We launch a new podcast column at Sheffield's Crossed Wires festival

Welcome to this new monthly round-up from the world of comedy podcasting. For this inaugural edition, I headed to Sheffield for the Crossed Wires podcast festival, a Mecca for a fan of the genre like me. Where else can you stroll from Women’s Hour to Uncanny via Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club? Having now wrapped its third year, Crossed Wires showcased more than 80 of the UK’s best-loved podcasts, including more than a few comedy mega-hits.

On Friday evening, I joined the enthusiastic, if sweaty, audience for a recording of BBC Radio 4’s stand-up specials, hosted by half of the Delightful Sausage, Chris Cantrill, and featuring the all-killer-no-filler quickfire line-up of Lindsey Santoro, Kyrah Gray, Dan Tiernan, Aurie Styla, David Eagle, Emer Maguire, Ayo Adenekan and Nina Gilligan. There was a high laughter-to-stage-time ratio despite the sauna-like conditions of the room in this fun and increasingly sweary show.

Another Friday headliner was the new podcast Bad Chat, launched in May and hosted by Alice Levine and Greg James. I was able to grab a few minutes with Alice, who co-founded Crossed Wires, and who told me:  'The vision was always to see it grow as it has, but obviously you can't do everything in year one. 2024 was, I like to think, charmingly scrappy. We were a really small team, and we wanted to capture the magic of a music festival or a comedy festival. We were calling ourselves, maybe loftily, a kind of mini-Edinburgh for podcasts.

‘Now we're four days long, we’ve got ten venues and 80 shows, which is not a small festival. We are getting that Edinburgh feeling in that we're taking over the city. It’s important to us that you can come and make a weekend of it, and it won’t cost you a fortune. I’m really proud that we’ve grown not only the blockbuster shows, but also the free offering that is of a quality that you would pay good money for.

‘I started the festival with Dino [Sofos from production company Persephonica] and James O’Hara. who has made many, many hit podcasts, but also founded [Sheffield music festival] Tramlines, so we had that foundation of knowing how to put on a successful event. As we've grown, we've thankfully attracted brilliant people who have only made it easier for us to step into the strategic roles. 

‘The DIY, slightly ramshackle feeling of an event’s first years is very much part of the charm. It's great if I'm washing windows and putting up posters, as I did in year one, but it's also nice to be able to step back and think of the future.’

The comparison led me to my next question: the evolution of podcasting into a multi-billion-dollar industry that can often feel like it has left the ramshackle, recording-in-the-airing-cupboard vibe far behind. I asked Alice if she misses those early days, when she co-hosted and produced one of the pillars of British comedy podcasting, My Dad Wrote A Porno.

‘I miss it in the sense that it's always exciting to be at the start of something, and I think My Dad Wrote A Porno was at the start of another wave of podcasting, but I'm still loving it.

‘There’s a whole other tier now, which is a far cry from when we were recording in the kitchen and switching off the fridge. There are still these great shows that feel cult and feel like you’re in a gang, like Elis & John and Three Bean Salad. Great comedy shows that still feel homemade, even though the quality is high. 

‘We’ve just started making Bad Chat, and we wanted to take it back to those shows that we used to love with a back catalogue you can listen to over and over, like Adam & Joe. The people that make these shows have their fingerprints all over them, and when those shows get really big, those fingerprints are still there, and the DNA is in there."

Alice also hosts British Scandal, a personal favourite of mine, with comedian Matt Forde. Across more than 50 seasons, Alice and Matt have covered crimes, cover-ups and media furores that have rocked Britain throughout history and into the 21st century. A recent series depicted Jade Goody’s rise to fame, her time in the Celebrity Big Brother house and racist abuse of Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, and her death from cervical cancer at 27.

I was interested in how Matt and Alice approach a story like Jade’s. British Scandal, which often takes a light and comical approach to its subject matter, offered a broadly empathetic view of Jade that pushed back against my memories of the late-noughties trial-by-tabloid.

‘Ultimately it's story by story, and there are certain stories that really lend themselves to leaning into the fun of it. The first we ever covered was Litvinenko, which on the surface does not feel like a story that you can joke about, but there are some completely absurd details in that story about the men who poisoned him. We're not a straight politics or history show, and we're not a po-faced documentary series. What we're doing is making those stories accessible with, I like to think, a really interesting social context.

‘When we researched that series on Jade Goody, we were just struck by the fact that she was really annihilated by the tabloids, and the public was a kind of ferocious beast that she wasn't ready for, so I think I think we did just feel empathetic. 

‘I think we also held her to account. It was undeniably racist and vicious, and it wasn't just one incident within that story. I like to think that we handled it in a balanced way, and we gave everybody grace. 

‘We have the benefit of time and I don't remember there having been much nuance. We always say at the beginning of the show that these stories are not quite what they appear. That being said, we’re about to record the story of the gold toilet that was stolen from Blenheim Palace. We're not going deep into the minds of the men who stole a toilet.’

On Saturday, I popped into the Crucible for a quick chat with Amy Gledhill and Ian Smith, the home of snooker temporarily housing their podcast Northern News. The podcast is based on local stories mined from Northern papers that are funny, mad or plain weird. Amy and Ian took Northern News to Crossed Wires for the chance to perform the show to some actual Northerners. 

Amy – the other Delightful Sausage – explained how the podcast started: ‘We missed the local news. There's a bit more light-heartedness and a bit more whimsy that you don’t get in London. Not because it's not happening, it's just there's so much to report on in London. No one gets around to telling you about a bin that's been stolen.’

I asked them about some of their favourite stories and Amy, sat crossed-legged on her dressing room chair, told me of ‘a pig that had to be coaxed off a mini-roundabout with crisps’.

‘No one could get it off and then… crisps,’ she said. ‘I think it's because I love pigs and I love crisps. And I guess I love mini-roundabouts in a way.’

Ian chimed in with one take that made me snort with laughter. ‘There was a Hallowe’en story about a ghost who said, "Fuck off, I'm trapped."  We made a sort of pre-agreement that later on in the podcast we'd whisper, "Fuck off, I'm trapped", not reference it and carry on talking. We got a couple of messages from people asking, "Did I hear ‘fuck off’ on that?"’

I segued into another of Amy’s hit podcasts, Single Ladies In Your Area, and asked for some much-needed dating advice. ‘God. It's just so hard out there. Dating is just admin now. It's so much admin and then the occasional bad date. 

‘Never give your Friday night up for a first date. Don’t give up prime real estate every week for dates. Because it might be crap.’ That is pretty sound advice for someone just getting back on the apps after three years single…

I was conscious of the other media types waiting outside the dressing room for their interview time, and that I’d already blown way past the five minutes I’d asked for. I asked about their summer plans. Amy won’t be at Edinburgh this August and instead will be taking her mum on holiday. Ian will be taking a work-in-progress. I asked Amy about her set-list for that night’s Crossed Wires after party, All My Friends. For the record: Spice Girls, Arctic Monkeys and Pulp, because when in Sheffield…

Finally, I put my last question to them: podcasting or stand-up? Ian told me: ‘I genuinely love them both. I like how podcasts need less prep. It's quite nice to turn up and chat. That being said, with stand-up once you've written the show and you know it, you can go on and there's no thinking on stage. You just enjoy it. A podcast feels more off-the-cuff. When you've written a stand-up show there are the rhythms of your jokes and you know where there will hopefully be a big laugh. With podcasts, you genuinely don't know.

‘It's nice if it's funny because it is a comedy podcast, but not everything we say has to be funny. I listen to a lot of podcasts where it's just bloody amazing to just hear people talk or have an opinion. I feel like you really get to know people more via a podcast energy.’

Amy had initially compared the question to the choice between chips and ice-cream, but concluded that with podcasts, ‘you’re saying completely authentic, honest stuff that, if you were in front of an audience, you might have a bit more of a filter and think, "I'm not going to say that, because I maybe sound a bit bonkers."’

Published: 8 Jul 2026