Before the Edison chart was published, I was asked to guess the top five. I guessed Off Menu and Sh**ged Married Annoyed – riotously funny, confident, slightly quirky podcasts hosted by comedians with a large and committed enough fanbase to fill and refill enormous venues.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster’s debut Off Menu tour this autumn is sold out; Chris and Rosie Ramsey, from Sh**ged Married Annoyed, filled London’s O2 in 2021. I should have also come up with That Peter Crouch Podcast, a football-based banter-and-insights show. It’s another laugh-out-loud affair, and its third Crouchfest will be at the 10,000 capacity Wembley Arena this November.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess who would be at No 1. Joe Rogan’s long-winded, rambling, occasionally offensive, often inaccurate bro-cast has long been the outlier smash of the medium, watched on YouTube by his fans as well as listened to via earphones. His podcast has nothing in common with any of the others in the chart, except perhaps Logan Paul’s, another overlong and irritatingly ego-based affair.
The Diary of a CEO is unusual among the top five because it’s not funny. It’s a long-form interview show (a little too long-form for my taste), with the main selling point being the high star factor of the celebrity interviewees. Steven Bartlett can be smug, his observations trite, but his guests willingly excavate their childhoods for insights into their adult lives.
It’s noticeable that the chart is populated predominantly by British shows. Only four US podcasts make the top 25; this would not have been the case just a few years ago.
True crime makes less of a showing than you might expect, but this can be explained by true crime’s usual format: a stand-alone investigative series, rather than a regular daily or weekly broadcast. You can imagine a smash-hit true crime show, such as Sweet Bobby, making a splash one quarter, and then disappearing the next. And it’s nice to see the breadth of subjects covered: history, ghosts, science, wellness, money, film, politics, marriage and news all make the chart. Specialism is key.
The BBC podcasts don’t chart quite as highly as I expected, though the Beeb has the most shows in there, with six. I expected a strong showing from Newscast and Desert Island Discs, but Money Box was rather a sweet surprise.
Overall, it’s clear that the most popular podcasts in the UK fall into two categories: hilarious or informative. Several combine both. And all of those that make the top 25 have the right vibe: funny, inclusive, with a warm and honest relationship between the hosts (usually two or three, you note), as well as between the hosts and the audience. Nearly all of them are worth a listen, though I wouldn’t bother negotiating the tedious egos of Joe Rogan or Logan Paul.
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Miranda Sawyer is the Observer’s radio and podcasts critic
