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Let it never be said that I don't record a shit load of podcasts. Next week I am doing 9! Though those nine recordings will mean I have enough RHLSTPs to put three out a week during the Fringe and then have regular RHLSTP and Book Clubs to take me through to the end of September (easily). Today I did one interview for Book Club with the fascinating and honest journalist and mild obsessive, Harriet Gibsone and another special branded episode with the beautiful and insane (my favourite combination) Lou Sanders.
I was slightly derailed in both by a bad internet connection at my end that meant we were rather out of sync for much of these two conversations, which makes it tricky to do back and forth and not talk over each other. But luckily the producers should be able to make things sound lovely in the edit.
And it's lovely to mess around with Lou, even if battling a bit of lag. We had a fun and weird few months working together on Fubar and it's been great to see her go on to certainly bigger and arguably better things.
She was going through a tough time then and claimed she used to come into the recordings with a bag of cider, which she drank during the show. I don't remember that. It was a weird job and not what I'd been expecting it to be when I took it on, but having Lou there meant it was never not fun. Even if nobody heard what we produced.
We gossiped a little about a salacious story that is burning its way through the comedy community (I think it's been going on a while, but being me, I only heard about it recently), but doesn't seem to be public knowledge. Nothing of the proportions of recent news involving less funny people, but still surprises me that it's being kept within the business. We may all be cunts, but we're cunts who remain tight with each other, even when someone has put a few noses out of joint. I like that about us. The info will, of course, not make it to broadcast.
Ooh, that was a bit like popbitch wasn't it?
I finished listening to Caitlin Moran's "What About Men?" (one of the books I'll be podcasting about next week) which has come in for a bit of a kicking in certain quarters, but which I liked and which came to some of the same conclusions as "The Problem With Men", most notably that many men are as big (or bigger) victims of the patriarchy as women. But also acknowledges that men aren't talking enough or talked about enough, at least in positive aspects. I don't think it's a problem that this is being pointed out by a woman, though I did imagine how funny (and what a furore there would be) it would be if I (or any man) attempted to write a similar book about women. It's actually very interesting to get a female perspective on it and it's a personal account rather than one that has any pretensions to universality or having all the answers. She does state that no man has written a book like this before, whilst I feel I might have written a couple on the subject, but fair enough. They haven't been as high profile as she is able to make this subject. I found that the kind of men who ask about international men's day on international women's day didn't like my more recent book, even though it was much more sympathetic to them than they might have expected and took on board their concerns. I am not surprised that some men do not like the idea of a woman trying to defend them either. But they should. Even if this is just a start.
Caitlin will be OK about the criticism. She's straight into the top of the book charts. Ha ha.
