Bigmouth

This week we scale the north face of Chatmandu with pop journo HANNAH VERDIER and pop-obsessed illustrator NADIA SHIREEN, both veterans of the sainted Smash Hits Academy of Excellence. What does our panel make of the return of ALAN PARTRIDGE, and will it make Andrew dial down his Piers Morganisms on the Bigmouth settee? Also: Can SLEAFORD MODS come to terms with the Big Time i.e. having a house wi...

This week we’re joined by Quietus co-founder JOHN DORAN and film writer LINDA MARRIC to pan for more pop culture gold among the gravel and bottle tops. RUSSIAN DOLL on Netflix: what’s the metaphysical subtext of TV’s funniest drinking, drugging and dying comedy? SHAUN RYDER’S LYRICS are finally collected in book form – is he the WB Yeats of Madchester as Tony Wilson claimed all those years ago? Wh...

On this week’s podcast, ALAAARM! We talk over the stunning re-Boot of sub-sea nerve-wrangler DAS BOOT with our guests, Quietus co-founder LUKE TURNER (left) and pop culture journo MARK HOOPER (right). Does the story of a different U-boat match up to the original and where does it fit into Brexit Britain’s TV schedule? Plus: Luke Turner talks about his remarkable book ‘Out Of The Woods’, where self...

On this week’s high-end pop culture hootenanny, we’re joined by music business journo EAMONN FORDE – who fills us in on the cautionary tale that is his new book ‘The Final Days Of EMI: Selling The Pig’ – plus The Times’ rock and pop critic WILL HODGKINSON. On the agenda: Jake Gyllenhaal in art scene gorefest ‘Velvet Buzzsaw‘, the return of Paddy MacAloon’s orchestral masterpiece ‘I Trawl The Megah...

It’s a rather more stylish Bigmouth than usual as GQ magazine editor DYLAN JONES joins us for this week’s pop culture dégustation along with SOPHIE HARRIS of Mojo, Time Out and… yoga? On the menu this week: Can HBO/BBC4 documentary ‘The Defiant Ones’ make compelling drama from the parallel rise of Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine? Psychedelic backwoodsmen Mercury Rev take on Bobbie Gentry’s country-soul cl...

“It’s not fraud, it’s just false advertising!” Special guests and major influencers ALEXIS PETRIDIS of The Guardian and LUCY O’BRIEN, author of ‘Madonna: Like An Icon’, join regulars Siân and Andrew on a microlite to misery as we gaze in disbelief at not one but BOTH Fyre Festival documentaries. What were the best bits, what did we learn about “millennials” and is there enough Evian in the world t...

Have Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly brought back the real Laurel & Hardy, and how many hankies should you take to ‘Stan & Ollie’? Why is Trevor Horn reinventing the 80s if they weren’t broken in the first place? And former Beta Band man Steve Mason says his fourth album ‘About The Light’ is his first proper record – is he right?  Seasoned journos Ian Harrison of Mojo magazine and Michael Hogan of...

What do the letters H.O.M.E. mean to you? We’re joined in Conversation Corner by guests Ralph Moore of dance bible Mixmag and Anthony Teasdale – terrace style guru and Balearic soothsayer – to discuss the movie that made everyone’s Christmas, ‘Bros: After The Screaming Stops’. Plus: can we mourn HMV if we didn’t spend enough money there? New Order’s fluorescent classic ‘Technique’ is a whole 30 ye...

In our second End of Year special, guests MIRANDA SAWYER and EAMONN FORDE tell us their favourite records, telly, films and other stuff of 2018 – and Andrew gets to make his choices too. Who liked lesbionic romantic disaster SALLY4EVER? What did the panel make of the new DOCTOR WHO? And who was the most appalling monster on TV? Plus music from Christine & The Queens, Shame, Suede, Half Man Half Bi...

The 1975! The Lemon Twigs! Anna Calvi! That fantastic Jeremy Thorpe dramatisation from the BBC! And some films, telly and music you might not have heard of too! It’s the first of our ‘Favourites of 2018’ shows. MICHAEL HANN of The Guardian and FT and ANDREW MUELLER (once Melody Maker, now Monocle and you can’t say that about everyone) join Andrew and Siân to choose the best of the year. Plus: how...

This week on the pop culture podcast for today’s prancing popinjay: Bassist to the gentry, raconteur and stand-up comic GUY PRATT tells us about life playing with Pink Floyd, Madonna, Robert Palmer and – for about a week – The Smiths. And music journo and author MARTIN ASTON helps us dissect new Netflix ‘Polish noir’ drama 1983 and the surprisingly addictive new jazz album from BRYAN FERRY. (Guy i...

They wouldn't let it lie.  Spam! Pants! Soil! Is the all-new Vic n Bob's Big Night Out all we've been expecting from a big night in? The Kominsky Method on Netflix stars Mr Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas, as ageing acting coach Sandy Kominsky - we ponder this dark, comedic "later life" series.  Plus with new reissues of the three This Mortal Coil albums on 4AD, we listen to Ivo Watts-Russel...

Dim the lights! It's the pop culture podcast for the louche lounge dweller. Does the Coen Brother's anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs cast a new light on the narrative of the Wild West and the lonesome cowboy? And did anyone recognise Tom Waits? We talk about the Suede documentary The Insatiable Ones - chasing the dragon or gettin' off that thar horse? And yes, it's Brett vs Damon week as we...

This week on the pop culture podcast for the sophisticated procrastinator: The KATE BUSH reissues are out. How do her leotard years stand up at nearly 40 years’ remove? We mark the ascension of Marvel mastermind Smilin’ STAN LEE to the Astral Plane with guest Dorian Lynskey from the Remainiacs podcast. HAPPY MONDAYS’ infamous second album ‘Bummed’ is 30 years old. And is Netflix’s blood-sodden Rob...

Is Netflix’s new rockumentary series Remastered up to BBC4 music doc standard? We look for things we don’t know in their episodes on JOHNNY CASH’s relationship with Richard Nixon and the attempted murder of BOB MARLEY. The producers of House Of Cards stage a realistic Mars shot in THE FIRST – but is the myth-making too earnest? And Andrew gets all excited about a lost gem of comic books from the l...

THE PRODIGY: the electronic AC/DC who don’t ever need to change because they got it right 25 years ago, or relics of rave? Is THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA a fitting reboot to the 90s Saturday morning cult witchfest… is it a bit gother-than-thou… and does it still have a talking cat? And does C4’s euro-spy effort BERLIN STATION have das richtige Zeug for modern espionage drama? Special guests...

This week we get all textual with NEIL TENNANT’S new book ‘100 Lyrics and a Poem’ – is he the pop TS Eliot or the Rave Larkin? – and gaze aghast at Julia Davis’s utterly filthy new comedy ‘SALLY4EVER’ in which a self-freeing and self-actualising lesbian affair turns into a disaster all round. Plus ROBYN’s new record of heartbreak on the dancefloor, Bobby Gillespie takes on The Man by refusing to d...

Twitter photomontage artist Cold War Steve: just another Banksy or the Fly-Tip Warhol of Brexit Britain? Neneh Cherry returns with the proper grown-up pop of ‘Broken Politics’ and St Vincent redoes her last album for solo piano as ‘Masseducation’ – does it work? And can our panel stomach the splattery historical horror of ‘Apostle’, the new Netflix movie from Gareth “The Raid” Evans. Britain’s bes...

‘DOCTOR WHO’ returns with its biggest series debut in a decade, but what are the pundits missing about this new incarnation of the sci-fi institution? Will JOHN GRANT’s arch, observational electropop – showcased on new album ‘Love Is Magic’ – hit the spot with our panel? And we load up on collard greens and grits to explore PRIMAL SCREAM’s post-‘Screamadelica’ journey into fatback gumbo chicken-sc...

The massive David Bowie box set project reaches the 1980s. Will the highs – Let’s Dance, Absolute Beginners, Loving The Alien – win out over the lows and is it strictly kosher to reinvent unloved albums to sound better after the artist’s death? Plus our guests Mark “Hole & Corner Magazine” Hooper and actor and director Caroline Catz talk about the Cat Power album, their emergency go-to movies for...

On this week’s pop culture palaver-fest, ex-NME and ZTT mouth-on-a-stick PAUL MORLEY joins  Siân and Bigmouth regular Michael Moran to ponder the week’s key broadcasts and releases. Is serial killer drama Killing Eve – written by Phoebe “Fleabag” Waller-Bridge – the electrifying experience everyone says it is? How about Netflix psychonautical caper Maniac? Is the new Chic album any good? And which...

It’s Gender Non-Conformist Week on the smart pop culture podcast as guests Miranda Sawyer and author and pop journo Lucy O’Brien discuss CHRIS (the artist formerly known as Christine & The Queens), the magnificent return of pop polymorphs SUEDE, Lucy’s MADONNA biography ‘Like An Icon’ and loads more. Listen in as Siân cheers them on and Andrew has his appalling retrograde cis-male attitudes shaken...

Hands in the air and lasers akimbo: ORBITAL brothers Paul and Philip Hartnoll materialise in the Bigmouth bunker to talk about new album ‘Monsters Exist’ and their 30 years at the forefront of raving. What’s it like working with Prof Stephen Hawking and Dr Brian Cox? How did the self-confessed “Mitchell Brothers of techno” bury the hatchet and start working together again? What are their favourite...

On this week’s show, RUDE BOY CINEMA: does Idris Elba’s Yardie capture the truth about Jamaican gangsters without romanticising it? LAVENDER ON THE MOVE: we try and fail to discuss the Keeley Hawes/Robb Stark from GoT political potboiler BODYGUARD without spoilers. Should close protection officer David Budd stop clenching his jaw and enjoy his job a bit more? And the not-at-all difficult second al...

LURING DISCO DOLLIES TO A LIFE OF VICE: This week we delve into Soft Cell’s enormous retrospective box set ‘Keychains And Snowstorms’ in the company of Times and GQ writer SIMON MILLS (who has some VERY interesting revelations about Marc’n’Dave from the good old days) and doyenne of the TV reviews JULIA RAESIDE of The Guardian. Plus: Is Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman really the most important movie of...