In Detail… The Toxic Waste Scandal BBC Local/ BBC Sounds
How Do You Cope? Wondery
Broken Veil Cheese & Pickle
Dish Waitrose
There were a few intriguing new series out last week, here to take your mind off the current terrifyingness of the world. May I offer: a long-fought battle by local people to find out how toxic waste affected babies in Corby; a sensitive interview series in which famous people talk about how they cope with their darker sides; and an is-it-real paranormal serial that may keep you up at night. Come on in, the audio’s lovely!
In Detail: The Toxic Waste Scandal is the true story behind new Netflix drama series Toxic Town. An eight-part podcast produced by BBC Radio Northampton, it’s an excellent investigation, brilliantly hosted by George Taylor, one of several people from the Corby area in Nothamptonshire who were born in the 1990s with physical deformities. In March 1992, George was born “navy blue”, says his mum, Fiona, who features along with his dad, Brian. Poor baby George had serious heart and lung problems, and the thumb and first finger of his right hand were unable to curl into a fist. “Like I was doing a cheesy ‘finger gun’ pose,” says George wryly. “You know, like David Brent in The Office.” (His humour and personality sing out from this show from the start when he narrates: “The English spring weather has turned to shite.”)
Corby was built around its steelworks. “The whole town was so proud of it,” says Fiona. The works were closed under the Thatcher government, and the council employed contractors to clean up the site. But the “clean-up”, with lorries to-ing and fro-ing laden with soil, wasn’t as clean as it might have been: much of the lorries’ cargo wasn’t properly covered and a fine orange dust spread all over the town. “It got everywhere,” recalls Fiona, who was a cleaner in Brian’s pub. “The tabletops were covered in dust. It was thick; it was every single day.” She, like many others, just cleaned it up. Nobody knew how toxic that dust was, nor what it could do to babies growing in the womb. They would soon find out.
There are moments in this series that I found very moving, a lot that is sad, and much that made me smile. And, gratifyingly, the combined power of local mums determined to get to the bottom of things, a whistleblower and a never-give-up lawyer leads to a conclusion that, if not happy-ever-after (there are too many terribly ill children for that), does at least provide some proper justice. The Netflix show might boast Jodie Whittaker, Rory Kinnear and Robert Carlyle (it’s good!), but George digs into the truth of it all, and this podcast is definitely worth your while.
Comedian John Robins is usually found in laugh-out-loud 5 Live podcasts with compadre Elis James, as well as on TV and on stage. He’s become an even funnier performer since getting sober a couple of years ago. A workaholic, among his many commitments he’s now solo-hosting popular interview podcast How Do You Cope?, which he previously presented with James, and the series has moved from the BBC to Wondery. This new version is more earnest (the music’s syrupy, the sincerity has gone up a notch, plus there are bonus mini-episodes called The Gratitude List), but don’t let that put you off. The interviews are great.
There are four of them so far, and I highly recommend the ones with rapper-writer-actor Jordan “Rizzle Kicks” Stephens and comedian-writer-actor Sophie “Alma’s Not Normal” Willan. Both are hugely gifted, effortlessly charismatic people who are riddled with insecurities. Both discuss with intelligence and insight how their backgrounds have affected how they think, feel and, yes, cope. They’re just great, and it’s enjoyable to hear Robins’s delight in his interviewees’ revelations; the moments when you can hear him learning from them. Funny and honest; great stuff.
Broken Veil is the strangest item on my take-your-mind-off-things list. A spooky series from writers Will Maclean and Joel Morris, this is a thoroughly uncanny listen in which they investigate weird things that have happened to friends. We hear cynical, clever people describing similar situations of liminal strangeness. An actor goes for a medical check-up, a comedian is booked for a corporate gig, and both separately end up in an anonymous facility that just… doesn’t seem right.
Maclean and Morris set out to find the place where these bizarre encounters took place, and what they find is at once everyday and very odd. Sarah, the comedian, loses the person who’s showing her where to go, and finds herself in a corridor that she can’t get out of. “There were these double doors and they’d shut, and I was pressing on them and they were completely locked,” she recalls. “That was when I started to get really scared.” Yeah, me too.
Maclean and Morris’s presentation styles are complementary – Maclean inclined to believe everything he hears, Morris is more cynical – but everything else here is weird, off-centre. There are just-heard noises and crackly voices that stay in the mind. It’s hard to work out if everything happened, or nothing did. Highly recommended.
Finally, if you want some straightforward, in-your-face joy, then check out American actor/singer Billy Porter on Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett’s Dish. Porter is just a whirlwind of positivity. “Seasoned food in England!” he exclaims. “Hallelujah!” Honestly, he’s the best.
