The Modern Mann

Artist, muse, socialite: when Daniel Lismore visits a nightclub, he charges THEM to host him. How did this quiet man from the Midlands become a fashion insider with countless celebrity contacts and an outrageous style that has strongly influenced London clubland? In this interview with Olly, he discusses how his battle with bulimia, his love of Star Trek and savvy use of social media has propelled...

Raising $1m in venture capital whilst still at Uni; starting a business seemed like child's play for James Routledge. His start-up attracted 50m page views per month, and his investors believed he could be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Except, beneath the surface, he felt stressed, isolated and alone - and his business was burning £30,000 per month. In this honest and compelling interview with Olly, h...

Comedians Tom Price and Stuart Goldsmith are facing up to daddy decisions: how to rescue their respective relationships from a world of 'guilt-tennis', how much TV to allow their sons to watch, and exactly how best to celebrate a one year-old's birthday... In this funny and frank discussion, they reunite with fellow father Olly Mann to offer up advice on Baby Sign Language, front-facing papooses,...

Pantomime: the most peculiarly British of festive entertainments. Each year, we Brits gather the family together to watch the same old stories. To cheer at the hero, hiss at the baddies, and watch a bloke in drag doing the same call-and-response routines that have enraptured crowds since the days of music hall. Why? ERIC POTTS is a maestro of the genre. As head writer for First Family Entertainmen...

Gary Connery is a Hollywood stunt-man. He's played them all: Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Indiana Jones. But it's for his role as Queen Elizabeth II, parachuting out of a helicopter in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, that he will truly go down in history. In this interview with Olly, he recounts how it felt to be standing on the edge of that helicopter, knowing that more t...

Amanda Hone has a 'hobby that got out of hand': traversing the UK, visiting myriad miscellaneous landmarks designated by brown signs. In this interview, she explains to Olly how an initial visit to an otter and owl sanctuary made her put down her phone, take the road less travelled and discover the quirky attractions around her - and enthuse others to do the same. In the spirit of 'brown-signing',...

What's it like to be radicalised? How do young British men set out to murder their fellow citizens in the name of 'jihad'? And, once committed to that course, can there ever be a route back? Former extremist Adam Deen spent much of his youth as a member of Al-Muhajiroun, the notorious terrorist organisation lead by Omar Bakri Muhammad. For years he believed in the foundation of a UK Islamic state,...

‘Productivity’ is a term that gets tossed around a lot: you should be more productive at work; the nation needs to be more productive in general... But what does it actually mean? There are only so many hours in the day - are there really life hacks that can help us make better use of the limited time we have to boost our output in the workplace AND lead happier lives? One man who knows is Chris B...

Down on his luck, and under pressure to maintain his lifestyle, Radcliffe Royds decided to rob a bank. In this incredible interview, he tells Olly his story. It’s a tale of extreme highs and lows, brutal honesty and dark humour. Meanwhile, Ollie Peart has decamped to Lisbon for the 2016 Web Summit - an orgy of start-ups and self-promotion. In this week’s Zeitgeist, he ponders whether laundry servi...

The RNLI lifeboats don’t just save lives at sea - they also rescue people on rivers. London’s Thames is teeming with party-boats, where drunken misadventure can lead to injury. Meanwhile, troubled ‘jumpers’, suffering from poor mental health, all too often consider suicide by plunging into its depths. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, Amber Bowie may be the woman who comes to your res...

Dr Guy Meadows, founder of The Sleep School, is a man on a mission. He wants you to sleep better. Not just if you're one of the 30% of Brits who will, at some point, experience insomnia - but also if you're one of the remaining 70%, who will, inevitably, spend some nights struggling to get some shut-eye, staring at the ceiling and wishing you were somewhere else. In this interview with Olly Mann,...

Frank Evans, 74, is a working bull-fighter who lives in Marbella. In this extraordinary interview, he tells Olly how he discovered the controversial sport on holiday in Spain; how a copy of To Be A Matador by Henry Higgins inspired him to 'give it a bash' - and how, with virtually no training at all, he found himself facing death in the ring in Montpellier. Now known as 'El Ingles', Frank sticks o...

Modern-day hermit Daniel Pike is, technically, homeless - but he does have a home, which he built himself, in woodland near Watford. He made it from clay and reclaimed wood, and it's amazing. Now, the landowners want to evict him. In this extraordinary interview, Olly Mann travels to Daniel's hut to learn how he came to be living outdoors - and why he doesn't want to forage for mushrooms any more....

What makes you buy a product? The look? The smell? The layout of the store? In today's cut-throat business world, none of that is left to coincidence: behavioural science is influencing the design of high street shops, supermarkets and online emporiums alike. In this episode, Olly meets consumer psychologists Reece Akhtar and Dr Dimitrios Tsivrikos from University College, London and learns how we...

How did Rory Reid get his dream job, presenting one of the biggest TV shows on Earth? Despite many years as a motoring and tech journalist, he had only a few months to adjust to flying around the world driving supercars. In this world exclusive interview, he tells Olly Mann how he prepared for his BBC screentest, and why a rap video may just have secured him the gig; reacts to his treatment by the...

How should you behave in a 'gentleman's club'? Stripper Edie Licious should know - from grinding the stage at super-sized American strip bars to working the pole in humble East End pubs, she's played 'em all. In this frank and funny interview, she tells Olly how nightclubs milk money from hapless drunk punters who pay 'VIP', explains why erotic dancing can still sometimes be erotic, and considers...

Is your smartphone spying on you? Just how secure is the dark web? And is your 'Private Browsing' time actually, you know... private? Buzzfeed's James Ball was just 23 when Julian Assange thrust a USB stick with nearly 400,000 confidential Iraqi war logs into his hands. In this episode he shares with Olly his top tips for conducting conversations, managing documents and meeting associates whilst a...

Comedians Stuart Goldsmith and Tom Price reunite with Olly Mann to compare notes, three months after all spawning sons. What has having a baby done to their time management, sleep routines and sense of self-worth? Which gadgets would they recommend to future dads? And is there such a thing as male post-natal depression? Meanwhile, in The Zeitgeist, Ollie Peart learns French via his smartphone, dis...

Imagine designing rollercoasters for a living. That's what Bradley Wynne, lead creative artist at Merlin Magic Making, gets to do. A life-long adrenalin junkie, he's now heading up the team for Thorpe Park's biggest ever launch, Derren Brown's Ghost Train. Find out how sounds, smells and touch can enhance the experience of riding a rollercoaster; how the fallout from the tragedy on The Smiler has...

How DO you make the perfect cup of coffee? Do you grind? Do you press? Do you froth? One man who knows is 'Coffee Masters' champion Ben Morrow, of Melbourne-based coffee roasters St. Ali. In this episode, Olly meets him at Hackney Coffee Company to discuss how to buy coffee, how to prepare it, and how to capture the essence of a Columbian farm in a cup... Meanwhile, in The Foxhole, Alix Fox sugges...

Photojournalist Alison Baskerville was serving in Iraq when she began documenting the lives of her fellow soldiers. She now independently produces astonishing images from the front line across the world, including Afghanistan, Mali, Israel/Gaza and the Philippines. In this episode, she tells Olly about the moments on basecamp that embedded journalists never get to see, the best way to pack to prep...

Charlie Gilmour dangled from the Cenotaph during the student protests of 2010, and became tabloid enemy #1. Now he's a writer and, since being scouted at a Xmas party, a male model. In this episode, he reveals to Olly what it takes to make Paris Fashion Week in 2016, how to work on your 'walk', and where models hide their drugs... Elsewhere in what would, if only we were American, be our 'season p...

Shaun Attwood survived a 9½ year sentence in America's deadliest prison. He tells Olly Mann his sensational story, from Liverpool to Phoenix, from his initial career playing the stock market to the millions he earned trading ecstasy for the fledgling 90's rave scene in Arizona, in competition with the Mafia mass murderer Sammy the Bull Gravano. In The Zeitgeist this week, Ollie Peart looks forward...

What's it like being Santa Claus? In our Christmas Spectacular episode, Olly meets actor Nigel Harvey, who makes a living playing Father Christmas all year round, and hears about the highs and lows of life in that iconic red-and-white outfit. Meanwhile, at the invitation of listener Paul from ice cream cafe Cloud 9, the rest of the team have decamped to Brighton, where Ollie Peart considers Tim Pe...

What if your first bet kickstarted a cycle of addiction that saw you flutter away over £10,000 in the bookies before your 20th birthday? Olly Mann meets Matt Zarb-Cousins to find out. Matt frankly confronts the nature of addiction, the changing face of the British high street and how a life can fall apart when the stakes are raised. Meanwhile, Ollie Peart is, like everyone else, contemplating the...