Laziness; it’s a very human trait, you either experience it or you are a very good liar. If you regularly read my podcast recommendations you will be aware that they go up on a Sunday but this week it has been pushed back to a Monday. That, I promise you is to fit this week’s theme of laziness. If you don’t regularly read my recommendations or you just happen to see this post Monday, then you didn’t even notice a difference and I have just wasted everyone’s time coming up with a pathetic excuse for a misdemeanour that only I even care about. Either way, don’t be lazy and continue reading to hear about a podcast that is much lazier than even this article.
It’s very hard for laziness to be endearing but somehow Rhod Gilbert manages it in his podcast version of his Radio Wales show; The Rhod Gilbert Show. At a drop of a hat, the show will take an undisclosed amount of weeks off, other weeks Rhod won’t even turn up and palm the show off onto his friends and probably laziest of all, the show is frequently recorded in is own London flat. Considering this is a BBC funded station, that kind of commitment shows just how much they want to keep him on the air.
All this laziness should be the first sign of a terrible show but The Rhod Gilbert Show manages to circumnavigate that terribleness with its tongue-in-cheek humour. Rhod and “insert co-host here” will be the first to admit how shoddy their radio skills are, so much so that they will have you thinking; “hey now, these guys aren’t that bad, give yourselves a break”. Don’t be fooled though, just because you’re on his side, that won’t mean you’re in the clear and Rhod will often ridicule the audience for listening for this nonsense. Even contributors to the show aren’t safe and often people are told; “never contact this show again”. Just ask Hugh from Bridge End, who has been “loser of the week” for a countless number of weeks on end.
I’m not doing a very good job at selling this show am I? Not that it matters to Rhod, this generally is a very funny show. Each half an hour long podcast will have you questioning the point of local news in the feature; “Non-Story Of The Week”. Other quality features include, “Celebrity Out Of Context Bingo”, a game in which listeners send in their ironic celebrity sightings and “Chimp Quiz”, which is pretty self-explanatory. If these features don’t make an appearance there will always be something to take its place, generally inspired by whatever news story is in front of Rhod at the time.
The show boasts a rotating list of co-hosts, each hilarious in their own right. If regular co-host, Chris Corcoran is unavailable Rhod will scroll through his phone to find the funniest/closest comedian he knows. Greg Davies, Lucy Beaumont, Llyod Langford and Tom Wrigglesworth are but a handful of the names to have graced the show with their presence. Sometimes the show is even headed up by four different comedians when The Rhod Gilbert Show is replaced by Jest A Minute. That being Rhod’s old radio panel show, a spoof on Just A Minute in which all the questions revolve around comedy.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the BBC’s podcasting guidelines there is never any more than four episodes on the feed at any one time. If you are lucky, you may be able to find a few shows that have been shared around some online forums by googling “Rhod Gilbert Show download”. Otherwise you will just have to be happy with the few morsels of Rhod Gilbert’s Best Bits available on iTunes(that name must be a euphemism). So if you are feeling guilty about the lack of work you’ve got done today, make yourself feel better by listening to a man doing a national radio show in his pyjamas.
