Worst Foot Forward

Ben's still decompressing from Edinburgh and Barry's away galivanting for his wedding anniversary, so we've thrown together a quick Worst Foot trifle of some of our favourite bits that didn't quite make the final cut over the past couple of years.  We cover all the bases: Hamlet set in LA, the group dynamics of Alvin and the Chipmunks, Vladimir Putin's short-lived ice hockey career and a witch doc...

Come listeners! Join us in the snaking queue into the uncanny valley! Ben and Barry are a bit glassy-eyed in this month's bonus Patreon episode, as we venture into Madame Tussauds. Yes, there's no apostrophe. No, we're not happy about it either. Voted the World's Worst Tourist Attraction in our episode with playwright Camilla Whitehill, we're back for more torture in this chamber of horrors. We ta...

It's a Ben-and-Barry duo episode, another chance to delve back into the archives and revisit past shows. This week we flip the record on episodes 26 to 30, finding the very BEST in the subjects we covered back then. And boy, does that prove tricky when picking the Best Serial Killer... alongside that, we also look at drivers, musical duos, horror films and aliens. The whole thing has a bit of an a...

This week we don masks, fake moustaches and thick glasses and try to avoid detection as we seek out the World's Worst Disguise. We are joined by a real masked man, luchadore wrestler and mascot for NHL team The Nashville Predators, THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR! Ulti shares tales from inside the ring and bad wrestling gimmicks, while there is also our usual smattering of silly tactics from the World Wars,...

And a one, and a two, and a one, two, four, three, five, seven, pi, ampersand, poop emoji...! Join us on the beat this week as we are joined by comedian and drummer Alexander Fox who helps us take a stick to the World's Worst Drummer. We peruse wartime drummer boys and Bing and Bowie's Little Drummer Boy. We admire animals who drum and Animal who drums. There are 17th century pranksters and 21st c...

Straighten your tie, pop on your bicycle clips and get ready to join the rat race this week as we head out on the journey to find the world's worst commute. Alongside Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Will Duggan we discover the perils of third hand cable cars, The Great Horse Manure Crisis of the 1890s and the Bolivian Road of Death.  If you managed to make it this far, well done, the employee of the...

Open your doors of perception and take a long toke of this week's mind-bending episode. With guest Jacob Hawley - comedian and host of BBC podcast, Jacob Hawley: On Drugs - we snort, sniff and soft-boil any substance we can in search of the World's Worst Narcotic. Barry hangs around the sewage pipes of Zambia, Ben feeds hallucinogenic lichen to goats and Jacob introduces us to the cutest-sounding...

In this month's bonus episode (paid for by our kind donors on Patreon), we revisit our episode about the World's Worst Cook with Fiona Sagar and specifically, the deliciously daft Futurist Cookbook. We learn about the origins of the Futurist movement and its nasty nationalistic side, we discover why arch-Futurist Filippo Marinetti thought pasta was the root of all Italy's evils and we taste a vari...

This week we have our tuning forks and ear trumpets out as we play the world's worst musical instruments. We are joined by comedian, writer, tutor and former recorder-enthusiast Alex Kealy, who regales us with tales of the vuvuzela's bio-hazardous capabilities. Ben looks at one-man-bands..one-men-band...one-mans-band... those guys. And Barry blows on the most terrifying whistle in history, courtes...

Straighten your tie, sit up straight, eat up your greens and don't even think about listening to this podcast dressed in that short skirt as this week we're talking about the world's worst parents.   We're joined by stand-up comedian (and former senior vice-president) Cally Beaton who shares with us tales of Hollywood amorality, dolphin-led birthing and spitting on babies to keep the devil away.  ...

Well hey there good looking, let's say you and me head back to my place, hop on the good foot and do the bad thing?  That's right, listen to a podcast all about terrible chat-up lines (whilst rutting.)   We're joined by comedian Juliette Burton this week to talk about the worst wooing imaginable: why Casanova is more than just a charmer, how to pick up a partner in Ancient Rome, the horror of hack...

For what you are about to hear, we are truly sorry. Which is appropriate, as we are all about the World's Worst Apology this week in the company of the sorry excuse for a human that is Angus Dunican and with guest judge, Patreon supporter and friend of the show, the unforgivable Dr Keir Shiels. We have big hitters like Galileo and the US government, Barry goes round the board of the game Sorry!, B...

It's the hottest day of the year in the UK as this episode drops, so perfect weather to sprawl on a beach or under a tree and get a bit of extra knowledge about one of our favourite people. We chose Emperor Norton I of the United States as our world's worst monarch so in this bonus episode, paid for by our Patreon donors, Barry and Ben take a longer, even more loving look at our glorious leader. A...

As we still feel the ugly reverberations of the 2008 crash it's about time 2 1/2 decent minds got together and drilled to the bottom of it.  Barry and Ben are joined by ex-wealth management expert and current stand-up comic Eshaan Akbar to talk about the world's worst banker. We find out who the worst scoundrel in the City of London is and whether they can compete with bent Vatican Financiers, a S...

We've got the World's Worst Assassin firmly in our wavering crosshairs today, with comic and card-ninja Javier Jarquin as our killer guest. It's jam-packed with familiar figures like Lincoln, Rasputin and Nero, as well as some lesser known stories. Ben tells tales of booby-trapped Nazi chocolate, Javi finds a ninja in his toilet and Barry reminds us all to check the best-before date on your cyanid...

After 120 episodes we thought we'd finally dispense with a guest and go toe to toe.  Barry and Ben duke it out over who the worst host of all time is, with special guest judge (and $10/month Patreon donor) Lydia Mizon deciding the winner. Together they reveal morbid Roman dinner parties, give the elevator pitch for the new show 'Celebrity Slaps' and discover yet another very weird slice of Japanes...

Spellcasting - AWFUL! We are led through the dark and dingy underworld of the legendary roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons by writer, performer, video game expert, Eurogamer content-maker, and professional Dungeon Master Johnny Chiodini. With Johnny's expertise we seek out the World's Worst Class (that world being that of D&D, not the stratified capitalist hellscape we're all currently inhabiti...

It's your May Bonus Episode, thanks to our supporters on Patreon.com , and this time we are revisiting the episode with Dr Keir Shiels about the World's Worst Doctor. Our winner was John R. Brinkley whose practice of putting goat-balls into human ballsacks to treat impotence leads Ben to take us through a history of fertility treatments. There are welcome returns for Pliny The Elder, the Malleus M...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATCHOOOOO! We bring you this week's episode with streaming eyes and ruby red nose as we dip or toes tentatively into the pretty grim world of allergies. Our guest - musical genius and comedy joy-bomb Katie Pritchard - shares her own unique tasting menu of allergies, whilst Ben fails to keep a straight face about allergies to electricity, semen and blackberries and Barry recalls t...

Once more we go back into the past with some positive vibes this time. We revisit episode 21 to 25 in search of the World's BEST in the categories of MMA Fighter, Kids Movie, Cook, Lodgings and Screen Actor. There are some big hitters in here with the likes of The Wizard Of Oz, Heston Blumenthal and Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, Fallingwater. And there are some more surprising appearances for...

This week we enter the surprisingly murky world of mascots with stand-up comic (and former Crystal Palace mascot) Chloe Petts for company.  There's a cornucopia of delights inside this week including cocaine-dealing parrots, indestructible cats, swans committing GBH and a former Tory MP, with tattooed eyebrows being transformed into a ship's figurehead... Follow us on Twitter:  @worstfoot   @bazmc...

Pop on your lab coats and join us down in the Worst Foot Forward labs as we uncover a carnival of quackery, forgery and all sorts of morally dubious activity done in the name of human progress. At the behest of one of our Patreon supporters we took a look at some of the world's worst scientific frauds and uncovered the story of the Piltdown Man (mammoth tusk cricket bat and all), how to make gold...

Behind every king or queen there always seems to be a witless eldest son, a dissipating and disappointing heir or some conniving offspring waiting next in line. We're joined by historian and author Lauren Johnson who takes us through some lacklustre lineage in search of the World's Worst Prince. We hear some classic gaffes from Prince Philip, encounter some badass con artists, shed light on the Da...

In the second of our monthly bonus episodes, courtesy of our fantastic fans on Patreon, we revisit a former winner of an episode: Theophilus Marzials, our World's Worst Poet. Barry recites some of his poetry including the legendary 'A Tragedy' (plop!) as well as some of the critical reaction at the time, we hear of his shenanigans in the British Museum and we also learn about his alma mater's othe...

This week's episode has been thoroughly spot-checked by a crack team of cardinals preparing Barry, Ben and their guest, comedian and animator Alasdair Beckett-King for canonisation.   There's the usual rogues gallery you'd come to expect from the Catholic Church, plus a very good dog, a very bad murderer and our old pal Simeon Stylites, doing unspeakable things from atop an enormous pillar. Follow...