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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Lifestyle
Bruce Dessau

Top of the Pods – How live podcasts are taking over comedy

Josh Widdicombe Matt Forde Rob Beckett Alice Levine James Cooper Richard Herring Suzi Ruffell Daisy Ridley Deborah FrancesWhite Emma Thompson

The My Dad Wrote a Porno team

(Picture: handout)

Comedians are used to boasting that they blew the roof off the venue. Josh Widdicombe and Rob Beckett seemed to do it without even playing a gig. The day that tickets went on sale for the live performance of their podcast Parenting Hell at the O2 Arena next year, Storm Eunice knocked the top off the Greenwich venue.

As metaphors go this is a useful one. Podcast gigs have recently stormed the comedy world. Yet despite notching up over 50 million downloads discussing sleepless nights and the perils of being young fathers, an arena tour was never in Widdicombe and Beckett’s career crosshairs.

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