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A lot of people have been asking me how I feel about huge celebrities all jumping on the podcast bandwagon. And when I say "a lot of people" I mean literally no one has asked me that, but I want an excuse to write about it. Just like everyone who says stuff like that on social media.
I imagine that a lot of people have been wondering what I feel about this issue, by which I mean I have been thinking a lot about this issue. It's not that much concern to anyone else if you think about it. The good thing about podcasts is that you can easily ignore them. That's why I got into them. I liked the idea that 99.99999999% of the population of the earth would never hear them. They're not even making a choice. They don't know the podcasts exist. And wouldn't care if they did. I am a show off that craves anonymity. Hence Stone Clearing.
Look, if just one person enjoyed my podcasts then I have really wasted the last 18 years of my life. If about 3000 people have enjoyed about 22% of them then that makes my life worthwhile. It's not complicated. It's simple maths.
So to edit those first three paragraphs down a bit, I wanted to write about big celebrities doing podcasts and also don't give a fuck what anyone wants from me - as a percentage of the human population the people who know who enjoy my stuff are negligible. YOU. ARE. NEGLIGIBLE. At last a writer who tells his readers the truth.
The people who don't like me or know about me are by far the greater force and probably better people. And the irony is that they will never know that I am bigging them up. They'd love me if they did, but of course, if they knew, they'd no longer be the people I was bigging up and would be negligible like you. They can only win by carrying on being unaware of me and anything that I say. Let's face it, based on this blog they would be very pleased not to have wasted time reading my stuff. If only they knew.
To edit the first four paragraphs down - today's blog is about big celebrities doing podcasts and my thoughts on that. Plus some additional stuff about you and your life being as close to nothing as it's possible to be.
Basically though, I just want to write about big celebrities, like Ant and Dec, who already have more money than they can spend in a thousand profligate lifetimes and are in no danger of that TV and advert money drying up any time soon (as long as they keep very broadly on the straight and narrow - and they've managed to navigate a couple of difficult moments and I have to say are squeaky clean compared to most people on TV) deciding to do a podcast now.
It's mildly annoying.
I don't have a problem with someone like Harry Hill doing it. He's clearly putting the work in and making something crazy and original (who would have thought of doing a podcast with a ventriloquist dummy? - he's made the mistake of making it principally a video podcast which is not in the spirit of podcast ventriloquism). Richard Osman certainly doesn't need the money (though I think he likes getting more) but his podcast is very good so I don't resent that. I only resent the people who have noticed that that medium that they often derided in the early days, is suddenly something that they can make money from and decide to do a lazy, soulless cash grab.
I haven't listened to Ant and Dec's podcast (and I probably won't), but I resent it anyway. It's good that they might bring more people into podcasting, but like big name acts doing the Edinburgh Fringe or comedians putting out ghost written kids books, it doesn't work that way. They're taking a slice of the pie and they already own a pie factory.
Podcasts are for everyone. Even super rich celebrities who want to put a bit more gold in their Scrooge McDuck basements and it's nice that people are realising that it's also a medium where you can do anything you want without having to give much of a cut to a gate-keeping broadcaster. I'm not particularly thinking of myself here. I am keeping my head above water and never got into this for money (so the last five or so years where I have made some money have been an unexpected bonus) - but it seems a shame for podcasting in general and the pioneering podcasters who found a way to get their cool ideas out there.
There's still room for us all, as the podcasting space is infinite, but to summarise for all those people not asking me what I think.
I don't like it.
