Michael Palin is possibly the last celebrity left in Britain not to have a podcast – which, to Greg James’s mind, makes him the perfect guest for the Crossed Wires Podcast Festival, taking place across this weekend in Sheffield.
“At their best and most powerful, podcasts are a celebration of community and togetherness, and no one sums that up better than Michael.” says James, who’ll be sitting down with Palin on Friday 4 July at 5pm in Sheffield City Hall.
“He’s been my hero for as long as I can remember. I can’t wait to ask him what he was like as a young man. I’m sure he got up to no good.
“Michael grew up in Sheffield so to have him back there talking about his early years of school and amateur dramatics in the city will be a complete pleasure. Let’s just hope I can convince him to start a podcast full time!”
James has come on board as creative director for the second year of this Festival, which will feature podcast stars from Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett from Dish, to Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham joining Matt Forde of Political.
The Radio 1 breakfast show host reflects on the paradox of the intimate medium of podcasting being translated into a large public space: “Radio and podcasts are wonderfully intimate for the listener, but all the while, they’re quietly creating beautiful communities for like-minded people.
“It’s always lovely to meet someone who knows the same in-jokes and nuances of a podcast you listen to. To have somewhere for everyone to congregate in real life and celebrate togetherness is something we all crave.”
“This is a showcase of live podcasting, the next generation of podcasting,” explains Alice Levine, who co-founded the event with producer Dino Sofos and festival founder James O’Hara.
“Like all good major national events, the idea started over a curry and a walk in the Peak District – the three of us were after that feeling of getting people together in one place, with a shared language of in-jokes and references for people who’d been listening to their favourite podcast from the beginning. We couldn’t believe it hadn’t been done.”
Levine already knows the magic of bringing the intimate experience shared between podcaster and listener into a huge, shared forum, having taken her own hit podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno around the world to celebrated spaces from Sydney Opera House to New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
She says: “There’s something special about podcasting in its original form – intimate, sometimes meditative – and then there’s this other thing, which is community and celebration, putting faces to those listeners who’ve contributed.”
Levine’s My Dad Wrote a Porno was one of the first big breakout successes of the podcast age, and she marvels now at the success of something created on the back of a good idea but no production company or marketing.
“It was a less crowded market then for sure,” she remembers of its debut in 2015. Inspired by the erotic books written by the dad of her university friend Jamie Morton, the show was “recorded around the kitchen table and just put out there”.
With only word of mouth to propel it onwards, the team were gobsmacked to find themselves in the global podcast chart, and equally surprised to spot listeners “in the wild”, as she puts it.
“I remember the day (co-host) James Cooper came in and said he’d seen someone listening to us on the Tube. We had quite striking artwork so we could spot when people had us on their phone.”
As well as Greg James sitting down with Michael Palin, the Festival slate is proof of the breadth of podcast content out there – everything from Help! I Sexted My Boss to Fun Kids Science Weekly.
Further demonstration of the mushrooming popularity of the medium is that, in just its second year, the Festival now has the BBC as a partner, with Frank Skinner, Russell Kane’s Evil Genius and Sara Cox among the Corporation’s free ticket offerings this weekend.
And where might fans of Levine and James be most likely to come across them in Sheffield? “I’ll be running around like a headless chicken,” says Levine, “but I hope to get to as many Fringe events as possible.”
“I’ll be wherever Michael Palin is to make sure he’s happy as we’re so honoured to have him there,” adds James. “But when it’s all done, we’ll be getting very drunk with the Tailenders gang at Fagan’s.”
Crossed Wires Podcast Festival runs 4–6 July in venues around Sheffield. For more details and to book tickets, visit: crossedwires.live.
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