This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘Stars in Your Ears: The harsh realities of podcasting’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello and welcome to PodPod. My name is Rhianna Dhillon and this is a podcast all about the wonderful world of podcasting. We always have special guests and in depth conversations, and today is no different. We are joined by Jess Robinson and Jo Walker, who created the Stars in Your Ears podcast, the 4.8 star rated pod in which Jess does musical impressions and teaches her special guests to do the same. But before we get to that, hello to my co contributors, we have Matt Hill who runs Rethink Audio and is the co founder of the British Podcast Awards. Hi, Matt.
Matt Hill
Hello, hello.
Rhianna
Hello. Happy New Year.
Matt
Happy New Year!
Rhianna
And we have Reem Makari, journalist and PodPod researcher. Hi, Reem.
Reem Makari
Hello.
Rhianna
Hello, Happy New Year to you guys. How...
Matt
You were gonna say how did you spend your Christmas, weren't you? And we haven't had it yet. Because it's pre recorded.
Rhianna
Yeah. So just to flag upfront, we are pre recording this episode, because, you know, no one wants to work over Christmas. I'm sure you podcasters out there have banked so many episodes, you're well prepared. Like us, we feel really prepared today.
Matt
It's a really important time, though, January, because new habits are forming. And if you are there with a podcast ready to go and launch at that time then it is really important. We do this daily history show called Today in History with The Retrospectors. And we've got new episodes from January 3. And that is because we know that people are looking for things for their commute, you know. And so yeah, it's really important time that so you know, sort of when we record this in sort of mid December is when we're really kind of gearing up for for that time and make sure everything's there. Also really busy time for sponsorship as well. Lots of advertisers kind of getting on board and new campaigns in January. If you're not making shows in January, then you're missing out.
Rhianna
Oh, you had it here first. Thanks, Matt.
Matt
Sorry to break it to you all!
Rhianna
Reem, what are you working on right now that means that you're prepared for January?
Reem
I don't know how prepared I am for January. But I will say think there is no better way to spend New Year's Day recovering than listening to a bunch of podcasts. So I'm looking forward to seeing all of the people who are going to be launching in the new year.
Rhianna
So I had like a really weird thing this week, we got our wedding video back. And it's kind of split into different bits, you know, like a sort of highlight reel and, and then the speeches on their own. And both Mike and I who we, you know, we're both podcasters, we both speak publicly for a living. Neither of us can bring ourselves to watch our wedding speeches. It's such a weird thing because we don't want to hear ourselves talk. And Mike has to like really listen, because he has a regular podcast. He has to listen to himself all the time. And but the wedding speech apparently is just one thing too many. And I think I'm always so afraid of what I'm going to find out about myself as a speaker if I listened back to myself, so I don't ever.
Matt
Oh, you never do?
Rhianna
No, I never do.
Reem
So you don't listen to PodPod?
Rhianna
I, I listen to it live. I'm listening to you right now. So, but do you guys listen back to everything that you do?
Matt
Not to everything, but certainly to some things, just for the make sure that I don't sound terrible. But I also just ask for feedback. I think sometimes it's obvious that you won't like your own voice. But it is important to know what other people think about the way that you sound and make sure that make sure that you're doing a good job at communicating and enunciating and all those things. And I am actually pretty bad at it. I think that's probably some of the feedback that I've certainly got from people listening to the show and I need to work at it. But that's why you know, sort of vocal techniques and just doing a warm up before you go on. There's nothing wrong with any of that stuff. It might sound a bit theatrical, but actually, you know, spending a bit of time just warming up your voice a bit. It's good manners, isn't it really for your listeners to make sure that they don't in the same way that you shouldn't cough into your mic and keep it in the edit that you shouldn't probably, you should probably try. Well, I'm just saying, it's the time of year. I'm just saying, you know, it's Emma's got her work cut out right there. But yes, I think is really important to really kind of, if you're entering people's ears, like deliver the best version of yourself really.
Rhianna
Reem, do you have that where you do listen back because you're quite new to podcasting. So I guess it's quite a new thing to hear yourself back and what have you learned from listening to yourself?
Reem
I mean, ultimately, I am a bit of narcissist, so I do end up listening back to myself. It is very much self inflicted cringe but I do listen, and I tend to blackout a lot when I'm recording. So I don't actually remember a lot of what I'm saying until I end up listening back to it and then I'm like, oh, that's what I contributed. But I do find that the more I listen back to myself that I realised I do things that like sometimes like relying on on crutch words, you know, like I say, like, a lot very Gen Z.
Rhianna
As do I, yeah, no. It's a real problem.
Reem
No, same. And then like going, like, um, or whatever. And then just listening back to me saying these things makes me take note of that. I don't know if I remember to apply them the next time I record, but I think I subconsciously try to be aware of it.
Rhianna
Yes, absolutely.
Matt
We're always our harshest critic. I think if you're listening back to your own voice, obviously, you are paying more attention than most people are. So don't don't take it away from yourself.
Rhianna
Do you think there is like a generational tic Matt? Do you have, as somebody who is slightly older than Reem, do you have a different tic?
Matt
Almost certainly, I don't think I've done enough on-mic editing myself to be able to detect those as well as people who, like Emma, who's editing this as we go along. But I do think when you spot the tics in your presenters that you're editing, you do have to then kind of reconcile with yourself, is this something I'm just going to have to edit out every time I work with them for the rest of my life? Or am I going to quietly say Do you know you do this a lot, and it would really help if you didn't? Because that can really play in people's heads like, you can really get inside people. Because like, ultimately, like sometimes you can't do anything about it. It's just one of the things that you use, it's a crutch as you say, you don't want to impose psychological warfare on your presenters. That's my top tip for the new year, don't impose psychological warfare on your presenters.
Rhianna
10 years ago, I said on air, you know, I don't know, I don't know, you know, something like that. And it's just, it's haunted me ever since because I think my producer pointed it out. And I've never forgotten. He was like, it's a kind of a stupid thing to say, because you're saying, you know, and then you say you don't know in the same sentence. Oh man.
Matt
No one needs that kind of analysis.
Reem
Like, I totally understand that. I don't see the issue with that at all.
Rhianna
So I mentioned earlier that Jess Robinson is our guest this week, along with Jo Walker. And I guess for a podcast like the Stars in Your Ears podcast, there is just no time for any of the stuff that we've just been talking about. Because it's such a slick, incredibly edited solid show. So here they are: Jess Robinson, and Jo Walker. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jess Walker
Thank you for having us.
Jo Walker
Hello.
Rhianna
Jess, you have created a very self deprecating persona in Stars in Your Ears, you have a team of musical disciples. Tell us a bit about keeping a distance from who you really are, at least in the first instance, in your your kind of opening and closing of each episode.
Jess
I don't know if it's that distant from who I really am, actually! I'm monstrous; I'm a monstrous knob! It was really fun to write; that's sort of my onstage persona, when I'm with the band, of being very demanding and silly and attention seeking. But I do think there's a bit of truth in there. I'm afraid to say, honestly, I do. But maybe that's the self deprecating, but who knows? But yes, I wrote the scripts, those sort of sketchy bits at the beginning and the end, with my friend Robin Morgan, who's a brilliant writer and stand up. And we just had so much fun writing that and then the band and I, and wonderful Jo Walker, who's here would go through the scripts on our little read throughs and then ramp them up and make them even more ridiculous. And we'd just laugh a lot, wouldn't we?
Jo
Yeah, it was fun. I feel like it was a bit like a table reads where we read what was on the script, and then just improved around it and then change the script based on the improvisation. And then when we came to recording, we improved again. So it was very fluid, very natural. And we were just always open to change what needed to be changed for it to flow the best. And what we found funny.
Rhianna
I feel like your podcast covers so many different areas, all in one; you have the sketches you were just talking about, you of course have the musical aspect, do you have the mimicry. And there were just so many kind of sections. The interview section, of course, is such a big one as well. What came first, I suppose, and how did you build that out to be what it is now?
Jess
I think what came first was I had always really, really, really, really, really wanted to start a podcast with the band, because I really admired The Horne Section. And I knew that Jo worked with The Horne Section and I wanted to do sort of an impressions, musical impressions podcast, because there wasn't anything else out there like that, or as far as I knew an impressions podcast. So that was the first thing and I wanted to do it with my bandmates because I love them. So that's that's how it started and then I thought, well, you know, in a sort of cynical way, we better get some celebrity guests on here. So you know, it will draw audience members in. Otherwise, why would they bother listening or find us? And then Michael, longsuffering Michael, our pianist, and admin, head of admin, he really wanted to put some sketches in and do some more sort of acting stuff, which I really think he excelled. It sort of came that way round. And it all happened in lockdown. And I asked on Instagram, whether there would be anybody that might be interested in helping us do that, or where I would start or how I'd get any advice. And lovely Jo Walker hopped on board, didn't you, Joe?
Jo
I did indeed.
Jess
And actually, we couldn't have done any of it without him.
Jo
I don't think that's true.
Jess
Oh, I imagined I would be like we'd record it all on GarageBand. And then I'd edit it. That was a really easy thing to do. Do you want to just talk them through what you had to do every week?
Jo
Okay, so how we did it. How we did series one was, series one was all over Zoom. And I'm trying to think the best way of describing it; basically the connection, no the connection you had with the band and the past live shows you've done, that was so evident. And we just wanted to bring that out more and more in series one. So we had the script, but obviously, we just started going off the hinges a little bit more, there was no talks about me doing sound effects or the sound design. And that just I sort of did that because I felt it's what needed it. And it went as well as we could have hoped to have gone, it was very sort of Mighty Boosh radio play. And again, it was something that we haven't really seen many comedy podcasts do it that way for a long, long time.
Rhianna
I'm really interested in you jumping on board via Instagram, and that whole process of building your team via social media. So what was it about Jess' project?
Jo
To clarify, I have worked with Jess before Instagram, it wasn't a out of the blue, Hello, let's work together.
Jess
But we hadn't worked together much, had we?
Jo
We hadn't done it much; too corporate for me.
Jess
Yeah, yeah.
Jo
And The Horne Section Podcast.
Jess
Yeah. And I just happened to know that Jo was a kind lovely man. But I didn't. I didn't ask him specifically. So when he came to the rescue, I couldn't believe it.
Jo
There had been a few drinks in Edinburgh as well, I'm pretty sure.
Rhianna
The best networking.
Jo
It is indeed.
Rhianna
So you're talking about Jess bringing, you know, using, not using, but having celebrities there to kind of find audiences.
Jess
Oh no, I used them.
Rhianna
Oh, yeah, you used them, sure. But also you have your own following. So did many of them follow you over to your podcast? And how did you kind of reach out to them and pull them with you?
Jess
I so I've got a little newsletter. But I tell you what, some, quite a lot of my audience that I've built up over the years, because of the stuff that I do and the sort of Edinburgh following I have, are people who might be between 50 and 70. And a lot of them are not podcast listeners. Like my mum, she doesn't really know what a podcast is. And every time I do an episode, I have to send her the specific link to the episode, she doesn't understand how to find it in her podcast app or anything like that. So she's got no idea. And then she has to send all of those specific links to her friends in Albury village or whatever. So that's quite, that's quite tricky, and they just don't quite understand what it is or why and why it's not on just on the radio, or whatever. So that was quite hard. And then I do have a nice following of musical comedy fans who really enjoyed it and and some random people who just sort of jumped on board and found us and loved it. But it was quite hard. I don't think I realised quite what a very tiny minnow in a massive sea I was - am.
Jo
Yeah, I think what was also tricky is because we started in lockdown. Obviously, there are a lot of listeners in lockdown because everyone wanted content but because there was so much content being created as well, we had to find the angle of when to release, when to do stuff. Because that's the other thing that people always forget with podcasts, people will listen to it on their commutes or in a certain hour of their day or whatever like that. So we had to tie it around Guilty Feminist, we had to tie it around The Horne Section Podcast, we had to tie it around all these other ones we thought we might be competing with to find an angle and a date and a time where we could drop the episode and hopefully build the audience from there.
Jess
And I had absolutely no idea about any of that. I had no idea that that, you know, you had to be so specific.
Rhianna
So The Guilty Feminist, that was you touring with The Guilty Feminist podcast?
Jess
Yes, but also just the times that The Guilty Feminist would go out because I thought that there might be a crossover of audience.
Rhianna
Was that a sort of network? Because that's, you know, there are a lot of brilliant, often female comedians, who there definitely seems to be a crossover with your podcast. So in terms of using The Guilty Feminist network as one of your own. Was that really useful?
Jess
Yeah, I think Deborah Frances White is really brilliant at being supportive and plugging things and that, you know, projects that we're all doing this sort of Guilty Feminist family. So she did some posts and some tweets and and told some people about my podcast on the live show, and was a guest as well. So that was great, that was really useful and helpful. But I don't think it did completely take off in the way that I thought it would or hoped it would.
Rhianna
Oh, so tell us a little bit more about that, then because, you know, we have sometimes these ideas of podcasts being almost overnight successes, and I don't think we often realise just how much has to go them, how many months or weeks of work has to go into making an overnight success. So tell us about the process of this becoming, getting to a point that you wanted it to get to.
Jess
In terms of, of numbers, I don't think it ever particularly has got, it hasn't gotten to that point yet that we want it to get to where it's making money, or even just has the amount of listeners that we want it to get or the following that we wanted to get, which is sort of disappointing, and it was thrilling to win a British Podcast Award. And we thought that would give us a huge boost. And it gave us a bit of a boost, but not massive. But also if if I'll hand over to Jo to tell you the process and the amount of hours that go into making one episode, because it is so different to just sitting at a microphone for an hour a week, or maybe getting you know, three or four episodes done in a day, it's just so impossible to do that. And I think one of the things that I have definitely learned is that you have to be putting content out there every single week to have a regular following.
Jo
I think you've hit the nail on the head, I think the difference we have with this one is most podcasts have to go out weekly or biweekly to sort of really build up an audience. And it's more, you throw content out there so that people can keep catching up and keep watching and keep learning. It's the whole sort of internet thing of you want it to be a bottomless pit. Whereas where we started with series, one, two, and three, we wanted it to be a bit more sort of radio series, we want to be a bit more TV series. And we've actually built a world where we've got scripts at the start and the end, we've got to get guests on at certain times, Jess tries to teach them an impression. So we've got to find out from just listening to that person who's a good person that they can nail because their sort of tone of voice and all that sort of stuff, because there's no point teaching some people certain impressions, because there's just a different tonality to the voices. We also do independent songs with that guests. So we had to do all the production, find out what song they want to sing, make sure it was in copyright, if it wasn't in copyright, we had to go back asnd try and find a way that we could change them to do something else where we wouldn't get scanned by PRs to pay for the right to the music. And then we had to arrange that song, work out the key, teach it to them, record it. And then on top of that we had our own sort of songs that we were throwing out there as episode games as well. Jess always came up with games for randomizers and all that sort of stuff. I'm trying to think of what the best way to describe it. I think it's sort of Stars in Their Eyes meets Noel's House Party meets Mighty Boosh, there was so many different elements to it that were all absolutely great. And we've loved doing it. But it took a month to write the scripts for all of series three, then we had two days where all the band came to mine in Brighton and we did the table read, we did some edits. And then we did more then we recorded all the scripts for the top and the tail. Then I had to edit all of that. And then we did all the music for all the guests. And then we had to interview the guests.
Jess
And in the meantime, Kitch had a baby. And Michael was touring. And so our lovely bassist Rob was just in the studio furiously making jingles, making backing tracks, he would have spent probably about four, four days worth of studio time making all of these songs and doing all of these things. And so, I mean hours and hours and hours or days, days and days go into one episode really don't they?
Jo
Yeah, and I think this is the sort of hurdle we've tripped up over, we love the content, we love what we've made. But at the moment, it's just unsustainable for us to keep going without getting funded. And back in the day, when we used to do like The Horne Section radio series, we were paid to go and spend a month somewhere and write a show. Whereas as soon as we jump to podcasts, you lose that time, you lose the time when you're paid to actually come up and write the show and make the show. So because you've got to make the content before you can start putting advertising on it and making money. We're just trying to find a workaround of how do you make something sustainable, keep the silliness that we found, and we love and we think is the heart and soul of Stars in Your Ears. But we need to make it more sustainable so that we're not spending hours and hours, not, I don't want to say losing money, because that's harsh, but it is a lot of work for time we're not getting paid.
Rhianna
I mean, it does sound absolutely exhausting.
Jess
I just didn't want the the joy to be sapped out of it. And it became a bit of a chore for especially for Kitch. And Michael and Rob, actually the band who you know, are doing it for the fun of it. But they are, you know, proper professional musicians, and they've got lives and it's it's hard to keep asking them to do loads of stuff for free. It just felt like it's it's not fair. And there's only so many favours I can pull in, because it's a fun hobby thing for them. But it's a vehicle for me. Do you know what I mean? It felt unfair.
Jo
And it's tricky, because we're not all based in the same place as well, me and Jess are both Brighton based, so we can quite easily pop in and do stuff. Whereas Michael and Kitch are up London based. And we learned very quickly with The Horne Section podcast. And I was telling it to Jess, when we started this one, you just can't do live music over Zoom, or Riverside or anything like that; as soon as it's internet based, live music's sort of out and you've got to do it at home. And with The Horne Section podcast, we can get everyone into one room, we can record the music live. And it might sound a little bit ropey here and there, but that's sort of the fun of it. Whereas because we started in lockdown and we had to do it remotely, we've now got to a stage where we got to this amazing high quality standard. And again, we don't want to lose it. But there's no way of doing that without putting extra time in.
Jess
Lockdown was the only way that we could do when everyone was trapped in their houses with nothing else to do. As soon as the real world kicked back in, it makes it very, very difficult.
Jo
And with songs and all that sort of stuff. It's it's a lot of work to put a song together and it goes out in one episode. So each series of the podcast, we're basically recording an album. Musicians take a year, two years to write albums and release new music. Yeah, we're doing it, trying to do it every week. It's tricky.
Rhianna
Do you think if you had that time over, you would have come up with a slightly more like a simpler format? Or are you really glad that you've kind of given yourself this challenge to use as a you know, as a learning curve going forward?
Jess
No, I don't think we would have done it differently. Because I'm glad of the learning curve. And I'm so glad that we had that time to produce something so brilliant. I'm really grateful that we did have that time. And also it came at a time for me when my dad had died not that long before. And I really wanted to throw myself into something and the world was completely upside down for everyone. And it was just a really amazing thing to see what was possible. But it's also Yeah, just you know, it's a wake up call and a bit disappointing to find that actually now everything's 'back to normal' in inverted commas again, it's not sustainable. So the challenge now because I would really like looking at Jo Walker's face there. I just really want to see him more and, and to see if we can find a more sustainable way of somehow continuing the podcast because it is a great thing to do. Especially because I absolutely hate social media. I hate making Tik Tok videos. And so if I could have if I could do my podcast as a way of being you know, that being my social media, thank you very much. I'd love it.
Andrea
Well, touching on that then, Jess, I think back earlier on this year, you asked for feedback on Instagram. So what were the things that people found really popular? What did what do they want more of? What did they want less of?
Jess
Oh I did, didn't I? Do you know what, we didn't actually get much feedback from that. That's what was disappointing. We didn't get a lot of engagement on Instagram, or Twitter or anything.
Andrea
Well if you hate social media, it's like an extra job, isn't it?
Jo
Well, yeah, a lot of the feedback that we get and we do, like we do have a decent number of listeners and we do get decent feedback. But all the feedback's always just really positive of oh, there's nothing like this out there, all the songs sound great, or I love this episode, I love the how different you are. And it's what I like about what we've accomplished is, it's ambitious. And we got it to a really high standard. But I like that every series is slightly different. I like that series one, that we were all just based in one house. And there was a bit of sound design, but it was more just silly games and silly things that we could do in lockdown. Series Two was when lockdown supposedly lifted. So we decided to do a little tour. And obviously, we all still record it the same way. But there's a lot more sound design, there's a lot more sort of elements that happen at the start and the end. And then for series three, we pretended we were stranded on a desert island. So what I like is that we've established that every series can be a little bit different. And what I think we wanted was we were trying to get specific feedback about what people liked and didn't want us to lose so that we could sort of come up with series four being focused in one more area rather than having every other area, but because everyone always just says, oh, it's amazing, don't lose anything. We're like, Well, we, we kind of have to lose something or we need to find think of another way outside the box. So we can achieve all of this without us all losing an arm and a leg.
Matt
It sounds to me like you're very much at a crossroads at the moment.
Jess
Yes.
Matt
There's a point in which it's like, will this continue? And if so, what for? It doesn't sound to me like you want to rollback the production at all, like it is the level and the ambition that you want. So is there, what do you see is the thing that would make you go okay, let's do series four?
Jo
Well, I think the main thing right now is just time isn't it? We need to work out, we're pretty confident with series four, it will probably be me, Jess and Michael because Kitch is in baby land and has to be in baby land, and we can't pull him away from that. And now that we've lost, potentially two co hosts, we want it to stay as hectic and as busy. But also, we don't want to because we've lost two other people, not be able to do such bigger songs or not do this or not do that. But we also don't want to put more time on to Michael.
Jess
Yeah, Rob, Rob has now decided that comedy is not for him, bless him. And he's gone into doing music production, more music production and stuff.
Rhianna
He was such a good butt of the joke, though.
Jess
I know. Everything's, and he lives in Brighton as well. And we love him to pieces. But yeah, he was...
Jo
I mean, we're still on good terms. It didn't end badly, it's just...
Jess
Yeah, no, no, no, no, we I've I've had some we've been doing some backing tracks for other stuff. But yeah, when he signed up to be in the band, he had not imagined that he would get roped into doing a podcast or having lines or, you know, he really doesn't want to have all of that. Yeah, he doesn't, even though he's so good. He never felt very comfortable saying his lines, bless him. I love him. So yeah, what do you think? What do you guys think?
Matt
Well, you and I know Jess, we've spoken many times about what, what the show did. And I should say, full disclosure. You know, once Jess won the best entertainment podcast, for the show, you know, we we met up every couple of weeks really to chat about could happen to make, get the show up and running and make it a real, like, find its audience. But I think where we've come to now, and I think this is sort of what you've been articulating is that, you know, in a way, it's an independent show, which has the ambitions of like almost like a broadcaster, or a big platform, you know, with a built in audience, it almost needs a window that to be presented in rather than trying to build it from the ground up, if you see what I mean, because it just feels like it's so welcoming as a show. It's so fully formed, it sort of needs to be as part of a network maybe? Is that part, is that maybe it, or is it an Audible exclusive or another, you know is it is there somewhere, it can sit as part of a wider group of shows that makes sense of how you know and sort of brings to the fore how much production and time and effort is put into it in a way which is just is no matter how great the artwork, no matter how how compelling the first few minutes of the show is, is never quite evident until you've heard the whole episode. But until you've, you know, experienced it is there. I don't know if that's the thing it needs, like, you just need a classic Victorian benefactor to come in and basically, do what you do?
Jess
Is that you, Matt? I love your top hat.
Rhianna
He's twiddling his moustache.
Jess
Yeah, maybe maybe that's it? Or maybe? I don't know, maybe we do take out some of the elements and we make it more chat based. And we maybe, I don't know. One thing I was thinking was do we take some songs that we've used already, our our mash ups, or whatever that we've done from the first series and focus one episode on each song and talk about how we put it together and where the impression came from. And but is that just sort of cheating? Is that lazy? Is that interesting?
Jo
This is this is where we, this is where we've sort of fallen at the hurdle. Because if you break down all the episodes, there's so many elements to it. And every element's brilliant, what we don't want to do is lose the impressions because they're brilliant. And it's really fun where we're teaching other people how to do the impression.
Jess
But I think I've run out.
Jo
We don't want to lose the interview, because there are some like, the interview bit you would feel would be the boring bit. But the way Jess asks questions and finds out how people feel about their own voice and how they changed it to sort of become who they are now is really interesting. And there's just, every element works by itself. And we don't know whether each episode needs to be one of those elements, or whether for a series we get rid of different elements and focus in on one, we're just trying to work it out. Because I don't feel like the world we're in right now there is this big, Victorian type benefactor that is going to get us to do what we've done. And we're happy to scale back, we just don't know ourselves which elements to scale back on, because we're so proud of the whole thing.
Matt
Is it about the, are there podcasts out there that, you know, have a structure that does work, whatever its scale, that that could work for you. I'm just thinking in terms of you mentioned, obviously, you've work with The Horne Section before and that obviously has very similar production values, although, you know, sort of in a different way. Live music, for example. Or I'm just thinking of like Pappy's and what they've done where, you know, they have a live show once a month, and then some chatty episodes is sort of to fill the fill the fill the gap until the next live show.
Jess
That's a nice idea.
Matt
I mean, are there things which, you know what I mean, have you seen other comedy shows, I mean, when I say comedy, I mean the thing that's different about what you're doing than what you would say a lot of comedy podcast do, a lot of comedy podcasts are actually just, they're banter podcasts aren't they, they're comedians talking with each other and riffing, but you're, you're scripted, you know, how many other scripted comedy shows are there out there? I mean, there's very few in the open podcast market. It's Beef and Dairy. There's Pappy's live shows, and then comedians talking to comedians, isn't it?
Jess
Yeah, it would be, it would be fun to record some some, you know, have a monthly live thing. The other thing that we were taken on by Auddy, who to help sort of try and monetize the podcast, and they've got sponsors sort of lined up and they and they said, it's really important that you have something every single week or every fortnight to put out there. And then we've got people we've got people lined up, when are you going to be able to produce some stuff, you know, and they're like, on us, they want us to. So yeah, so that's a nice little opportunity. But I don't really know what completely to expect from that.
Jo
And I think what's been hard as well is with series three being finished. I jumped on to tour with Ian Stirling and then jumped on to The Horne Section TV show, Jess jumped on to Spitting Image and Guilty Feminist and now your legacy show which is very, very tech heavy, like it's, it's also trying to find time where we can do the other bits we've already committed to, and we're not quite sure yet how to still keep the fun for us because the fun of this podcast was always the collaborating. It was always we enjoyed putting the amount of time we put into it, but even if we simplify it, just getting time when me and Jess can meet up and actually throw the dreidel down the stairs and see what it lands on. We just haven't had time to do that.
Jess
Throw the dreidel down the stairs?! I've never heard that before!
Andrea
That's a phrase I've never heard before. Never, ever heard that.
Jo
I don't know.
Jess
That's the best thing I've ever heard!
Jo
This is why I do podcasts, but I don't talk on them.
Rhianna
No, you should talk more Jo, that's great.
Jess
You just need to throw the dreidel down the stairs. That's the best thing I've ever heard. That's brilliant.
Jo
I meant to say dice, didn't I? I meant to say dice.
Jess
I'm so pleased you made it Jewish for me. Do you throw the dice down the stairs?
Andrea
No, that's, that's also...
Jess
I'm just happy throwing things down the stairs. I throw my dirty washing down the stairs. Jo Walker original.
Jo
You live in a flat Jess, you don't even have stairs.
Jess
It's alright, I've got a lift.
Rhianna
So looking back at some of the incredible guests that you've had on, I mean, you must have had so many highlights with the people that you've talked to, Jess Phillips talking. I mean, first of all, when you're, Jo, you know you just mentioned about that each interview is kind of about the voice. And Jess, when you kind of got that thing about her talking about how she used to smoke from the age of 10 and that's why her voice is so it is absolutely insane. So tell me about some of the highlights that you've had over the past three series and which guests really stood out for you.
Jess
Stephen K. Amos was great fun.
Rhianna
He's so funny!
Jess
He was so funny and gorgeous.
Jo
I was about to say that as well.
Jess
Yeah, Alex Horne really entered into the spirit of things didn't he? Adam Buxton...
Jo
Rosie Jones.
Jess
Oh, Rosie Jones was brilliant and getting...
Rhianna
This ep is not to be missed, on the Rosie Jones one.
Jess
I mean, she's just so, she's so game isn't she, she's so fun and it was very interesting. listening to her speak about what it's like to have cerebral palsy and her voice and what it and how it's been for her sort of with people finishing off her sentences and not being patient enough to wait for her to get there or whatever. And, and having Adam Buxton on, that was an absolute oh my god, that was such a dream, wasn't it?
Rhianna
So is he a dream guest How do you get Adam Buxton on? I mean, he's one of the most famous podcasters out there, right? Yeah, you get him on your podcast, who is the talent booker?
Jess
Me. I just drop into people's DMs, I found Jess Phillips' parliamentary email. Oh, I got Romesh Ranganathan did an intro. So I dropped into Romesh's DMs, got him on the podcast. He really loved it. And he was amazing. And he said, oh, you should get Adam Buxton on. And he asked Adam, if I could have his email address. I got Adam's email address. And it took me a year and a half of remember me? Oh, have you got any time now? I was just sort of. Yeah, a bit of chutzpah. I was channelling my mother, just pestering people.
Andrea
Jessie, there were no agents involved. It was all just your own under your own steam.
Jess
Yeah, no agents. No, no.
Andrea
Amazing.
Jess
I mean, I tried, they were not helpful.
Rhianna
This is sort of feels like a bit of, you know, magic fairy dust of how you get somebody who has got such a huge profile. We think that they're untouchable in a way. What are, the what's the language that you're using to be like, come on my podcast for no money and be amazing?
Jo
I think what we got very lucky with is after series one, people had heard the episodes and we were able to listen to them and see what they were like. And we got so many messages from people saying I've never had to prepare so much for a podcast before. It's just like, what some people prepared and we're ready and what up for, like what Romesh did with when like with the randomizer games, where Jess would be like okay, now you've got to climb up this tree and you've just got Rosie Jones going oh, alright, alright. It's a branch. Oh, no. It was so funny. Just watching... the guests we had, a lot of them wanted to be on it. And a lot of them enjoyed it. And I think it was something very different that most people when they go on podcasts, it is just talking, it is sort of like oh, can you just read the sentence when it was us, it's very much like Okay, so you've got to learn this song. We're gonna teach you this impression. For this section, can you just make loads of sound effects and just play along? And they just go for it and they have a good fun time as well.
Rhianna
Is it really difficult performing your impressions without having an audience in front of you? I mean, we've seen your Britain's Got Talent audition, which was just mind blowing and the response you got from people in the room was incredible and really moving and Ant and Dec on the side kind of beside themselves with excitement. And then you are doing this in a space where you don't have that response and you're not playing off a crowd. How does that that affect the way that you are able to do your mimicry?
Jess
I don't think, it doesn't really affect it at all; I'm sort of I'm so used to doing voiceovers and Spitting Image and and all of that, it's actually almost a bit easier because then I can just close my eyes and focus in on the voice rather than worry about whether people are going to clap or not. So that's an interesting question, though.
Jo
I think it's very rare as well, Jess, that I think there's only been; how many episodes've we done? We've done 30 odd or something like that. I think it's there's only been one episode where you've ever listened back to it and gone, Oh, I didn't do that impression very well. Can we overdub it? You've always smashed it.
Jess
Yeah, I do. I think my Bjork came out a bit Welsh. And some sometimes, you know, when I'm teaching an impression to someone, and it's someone I really love and respect, I feel like a bit of a c*nt. So I get a bit worried; you might want to bleep that out. I've Yeah, I get a bit sort of, oh, God, oh, God, like, who am I to tell them? Yeah.
Rhianna
Thank you so much to Jess Robinson and Jo Walker, for giving us a really honest and insightful discussion into the highs and the lows of podcasting. I mean, we have talked about some of the really difficult stuff before but I think perhaps not in quite so much depth. Matt, listening back to this, what really stood out for you?
Matt
Yeah, it's really hard kind of making this decision to end the show, which is basically where I think Jess is probably at. But I hope she can take some consolation in the fact that first of all, it was an award winning show, like it was recognised for its brilliance and for the audacity of its concept, and that it will continue to be there, you know, it is not, you know, unlike if it was a show that had been made for the radio, it would have disappeared, and no one would have heard it again. But it will last as a podcast for a long time. And I hope will develop a cult following because it really is an excellent show. And there's nothing else like it out there. And I think they can be really proud of that. And, you know, both Jess and Jo have gone on to be you know, supremely talented and done their own things, Jess doing a lot of stuff with The Last Leg and Spitting Image and everything. Jo has been working on The Horne Section TV show recently and also on those shows. And so yeah, I think they're gonna go on to big things. It's a great calling card. But, you know, sometimes sadly, not everything continues.
Rhianna
Reem, what were your thoughts, having kind of listened to Jess talk so openly about what was really difficult for her with this latest season of Stars in Your Ears?
Reem
I mean, I think I just I really appreciate the the honesty and the being able to talk about such a harsh but real reality, because I think what I learned from from meeting a lot of podcasters, or attending conferences, and one thing that people kept bringing up is wanting to invite more conversation, or open conversation about things like data and money and podcasting, because a lot of this information is often hidden. And it's very helpful to be able to know what other podcasters are going through. Even if they look very successful, they might be struggling. And it's more helpful to up and coming podcasters or even ones that have been in the industry for a long time, to know that other people are struggling just to see that it's something that's completely normal, and they can kind of lean on each other or they can get advice from each other. So I just what I took from that is just to be able to appreciate that that honesty from from podcasters.
Rhianna
Yeah, that's really lovely. I think, for me, you sort of forget how much dedication I suppose that it takes to create something like this so completely from scratch. It's such a unique idea. And there are so many moving parts, there are so many elements to it. So to keep all of that going and afloat. You know, I think Jess was maybe reluctant to say that they were losing money, but they certainly weren't getting paid for doing it. And to do a passion project like that is a really wonderful thing. But the kind of the realistic thing is that it it can't carry on until it starts to get you income, right. But what a shame and is that going to start kind of smothering creativity in this way in podcasting?
Matt
Well, it's certainly true that a lot of people started podcasts in the pandemic and have not continued them. You know, there was a kind of a slight drop off in entrants to the British Podcast Awards in 2022 compared with the year before, which kind of reflects sort of that, that that trajectory, but the ones that did come out of the pandemic with an audience and with some sort of viability are thriving. And I think what I would say is that, you know, there is, It's not that the market is saturated by podcasts. I think that is something that gets bandied about. But it I don't think is entirely true. I think the issue is still that there are some audiences that aren't still in podcasts who could be. So for Jess, she was quite open in that conversation to talk about, like a lot of her audience are sort of, you know, sort of 60 plus women. And they aren't necessarily the target audience of most of the platforms for podcasting at the moment. But that time will come. And so it may well be that Jess' show was just really ahead of the curve, and that that audience, and that demographic will be served by podcasts in the future. But right now, it's just not, there's just not a market for it.
Rhianna
I really hope so. I really hope that for Jess, and Jo and if you want to go back and listen to all of the Stars in Your Ears podcasts, obviously the whole back catalogue is out there. So do go and have a listen just to kind of see how Jess and Jo perform.
Matt
It's a great show.
Rhianna
It's, it's a lot of fun. And the sound design is brilliant; for once Axel Kacoutier is not involved, I think in this - it's the only podcast, possibly, that he's not had a hand in.
Matt
Tell your mum. it's a good show for your mum. Everyone tell their mums.
Rhianna
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Thank you so much to Reem and Matt for joining me. And a huge thanks to Jess and Joe and Andrea Fox for joining us. You could find out so much more on podpod.com, loads of new columns going up there every day. Do sign up to our daily email bulletins. And you can follow us on social at @podpodofficial and subscribe, rate, go on, review as well. And the podcast is produced as ever by the brilliant Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media. I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon, and I will see you next week. Bye.
Matt
Happy New Year.
