Worst Foot Forward

We're wearing our finest primary colour dungarees and are full of all the E-numbers as we get ready to indulge ourselves with the worst Kids Movies of all time. Joined by Mock the Week panellist and silken-voiced star of Live at the Apollo Ivo Graham, we uncover some timeless stinkers. If you want to find out about the one movie Whoopi Goldberg regrets, one of many which, sadly, Robin Williams see...

Join us this week in the sweat-soaked, blood-stained Octagon as we done our fighting gloves, pop in our gum shields and tap out in under 10 seconds to a girl guide from Aberystwyth Primary School. It's time to find out who the worst mixed martial arts fighter of all time is. The UFC franchise may only have been running since 1993, but this episode heads all the way back to Ancient Greece, from the...

POP! Smell our cork, relish our bouquet and admire our legs because it's a VERY good year for a podcast about the World's Worst Wine. We've got a guest with a very fine nose to help us find it: wine expert, consultant, educator and host of ITV's 'The Wine Show' Amelia Singer. Ben and Barry knock back a few choice bottles of grog including the leavings of monks, a mouldering ancient Roman concoctio...

An episode for smart minds and stern stomachs as we uncover Mother Nature's dark side. We're joined by professional science communicator, squid dissector and founder of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, Simon Watt, to talk about the world's worst parasites. There's an entire Hammer house of horrors on display, including flies that bewitch cockroaches, cookie cutter sharks and the worst fate ev...

This week Worst Foot Forward sidles up to you at a school dance, drinks deeply from the red cup of awkwardness and asks you, the intriguing new kid, to dance before spilling Kool-Aid all over you and slipping over onto our arses in front of all the jocks from the football team. "Tell me more, tell me more" you sing, for some reason. Yes, we are looking at the World's Worst Teen Movies in the compa...

Things are getting hairy this week as comedian and barber Paul Sweeney joins us to style out some of the world's worst haircuts. No amount of dye-jobs, comb-overs and toupées will hide the shameful secrets of our candidates as we take our scissors of silliness to the mullet, learn about the correlations between drug and hair trends, and explore the racist undertones of Duck Tales - WOOHOO! And ami...

Pop your collar up high, make sure no one's tailing you and join us in the WFF basement, huddled around our oil can fire as we share some of the darkest and stupidest secrets of history. Find out who stole Shergar, why the US invasion of Iraq was so much more impressive, how rocks have been pulling the wool over our eyes for millennia and how Danny Dyer is at the centre of every web of intrigue. W...

This week Ben and Barry are charmed, beguiled, tickled and shocked by the wonderful Lynn Ruth Miller. Lynn popped into the hearts of the nation when she appeared on First Dates on Channel 4, at the age of 84, so we just had to get her on and find out about her worst dating experiences. On the way we find out about her life as the oldest working stand-up on the planet, why a bagel is simply never e...

This episode is all about the funny - or not - as we settle down on the sofa, can our laughter and have our ribs tickled by the World's Worst TV Comedies. Our guest is television and theatre director Thomas Hescott who was just this week named on BBC's New Talent Hotlist 2017 for his work directing for TV. Tom brings us a real rare gem of a candidate from the archives of television purgatory. We a...

Can you smeeeeeeeell what the Foot is cooking?!?! Join as we jump off the top rope, only to land awkwardly and give ourselves a hernia as we chat to comedian, idiot, relentless storyteller and top hole wrestling promoter Jim Smallman about the worst wrestlers of all time. As you might have noticed, this is our longest episode by far - once we opened up this Pandora's box it was impossible to stop...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin... Ben and Barry love a good yarn spun well and they're in excellent company this week as they're joined by chipper Aussie comedian and head honcho of the acclaimed Storyteller's Club, Sarah Bennetto. Together they wonder through literary history to uncover the worst fairy tale ever told. On their way they tip their hats to the Brother's Grimm, discove...

Here at Worst Foot Forward we love a board game so it's about time we explored those games that are all snakes and no ladders. Rolling the dice with us is Paul Flannery, actor, comedian, and creator and host of the exceptionally geeky stage shows 'Knightmare Live' (http://knightmarelive.com/) and 'The MMORPG Show'. Taking turns on the World's Worst Board Games, we land on such notable squares as m...

Charge! This week Worst Foot Forward goes to war in search of the World's Worst General. Privates Ben and Barry are led into battle by their charismatic mastermind of a guest, actor and storyteller James Rowland. Having very much brought our sporks to a gunfight, we find ourselves huddled in a foxhole alongside such decorated heroes as the navy who lost to a cavalry charge, the geometric shapes of...

Today's guest is Stuart Goldsmith, host of the excellent Comedian's Comedian Podcast (http://www.comedianscomedian.com). Stuart, with henchmen Barry and Ben, is masterminding a raid on the highly pregnable vault containing the World's Worst Heist Movies. Within it, among the countless films called simply 'The Heist', we find the Nagasaki atom bomb, Mark Ruffalo's smug acting and a regenerating Ice...

This week Worst Foot Forward goes intergalactic! Our stellar guest, comedian and writer Gemma Arrowsmith (http://gemmaarrowsmith.com), is a lover of all things space and so she helps Ben and Barry discuss the world's worst astronaut. We thumb through the books of space law, eat corned beef in a rocket ship and see just how many cute, furry creatures we can launch into the stratosphere in 45 minute...

Our guest this week, Nathan Caton (http://www.nathancaton.com) studied architecture before his diversion into comedy. In his company, we are rifling through blurry blueprints, sketching wonky towers and clipping the wings from flying buttresses in search of the world's worst architect. Among the burning rubble, we discover prostitute-shaped brothels, the infamous Bond villain Goldprick and a Dutch...

Winter is almost gone and a refreshing spring breeze sweeps through Worst Foot Forward in the shape of Angela Barnes (host of BBC Radio 4's Newsjack). The better weather means the return of the Great British Day Out - so here we dive into some not-so-great ones. Angela reveals her deep-lying love for subterranean bunkers while our battered old tour bus takes us on a journey around Mr Blobby's ance...

Episode five lands in a week where major protests are shaking the world in support of women's rights and refugees. So comedian and podcaster Tiernan Douieb joins us to look at some of the less effective and affecting protests that the world has ever witnessed - many of them from our new favourite nemesis, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. There are also bucketloads of red milky vomi...

It's episode four and our guest is Ellie Gibson - comedian, co-host of Dara Ó'Briain's Go 8-Bit, one half of the Scummy Mummies (http://www.scummymummies.com) and video games journalist. With Ellie's help, we're rampaging through various levels of awfulness in search of the Big Boss of terrible console games. The show features a cameo from the Swedish Mafia, Atari's attempts to bury its demons and...

In episode three, we are joined by musical comedian Jay Foreman to unpick the back catalogue of the world's greatest band in the hunt for the World's Worst Beatles Song. Ben and Jay's exhaustive knowledge sees Barry trying desperately to hold his own while we explore mass murder as a subject for pop songs, Ringo's song-writing process and John & Yoko's tantric music - with a shout-out for Donovan'...

For our second episode we don our flapping red capes, lower masks over our eyes and pop our underpants proudly over our trousers as we delve into the heyday of comic books to uncover the most terrible, pointless and ineffective superheroes of all-time. There's a huge supporting cast of superheroes who really should have been left on the shelf, whilst Bec provides her own entirely new pantheon of h...

Kicking off our first episode we chat to Professor Sophie Scott, an expert in neuroscience and the way that laughter works in the brain. Our subject matter is not as light and fluffy, as we explore the worst psychological treatments of all time, taking us on a journey from Bristol's most infamous asylum to Ancient Greece, stopping off on the way to stare at some dangerous looking Arctic shamans br...

A taste of what's to come on Worst Foot Forward, a new podcast about the world's worst things and life's biggest losers. Hosted by two of them, Barry McStay and Ben Van der Velde. First episodes coming January 2017.