Worst Foot Forward

Our guest this week is perfectly designed in every way to give us an insight into the World's Worst Design Flaw. A designer and author of the book Tragic Design, Jonathan Shariat is also a podcaster with a bone to pick with the Florida ballot papers during the 2000 US Presidential Election. Ben turns his fire on badly designed guns (and promptly shoots himself) and Barry has a wander through the h...

This week we don our sheepskin jacket (with a bribe sown in the lining), enjoy a cheeky post-match half (plus a wee nip from our hip flask) and stand on the sidelines hollering impotently into the wind, as we reveal the worst managers of all time. Alongside our guests from the Absolute Worldie podcast we discover the very formal early history of Scottish football, a black magic bank job, the aston...

We're in uncharted waters this week, as Ben and Barry are confronted with technology far beyond their understanding, otherwise known as our guest Andrew Somerville. An immersive theatre-maker and tech whizz (we don't really understand IT job titles...), Andrew's experience is brought to bear on the World's Worst Algorithms, with the boys tagging along gamely in his brainy wake. There's plenty to e...

Hold your noses and dive into the open sewer of the most olfactorily repulsive episode yet.  Joined by Sarah Jones, an expert on microbes, minerals and a bunch of really pungent jobs we delve into the eye-watering world of the world's worst smell.  There are tales of the Asian "King of Fruits", canine flatuomancy and The Great Stink, plus our old friends at the World War 2 Special Operations unit...

As promised a couple of episodes ago, since we've hit our target on Patreon of 25 supporters, we'll be throwing out an extra show per month for all our listeners in which we focus in more depth on some of our world's worst winners. For this first extra edition we went all the way back to our first episode and explored the grisly world of trepanning and lobotomies.  We're not gonna lie, it's pretty...

We're down in the lab tinkering with equipment, mixing dangerous substances and generally causing chaos. We're conducting the World's Worst Scientific Experiment under the watchful eye of the hugely qualified and clever Cerys Bradley. There are a surprising amount of stories involving puppy-torture, probes being stuck in surprising places, elephants on drugs, Jesus get-togethers and much more. Fol...

*swivels around in enormous winged chair* Ah, Mr. Podcast Listener, we've been expecting you.  The guest in our deadly lair this week is master script editor Andrew Ellard, who joins us on a tour of the most woeful evil geniuses in fact and fiction. Andrew brings an astonishing movie abomination from the 1960s making an absolute hash of the memory of 007.  Meanwhile Barry tells the tales of the mo...

Quick, march! Into battle we go under the leadership of our general, classicist and quiz-show boffin Dr Rob Cromarty. We're seeking out the world's worst military tactic and you bet we've found a few contenders to skirmish with. There are war elephants galore, French plans that backfire spectacularly and the Pyrrhus behind Pyrrhic victories. Attack! Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @ben...

This is an episode for anyone who has become so frustrated with their Rubik's Cube that they've ended up unpeeling the coloured squares and sticking them back on to help you solve it! Joined by incredible escape room auteur Dean Rodgers, Ben and Barry travel from Ancient Greece to musty 90s gamer bedrooms, via the court of King Rudolf of Bohemia and Lewis Carroll's very twisted imagination.  By th...

With the first inklings of spring in the air, Ben and Barry are feeling positively positive about things and so once again are delving back into the archives in search of some of the World's Best. In this instance, we look at the topics from Episodes 16 to 20: Conspiracy Theory, Haircut, Teen Movie, Parasite and Wine. There are missing landmasses, Polish plaits, classical literature, sniffer-wasps...

Sleep well, dear listeners, and sweet nightmares to you all as Ben and Barry, in the company of poet Dan Simpson, hasten you to slumber with the World's Worst Lullaby. We truly travel the globe in this one, with contributions from Iceland, Haiti, Brazil and Indonesia, essays from Lorca and compositions from Brahms, and Dan introduces us to a particularly horrifying cover of an already horrifying s...

In a world where two trivia nerds are able to trap the honorary librarian of the Liberal Club in a posh shed out the back of a nice flat in Hampstead, anything is possible.  And this week, in that world, we chat to the marvelous journalist, academic and storyhouse of anecdote Dr Seth Thevoz about the worst voiceovers in history.  Ben has trouble with Republican sausage rolls, Barry finds out about...

Be our guests, be our guests - in fact, the man doing just that (via Skype) is American stand-up Myq Kaplan, who is getting very meta as he chose the topic World's Worst Guest, and strives to live up to the title. Meanwhile, Barry tells us about the man who broke into Buckingham Palace and served himself a cheeseboard, while Ben looks at chat show meltdowns and Japanese retirement parties gone hor...

Over the past five years the phenomenon of escape rooms has exploded all over the globe and this week our two guests are creators of several remarkable ones in London.  Tom and Andrew join us to talk about what goes wrong when people try to escape.  There are tales of hidden papal tunnels, ice skating queens and the most Australian disguise in history. Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @...

We're indulging our consumerist instincts this week in the company of actor, host of the Average at Best Podcast and star of countless commercials, Oliver Powell. Ollie helps us glaze over in the face of the World's Worst Adverts, with insights into life on the set of his recent Durex ad. Barry examines the product placement habits of 007, and Ben describes the public service advert of your nightm...

Pop on your diamante slippers, swish your feather boa around your neck and strut your way in 2019 with tales of the world's worst divas.  Accompanied by magnificent musical comic Sooz Kempner we tell the tales of Handel's warring divas, Freddie Mercury's run-ins with Sid Vicious (and a lot of dwarves) and why the heir to the British throne doesn't understand how sandwiches work. Follow us on Twitt...

New Year's Eve, the clocks tick towards midnight with the prospect of turning the page on 2018. BUT NO! We keep you firmly rooted in the past as we look back at our so-called "best bits" from episodes released over the past year. There are returns for several old friends, not least the French president who died in flagrante delicto, an unwitting newsreader with a numerical disadvantage, and an Eng...

This week we head to the appendix of our encyclopaedia of heroic failure and talk about some stone cold heroes. Way back in early 2017 we talked about the worst board games, fairy tales, professional wrestlers, TV comedies and first dates - now Ben and Barry return to the scene of the crimes to laud some champions.  On our way we uncover the real story behind Beauty and the Beast, why Calvin Cooli...

Sweet holy mother of everything that's heroically awful: we made it to 100 episodes!  To celebrate Ben and Barry drill down into everything terrible about the number 100: from dodgy bank notes to terrible cricketers and golfers, suspiciously young super-centenarians, premature wartime celebrations and bang average cars.   As ever, we take you on a journey including all human life from Ancient Etru...

We are boldly setting out to civilise you this week, as we talk about the World's Worst Empire. Our guest this week is regular contributor to satirical podcast The Bugle, comedian and writer Anuvab Pal. As a native of India, and with Barry as his sidekick, Anuvab gives the British Empire a bemused and loving revision. Barry takes us all the way from Haiti to a galaxy far, far away, and Ben has a n...

Inspired by the mot batshit crazy Patreon suggestions we've had so far, we plunged head first into the surprisingly fertile and unsurprisingly weird world of terrible vending machines.   Thankfully we had a responsible adult with us as our guide in the shape of Lucy Johnston - author, curator, futures consultant and, as it turns out, a fairly impressive authority on vending machines. This week we...

Our listeners, who art in the internet, hallowed be this episode of Worst Foot Forward. We are getting blasphemous this week in every possible religion by denouncing the World's Worst God with comic, musician and practicer of magic, Andrew O'Neill. We look at obscure ancient deities, eternal bacon, Dutch eel-vendors and Andrew tells us about the ultimate case of 'cutting your nose of to spite your...

We're joined this week by the eminently qualified Dr Anna Ploszajski - Young Engineer of the Year, Channel Swimmer, science explainer and graphene-hater to talk about the worst material on earth. As eclectic as ever, we uncover a World War 2 plan by the British military to create aircraft carriers out of icebergs made of ice and sawdust, the blackest substance on earth, an astonishingly petty art...

Testing, one two one two, is this thing on…? We're met by a mix of cricket sounds, flying bottles and scathing reviews this week as we perform the World's Worst Gig. We have the company of South African comic Schalk Bezuidenhout who shares a first-person tale of steakhouses, strippers and stand-up. Ben takes us to the worst Beatles gig ever (those of you playing the Ben/Beatles drinking game, down...

This week we're donning our sterilised plastic gloves, three face masks and a full hazmat suit as we prepare to deal with the world's most peculiar, disturbing and deadly epidemics. We're joined by outstanding historian and curator of one of the most informative and sinister Twitter feeds around, Mike Stuchbery. Together we talk about renaissance nuns pretending to be cats, Singaporean men who thi...