Strike Force Five Spotify
British Scandal Wondery
Intrigue: The Immortals (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
The biggest podcast in the US last week wasn’t a true crime one, or about the news, or how to live your life. It was Strike Force Five, and it was – uh-oh – banter. Big-name banter, as the quips and chat come from the hosts of US late-night TV talkshows: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver. Strike Force Five is, essentially, five rich and famous middle-aged men who have the same job, chatting away on Zoom for an hour. Apart from the amount of men involved, this is a familiar podcast proposition. Although in this case, usually an impossible one: these are very busy people.
But, due to the writers’ and actors’ strikes in the US, the Strike Force Five are not busy at all. And also due to the strike, the people employed on their late-night shows – writers, researchers, bookers – aren’t earning any money. The Strike Force Five podcast exists to raise money for those people, which is a good thing. Whether it’s a good podcast is another matter. We’re two episodes into what is likely to be a 12-episode series, and, well, SFF is nice enough. Episode one features a cute story about Colbert’s mum owning the former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza’s trousers, and how Kimmel invites celebrity friends to his Montana home to fish and gets upset if they don’t bother. The second, released last week, has the five revealing anecdotes about their first ever talkshows. John Oliver is the sharpest.
Really, what this show gives you is an audio lesson in the importance of two things: confidence and scripting. These are amenable, funny men – not whip-quick, but amusing, in a dad way – who sell themselves well, simply because they’re confident. But without a script, or proper production, such confidence descends too often into unfocused waffle. I hope Strike Force Five raises money for those behind-the-scenes people who make everyone in front of a microphone seem smarter and more hilarious than they are in real life. Because, as anyone can tell by listening, such people are vital.
Quicker, snarkier and – yep – entirely scripted, British Scandal is a far funnier proposition than SFF. This storytelling show has been going for a few years, with excellent hosts Matt Forde and Alice Levine taking turns to relate to the other a true, scandalous UK tale of (sometimes) sex, (sometimes) money and (always) power. You may well know the subject matter – the Profumo affair, the Sex Pistols, the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire coughing major – but that’s not the point. It’s the telling of the story that makes this show: the silly, overwrought, unsubstantiated details, the delivery, the tone.
Last week’s new subject was irresistible: Liz Truss. But not just her premiership; a wise decision, as to concentrate on her limited time in the top job wouldn’t give Forde and Levine very much material. Instead, we learned an impressive amount about Truss’s life pre-PM: how her mum joined her to knock on voters’ doors; how she battled old Tory duffers in Swaffham to become an MP; how she had an affair. Forde’s silly voices for David Cameron and Truss made me giggle, and Levine is the queen of snappy asides. A genuinely uproarious listen.
Less enjoyable but more crikey-did-you-know-this? is Radio 4’s new Intrigue series, The Immortals. Hosted by the always fab Aleks Krotoski, its starting point is tech billionaires and how they’re investing a lot of time and money in the idea of being able to live for ever. Because the world needs more ageing tech bros, right?
The opening episode featured Bryan Johnson, who has been smeared across all media platforms for months now. I feel like every time I open a newspaper supplement, there’s Johnson, standing topless next to his son. Why his son? Well, the lovely Bryan has persuaded his hapless offspring, Talmage – Talmage! – to regularly donate a litre of his gorgeous youthful blood plasma to daddy, in an effort to keep daddy young. This costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and, during the process, they cry, apparently, because it’s all so “meaningful”.
In fairness, Bryan has at least once also donated a litre of his own plasma to his dad (why not more from Talmage? Surely that would work better? Get back on that drip, Tal!). It all made me think about blood donation, which is altruistic, rather than selfish. But also birth, another very ordinary way to transfer plasma between human generations.
Bryan said: “I’ve never paid more attention to what [Talmage] is eating because it’s going into my body.” What an upside-down and horrible thing for a parent to say. Also, not to be mean, but I’ve seen the pictures. Despite Krotoski loyally insisting that Bryan could be any age between 25 and 60, actually he looks like exactly what he is: a rich 46-year-old. The plasma isn’t working. Maybe Talmage has a younger brother.
Krotoski unearthed more truly weird stuff in episode two. She spoke to Irina Conboy who in 2005 created the original experiment that led to Johnson and others becoming obsessed with absorbing young people’s blood. Conboy and her husband, Michael, stitched together young and old mice, like conjoined twins, and found that together, their blood had a younger profile. To which the only reaction is: uuugggghhhhh. The Immortals is an interesting rage-listen, but not one I can wholeheartedly recommend.
