hand in 27 minutes, 30 seconds minimum. Similarly, if the show is 28 minutes and 15 seconds, I have to cut something. Yeah, it doesn't matter how good it is, I have to cut something to make that show work. Whereas in podcasting, I think a lot of people don't edit because they don't have to. Whereas, you know, on a fundamental existential level, none of this has to happen. Yeah. Like no one asked us to do. Yeah, so we decided to do it. And so if you're going, so it's actually more pressure to go does that earn its place, does that earn its place, does that earn its place. And before long, you're having an anxiety attack and deleting the whole episode. None of this really needs to be said, I think people have probably done these jokes on Twitter already. So but the principles of how you tell a good joke on radio, like, if you imagine doing The News Quiz in character, that's what we're doing. I mean, what we're doing is basically the Colbert Report, the American TV show, but on radio, so the principles of the jokes are exactly the same. And the other difference, of course, is with a radio show, you get a budget. So you pay for people's time, you know, I was, I was in the studio making a Radio 4 sitcom a couple of weeks ago. And that's the vagaries of scheduling. I had to ask someone to come in at 10 o'clock, work for 45 minutes, and then not do anything else for two hours. Because they didn't have any other scenes. But I needed to get through someone else's things because they weren't available and sort of that and you feel bad about that. But on the other hand, I'm paying them. So yeah, sit down, have a coffee. I'll call you when I need you. And in podcasts, and that's just not true. So you have to make it a lot easier for people hence, remote recording. Hey, when can you do when they, you know, they'll say, oh, I can do, we say oh, can you do seven and they'll go I could do 6.30? Right? We'll change to make it easier for you.
Rhianna
In terms of like the rest of the market, in the area that you're working in, which other podcasts have inspired areas of NonCensored?
Rosie
Big one for me is Dear Joan and Jericha; it's so brilliant, which if anyone doesn't listen to they should. It's Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine, and they're playing two agony aunts, you've listened to it, two agony aunts giving advice, and their advice is horrific and terrible.
Rhianna
It's the kind of podcast you remember where you are when you heard it.
Rosie
Yeah, they're just, they're basically misogynist. Like, they're really sympathetic to the men and they're really critical of other women. And it's so funny. And it's so mean. And there are some things they say and I'm kind of going I can't believe, I can't believe they got away with that. I might also listen to lots of news podcasts. Yeah, I listened to The Guardian Today In Focus and, and The Spectator Shots, which are a bit more chatty and, you know, they usually discuss an article that one person has written, I went on a Spectator episode, where they were talking, some guy had, I can't remember his name, he'd written an article about how it was literally, you can't say anything anymore. And he was saying, why can't, I remember the good old days of Little Britain. Why can't you joke about that anymore? And I was going well, I was there as the other side, I guess?
Ed
The description of our podcast is, you can't say anything these days, and here's a podcast to prove it.
Rhianna
Yeah. Yeah.
Rosie
And it is funny, cause those podcasts, especially when someone's talking about how they can't say anything anymore. And they are as Ed says, they're saying it. So I think that's something we have really have fun with in the podcast.
Ed
You're so in tune with what Harriet would say. Yeah, to go back to the point about what a character can say that a real person can't. We had this joke about how with Chris Pincher who's alleged to have committed sexual harassment or sexual abuse, I don't know how you describe it. But because it's allegations at this stage, and so legally, you can't say he definitely did it. But Harriet could say, of course, there's been sexual harassment in Westminster for ages. But now it's happening to men. So people care about it, which is actually a pretty good point?
Rhianna
What everyone was thinking anyway.
Ed
But if we turn that into a joke, it's sort of very, it's very crass for someone who, to use that in a gag. Whereas if the character expresses it as an opinion, like yeah, that is what she'd think, it is. Yeah. No, it's worse when it happens to men, because that's what the character would stupidly believe. And so I think we've built up that knowledge of, you know, Martin then, you know, he's got dogs now. We've learned a lot about Harriet's private life in some interviews.
Rhianna
Yeah, flying flying men over. She's just....
Ed
A way more open marriage than I imagined at the start.
Rosie
Entertains a lot of men. Talk about Thatcher together.
Rhianna
I'm sure they do. If you were to kind of go back to the beginning, streamlining or whatever, if you had your time over again, what would you do differently?
Rosie
I don't know. Because it's sort of a, just a, it's a, learning is kind of how you, you get better with it. Such a wise thing to say; learning is good!
Ed
Yeah. Stay in school, kids.
Rosie
No regrets!
Ed
You get better by doing, that's just, the more you do something, the better you get. So it's inevitable that I'm going to enjoy the the most recent episodes more than the old. I mean, I listened back to old radio shows I made, even something like John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme was on Sounds recently, and I looked at it, and it feels really slow. Compared to series 7, 8, nine's slightly different cause we didn't have an audience, but you go oh, why'd I leave that like that long applause into the next, I could have time to save four seconds, I probably could have got that extra joke in!
Matt
But it needs to be 27 minutes and 30 seconds or whatever it is.
Ed
I must have cut something. The but I think yeah, so the fact that the improv sections, especially with Eshaan, cause Eshaan's there every week, I think we did like, it's eight minutes, eight, seven or eight minutes in this week show. And we did, we did 10. And we just we sometimes we get to an extra point, and we'll go Yeah, and then as we go, oh, maybe we should tackle this point. We keep going. And now we're just like, yeah, we've got enough. We know what we've got. But also, because we did the planning beforehand of what's sustainable. So like Rosie's time for writing. And Brendan's time for writing is one thing, but we can't ask people to rehearse a sketch and record a sketch and do multiple takes, it's 'do you want to come and dick about?' Yeah. So that because that's the thing we can afford to make. So I think it it wouldn't, those principles are still the same, that they were when we started, that is that production shedule
Rhianna
Rosie Holt, Ed Morrish, thank you so much for joining us, that was utterly illuminating.
Ed
Thank you.
Rosie
Thank you for having us.
Rhianna
So that was Rosie Holt and Ed Morrish talking about NonCensored. So much to think about after that chat and loads I hadn't really thought about before, especially in terms of satire, and how close to the bone you can get. What really stood out for you, Adam?
Adam
So one of the things I found quite interesting is what Ed was saying, around the fact that, you know, it's not really highly monetized yet, the podcasts are they're still effectively, he said, they're still in debt from kind of paying for production resource and, and people's time. So they're very limited in what they can invest into the podcast. And so they've had to work quite creatively around that, to do things cheaply, by working with kind of friends and contacts who are willing to drop in and give them kind of an hour or so of their time. But I think those kinds of resource constraints encourage creative thinking in how you kind of plan and devise your podcast, and really, it's interesting seeing what you can do with not very much.
Rhianna
Do you think that from what we you know, the people that we've spoken to, you do you think that is a real kind of common theme now in podcasting, that actually barely any people are making the big bucks. And there is, again with it as with anything that's kind of small minority, which we might see quite a lot of in the charts and everything like that, as we were talking about at the top of the show. But do you think actually, for these people, it's going to be viable in the long term to keep putting out these podcasts, if they're not making any money, if they're losing money doing it?
Matt
I mean, the great hope with podcasts is because they're on demand that you can monetize your back catalogue. So even if your episodes aren't covering their costs, in the short term, you know, the hope is that there's a breakout moment that the podcast suddenly acquires a certain level of audience that then discover the back catalogue and make it worthwhile. So there's a certain amount of hope in terms of the economics of podcasting that you invest for an amount of time, build a good product, market it well. And when the audience arrives, they've got a great back catalogue to explore and you can monetize. But yes, I think it is probably very healthy, when you start out is to have have an exit strategy. Like, when is, when do you pull the plug? How many series will you do before you decide whether it's working or not? Because you could convince yourself for a long time that a show is going to be a hit without it actually ever be able to make its money back.
Rhianna
I wonder also sometimes with political podcasts, because we've talked to quite a lot on PodPod about news podcasts, and about how they're doing incredibly well at the moment, and have been kind of ramping up even more, because they're because the news has been so turbulent, there's been so much to discuss every day, there was some kind of breaking news in the government or whatever. And I wonder if with kind of political satire, it's almost kind of going into an already saturated market, which it wouldn't normally be oversaturated except that people have are thinking about the insane nature of politics at the moment. Is that then a harder field to make into comedy, because people it's so close to home, and trying to find the comedy in it is actually quite difficult when, as we know, people's lives have been affected so, so dramatically in the past few months? I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here, if that is if that's a harder time to actually break into this field.
Adam
Well, if anyone can do it, Ed can, as Matt noted, he's a seasoned veteran of political satire. And I think what's really interesting about things like NonCensored is, in many ways, I think it makes sort of turbulent times easier to deal with by adding a bit of levity to what what can be a quite depressing situation in a lot of cases. And having that kind of outlet for those feelings, I think can be quite helpful.
Matt
And certainly, in terms of saturation point, I don't think podcasting is anywhere near that yet. But also in terms of the way in which people think about political commentary and satire. You know, there have been some big shows that we've covered on this series, which have launched this year, there are big successes and everyone's talking about, but they are only playing to certain audiences. And actually, you know, when you're looking at trying to engage people in politics and current affairs, beyond the kind of like the traditional political wonkery, that's, I think, an audience which is underserved still, and actually Rosie is doing an amazing job at reaching out to.
Rhianna
I really enjoyed her talking about Chris Atkins, who has written a book about being in prison, he's incredibly critical of the justice system, and how he kind of used this platform to get really, genuinely angry about it, but was also able to say everything that he wanted to say, in in, I guess, a safe space, but with with it kind of feeling like a not very safe space. So he's almost using Rosie as a somebody that is the face of everybody that he's wanted to scream and shout at for the past, however many years, and found it actually quite cathartic, in the end. I kind of really liked that idea. That's not something I thought about from a guest perspective before. If you go on something like Question Time, or these other platforms that you do have to have these balanced debates that that can be incredibly frustrating, not being able to get your point across. So this must have been amazing to really let rip.
Matt
I'm sure Rosie is available for consultancy. Just just literally just kind of talking therapy.
Adam
Well, one of the really, really entertaining points for me in that discussion was the amount of people that they were saying that did actually take it seriously. And were saying like, why isn't this in the news section, which is entertaining, but also possibly a bit of a damning indictment of the state of current political commentary.
Rhianna
Oh, my goodness, that's really quite...
Adam
it's a little bit alarming, isn't it?
Rhianna
It is. Thank you so much for listening. That was really, really interesting. Find out more on podpod.com. Sign up to our daily email bulletins and follow us on social at podpodofficial, do subscribe to make sure that you never miss an episode. And it would be lovely to get a rating or even a review from you as well. Thank you so much to our contributors Matt Hill and Adam Shepherd. And a huge thanks to Rosie Holt and Ed Morrish for joining us to talk about NonCensored. The podcast is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media. And I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon, and I'll see you next week. Bye.
