Miss Me? (BBC Sounds)
53 Minutes (Global)
Heroes and Humans of Football (Immaterial)
Old pals Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver have a new podcast out, Miss Me?, and it’s a complete hoot. It’s two shows really. On Mondays they have the “proper show” where they talk through what’s on their minds and what’s in the news (so, where is the Princess of Wales, whither Allen’s music career, that kind of stuff), and on Thursdays they answer readers’ questions. Informally, they call the first the Meaty Dump and the second, formally, Listen Bitch!, and throughout, Lily is in Brooklyn, where she lives, and Miquita is in east London. “On FaceTime!” laughed Oliver during their first show. “Which is where I prefer to see you.”
Miss Me? is, if we’re being technical, a teeny bit of a mess. Topics arrive and are dismissed, talked around, then recalled; huge diversions are made into other areas. But none of this matters. It’s all immensely cheering and laugh-out-loud funny, because both Allen and Oliver are both madly charming and genuine friends. Their anecdotes are intimate and hilarious. In the first episode, Allen confesses that once, when a rapper she was having sex with asked about her liposuction scars, she got embarrassed, so told him they were the result of a hip replacement. In the second, they both recall going on a barge holiday as kids with Keith Allen (Lily’s father), Alex James from Blur and someone else they can’t remember, and running away after a couple of days because the nonstop-partying adults were making them work all the locks and do all the cooking.
Oliver is slightly more of the host than Allen; she’s had a long career in TV presenting. But you don’t notice, really: the shows are all about the vibe. The two women are relaxed and super-honest, even about the little things. In the first episode of Listen Bitch!, which had a theme of Boys From the 90s (when Oliver and Allen were teenagers), they listed their old crushes, from EastEnders’ Paul Nicholls to Boyzone’s Stephen Gateley. From there, they seamlessly moved into fancying men in citrus Ben Sherman polo shirts, and their self-confessed “daddy issues”. “My dad was there, but not there, inconsistent,” said Allen. “Yours was a fantasy.” “Thanks,” said Oliver. “I have therapy later.”
Celebrity-hosted podcasts often fail because the stars involved don’t do the behind-the-scenes work on their presenting, and are too cautious about their careers to do anything other than gush. Not here. There will be many out-of-context clips from this podcast because Allen has always been tabloid catnip, but to get the true and full delight of it, listen to the actual shows. Enjoy.
OK, enough of such wild and funny woman-ish entertainment. It’s time for a couple of football podcasts. Excellent hosts Dara Ó Briain and Josh Widdicombe are here to offer us 53 Minutes, which dives into the story of Ali Dia. You remember Dia. He was the player who, in 1996, came on for Southampton for 53 minutes in a game against Leeds, ran around like a confused child, and then never played in the Premier League again. There are going to be six episodes about him, which seems a lot, but Ó Briain and Widdicombe are accomplished performers, they have a dynamic script, some great interviewees and they promise to make the show about more than just Dia. Widdicombe: “Crucially, it’s about how what happened changed the shape of modern football into the absolute binfire that it is today.” The first episode starts at the 1990 World Cup, and is full of fun: Ó Briain and Widdicombe are great at capturing the joy of football.
Rather more intellectual is Heroes and Humans of Football, a new show which explores the lives of interesting football people. The first three episodes are about Kylian Mbappé, Roman Abramovich and Emma Hayes. These are in-depth, discursive, information-packed analyses of some fascinating characters; a bit like a long-read piece in a broadsheet. Hosts Simon Kuper and Mehreen Khan know their stuff. Kuper, from the FT, is our main storyteller: he’s hugely well informed, though he can be a little clipped when challenged. In the Mbappé episode, when Khan asks whether the Parisian banlieue footballing community is akin to the football cage-culture of south London (both have produced a lot of great players), he doesn’t quite engage. But he’s good at painting a picture not only of the person, but the context they operate in. Khan, from the Times, and also very knowledgable, is the listener’s way in, asking informed questions, giving reactions. A few more audio dynamics (an undiluted hour of two-way conversation is loooong) might mean that those who aren’t serious football heads would also enjoy this show.
A quick note about the furore around the fact that Radio 4 station head Mohit Bakaya has swapped the Sunday-morning time slots of Desert Island Discs and The Archers around, so that DID is now on at 10am and The Archers at 11am. Personally, I think the move to extend the running times of DID (and The Media Show) to an hour are what we should be looking at. It’s an easy way to save money, because it does away with having to schedule a separate 15-minute programme on Fridays, when Desert Island Discs is also broadcast. So lovely little programmes such as next Friday’s New Storytellers piece The Sound Collector, Talia Augustidis’s gold award winner of the Charles Parker prize for best student audio feature, will just... disappear. This is not to diss Bakaya, he’s doing his best. But you have to assume that cost-cutting is at least part of the reason for these scheduling moves.
