Comedy of the Week - John Tothill Forgives Your Sins

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

In a world of crossfit and kink-shaming, budgeting and meal prep, John Tothill presents the antidote to self-improvement.In this episode John tackles the workplace - rejecting the nauseating barrage of self-betterment and productivity, in favour of your worst impulses and transgressions.Listen, we all have regrets that make us wince to remember and consider booking a one-way ticket to Nepal. But do you know what the biggest killer in the UK is? That's right: shame. So come on in, darlings. Curl up with a lovely big pint of Negroni and share your naughtiest stories. John is here to celebrate your vices and absolve you of your sins. You have nothing to be ashamed of.Producer: Sasha Bobak Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Co-Writer: Eve Delaney Production Coordintor: Asha Osborne-GrinterA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

Welcome to John Tothill forgives your sins! This is the show where I, John Tothill, eschew the nausea of self-improvement in favour of your worse impulses and transgressions. And I'm here tonight to take your confession. Think of me as your high priest. And while not a real priest, I am really high. And where would a priest be without his parish? Look at you all. Thank God you're here.

I asked my producer, Sasha, to round up the most impure, immure, immobile. immoral, feckless, virile, shameless, disgusting little freak she could find. And my God, she's done a good job, hasn't she? We all have those regrets, whether it's an awkward faux par at your girlfriend's work Christmas party, or drunkenly insisting you can do a backflip straight into the chocolate fountain at your girlfriend's work Christmas party. But lifestyle gurus are constantly teaching us

how to optimise our lives. Influencer Molly May once said, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. I say, not if I lose six of them, drunk on sherry in my local waitros, waiting for them to put little yellow stickers on the fish cakes. Now, today's theme is the workplace. Now, the world is full of people

trying to teach us life hacks for the workplace. I'm tired of Stephen Bartlett with his diary of a CEO. Sorry, that's the last diary I want to read. My favourite diaries in order are Bridget Jones, Samuel Pepys, everyone else on earth, and then Stephen Bartley. Okay, workplace. What do we do for a living? What's your name? Lucy. Lucy. What do you do for a job? Design festival. Design festival. Now, what that is, is two abstract now. With you so interestingly sewn together. Design festival. Say more. You don't have to.

Work in partnerships. So sales. I blacked out. Don't take this the wrong way. You know when someone starts to say sales? And it's like, you know when someone tries to explain the rules of a board game to you? And you go, I can't.

I can't do this. Anyway, what's everyone's favourite style of quasson? Three, two, one, almond. Okay. Let's get on with it. Let's get on with it. Let's get going with our first mischievous misdemeanor. Now, my genius producer, Sasha,

has gathered up all of your confessions before the show. I promise you, I have never heard any of these before, and I can't wait to get through them. So, our first confession comes from Nadia. There you are. Okay, amazing. Now, I will say, Nadia, in the final broadcast,

in the interest of anonymity, we will blur your face, okay? Nadia, what's your confession from the workplace? I once caused a man to have the wrong body part treated in A&E. Okay, do you work in A&E or was this an accident? I used to. You used to work in the air. Yeah. That story checks out, isn't it?

Tell us what happened. He was meant to have his lower leg, his shin, examined. Right, and what actually happened? Well, I was a student nurse at the time, and I wrote down, because I was a bit nervous and a bit dyslexic, and I accidentally wrote down chin. Oh. Okay. And so what happened?

Well, we were sort of flitting around as students and I could see the man sat down and the cashierty officer was like, open your mouth, can you clench your teeth? Thinking, oh, and he looked at a bit eyes up to heaven and he obviously thought he was getting a really good job starting at the headphones. And then it didn't, the penny didn't drop with me

until I saw him limping out. Okay, I'm very sympathetic to you straight away. And for two reasons. First of all, it's totally on him. Do we agree? To be like, I think that's been everything. Thank you. I think he's got to learn to advocate for himself, you know, for God's sake.

Second of all, it's hard, isn't it? Because you're a student nurse, you're doing a real job, aren't you? When people like with fake jobs, don't take this a wrong way, but, you know, design... You know, if the design festival goes wrong, it's not the end of the world. Because before I did this, because I mean, as you can see, I don't work anymore. I don't consider this work.

Civic duty, perhaps, but not work. But I used to work as a teacher, Nadia. And it's difficult because it is a kind of high-stakes job, isn't it? I wasn't a good teacher, I should say. I was a really bad teacher. I was, in the words of one of my own students, a dog shit teacher.

Terrible, awful. I was like one of those ones that, like, you know how in every primary school there's one particular classroom where you walk past it and you're like, okay, it's not that those children aren't learning that those children are actually forgetting things they used to know, you know?

Really scary. But it's difficult because I'm not a natural teacher and don't take this the wrong way Nadia, but you don't sound like a natural nerd. If I had to have my actual ideal job, I think I would have been a very good, medieval, nine-year-old, morbidly obese,

Boy King. Wouldn't that be nice? You can't do that. I had to be a teacher. And I had to leave the school, actually, in the end. Lucy, ask me why I had to leave the school. Because you were badly behaved? No, Lucy.

I said, ask me why I had to leave the school. No, don't help her. Lucy, please could you ask me why I had to leave the school? Why did you have to leave the school? Round of applause for Lucy. That's why I push you. So, I had to leave the school

because this modern, agonising notion of timekeeping and punctuality and contracted hours is entirely at odds with leading what Aristotle would have called the good life. If you ask the school why I left the school, it's because I kept forgetting that the days start in the morning.

Absolute nightmare. And my whole family are teachers, by the way. But I don't know if you come from a dynasty of nurses. I don't know if you come from a dynasty of design festivals. Maybe you do. Maybe it's a sort of family thing. My parents are teachers, my grandparents are teachers. In fact, okay, I'll quickly tell you this.

My grandma, as in my mum's mum, you know how in the English language it falls to like the children of every family to come up with a differentiating system between grandparents? Do you find that? So you get grown men like me being like, yeah, well, when I was younger, I couldn't really pronounce the word grandma. So in my family, we just call my mum's mum gang bang. Absolutely fantastic.

And so my gangbang was a cookery teacher, right? And she was a cookery teacher, and her maiden name was Miss Pyecraft. Isn't that so nice? Isn't that lovely? That would be like me being called Mr. Has a glass of wine at lunch, and in the afternoon wheels out a trolley with a TV on it.

Makes the children watch chicken run hundreds and hundreds of times. Any teachers in? We will come back to Nadia. Any teachers? Is a teacher over here? Thank you for putting your hand up. God bless. Billy Bustin's holiday for you.

What's your name? Samantha. And what, do you teach primary or secondary? You teach primary. God bless you, quite right. Secondary school teaching, terribly intellectually lightweight. Yeah? Do you know what I mean? Primary school teaching Samantha, that's where it's at, isn't it?

Because we are... This is the last haven of the polymaths. Do we agree? Yeah? Primary school teachers, the great generalists. Are we cooking with this? Yeah? The last living Renaissance men and women of Europe.

Pontificating as we do, on all the great subjects, you know, flitting between French and food tech, like a great multi-headed god of wisdom. Fantastic. Joining the dots of knowledge. That's what you have to do, Samantha, isn't it? What can the Battle of Hastings teach us about joined-up handwriting? Very interesting. Very interesting. Anyway, so Nadia, did you get into trouble? No one really realised because I managed to run after him because he was limping, so... Oh, bless you. So you actually rectified this. I'm sorry, but you're an angel.

I think. That's fantastic. I used to get into so much trouble. There was one time, when I was a teacher, I got called in for a meeting with the deputy head. And she said, John, you and I need to have a meeting because every time you're late for the school, the message that that is sending to the children is that you value your time

more than you value their time. And I said, yes. Go on. And that's not what that means, by the way. If you're someone like me who's late for stuff, all the time. It's not that you value your time, is it? What it means is five minutes before I was supposed to get to work, I treated myself to a sit-down wee, turned out to be a poo.

Here's an interesting fact for you. The digital alarm clock was invented by the Nazis. Isn't that interesting? It's not true, but it is... All of this is to say, Nadia, for God's sake, if I can get a word in edgeways, is... ...the workplace, it forces you to be someone to be someone you're not and for that I think you deserve complete forgiveness what do we think do we forgive Nadia yes what do we say to Nadia we forgive you round of applause for Nadia

time for another confession I think so where is Izzy okay incredible Izzy what's your confession for me so I was so bored during my receptionist job that I bought a craft project to do at the front desk and I superglued my arm to the desk and the paper So this was a desk job. It was my first job. I see. And I was a receptionist, and I had to work quite late. Right.

It was just quite long, and so I would kind of just want to craft and, like, do some things. What do you mean by craft? Am I being stupid? What do you mean by craft? I decided to, like, kind of recover my diary with, like, kind of different bits of papers. Oh, I see. Putting sort of, like, new wrapping paper around your diary. Right, exactly, because I didn't like,

And for that, you use super glue. So you put the glue on your arm. No. No. No, I mean, I'd put it on, I'd put it on the paper. Uh-huh. And I tried to pick up the diary to have a look. Uh-huh.

But I was stuck. And then how long were you stuck there for? I think maybe like an hour. No, an hour! And so this was in an office. It was in an office. But it was a quiet day at the office. Yeah.

I'm so interested in these kind of office. officey jobs like that. I haven't been to an office in years. Because I'm a professional comedy writer, which basically means I'm a sort of stay-at-home dad with no kids. Do you know what I mean? It's interesting, actually, freelance writing, you can wake up, sit down at your desk, blink, and you've been making scramble

eggs for hours, you know? Do you know what I mean? Work from home people. It's scary, isn't it? It really can. You blink and you're Afro beats dance class at your local website. Sometimes I'll pretend I'm in an office, is he? I sometimes will make a workstation for myself. Do work from home? Work from home, people, do you do this?

You know? And some of you, like, office people, you might remember this from the lockdown when we all worked from home, which I consider a kind of cultural appropriation, by the way. You know, I look at that, I think, well, that wasn't really your thing, was it? That was my thing. You know, my flatmate was working for the local council. I've never seen so many desktop monitors. He brought in, you know, organising bin collection.

He looked like he was launching a rocket or something. Ridiculous. Awful. Sometimes, as a work from home, I will venture out into the library. Libraries. Okay, let's quickly talk about those. libraries have very good PR, don't they? You know?

If you read about libraries, people are like, well, the library, for as long as we have libraries, we have civilisation. You know, the library, this bastion of hope, you go to a library now, and it's a stack of Dan Brown books and a nappy change area. Being presided over by a volunteer ghost.

Do you know what I've also done, is he, I've occasionally tried to do working from home in a pub. Has anyone done this? Work from home, people? You ever try, or maybe I'll go to a pub during the day? That's a disaster for a whole range of reasons.

It's a nice place if you want to answer emails surrounded by silent men who move in slow motion. And the other scary thing is a pub at the daytime at any point in the toilets. Someone's going through the unimaginable. And I don't just mean number twos. I mean number threes. People inventing number fours, number five.

You know, pioneers. really scary stuff. Even that, even that I think is better than an office. You know, you really, Izzy, you couldn't pay me to go into an office, I don't think. I appreciate that is the point. You are paid to go into an office. You couldn't believe you to go in. Dad. Do you still work in an office, Issy?

Do you still go in sometimes? Yeah, it's not that office. No, no. Oh, thank God. Okay, yeah, yes. I see offices, it leeches the life out of you people, doesn't it? I always, there always comes a point on a Sunday when my office friends, they go, oh, I've got to go home, I'm in the office tomorrow, I've got to go home and prep my meals. I'm gonna have some bulgar wheat this week

I'll put that in little taparwe's coffins for food maybe I'll put some Hulumi on it That'll be fun Hulumi is not fun people Wake up Hulumi is fun in the same way that crazy golf is crazy Yeah

If I went into an office I think Izzy I would I'd buy a cheap lunch Yeah, four words for you Scott Egg cream egg I just don't like all that meal prep stuff The office fridge, so sad, isn't it? Awful place Go in Tupperware's everywhere like you're preparing for the apocalypse

Standard All of them labelled, labelled Tupperware's Katie! I hate that Katie! Do not touch, Katie! Katie! Funny name for a salad, I yell as I shovel my colleagues niswis into my gaping more So, okay, Izzy, frankly, I don't blame you at all. If you're trying to add a bit of doldrums into the banality of office life, I don't blame you.

What do we think? Do we forgive, Izzy? Yes. What do we say to Izzy? We forgive you. Okay, I think we've probably got time for one more confession, have we? I mean, do they need the news again at seven? No. Probably the same as it was at six, and it hasn't been nice recently.

Okay. This next confession, I think I'd like to hear from James, where's James? Hello. Hi. What's your workplace confession for us? I was fired for going to Glastonbury twice. Hi.

But a lot of posh people tonight, hasn't it? Amazing. So does that mean you were fired twice, or you went to Glastonbury twice? Two jobs, two different farings. So I... No, no. Okay, okay. Right.

What was the first job? It was actually a sales job, interestingly. Not interestingly, no. But you don't always get fired for going to Glastonbury. So I ran out of annual leave and obviously wanted to go. So did the, well, I'm feeling a bit sick for a long time, three days, I think. Oh, that's huge. So you did the little trailer in the office being like, I'm feeling a bit piquy. So you're a, you're moriarty.

That sounds incredible. You're a genius. Monday, Tuesday, sort of setting the scene. God, that's amazing. And then, so obviously, Wednesday go, have a really great time. Monday morning, get back in, quite conveniently looking pretty terrible still. Yeah. And my boss asked me how Glassonbury was. No, no.

Yeah, he was a Facebook friend. So, uh... Oh. He was a Facebook friend. I didn't realize you were sort of in your late 50. Now, that so far is a horrible story. But in the back of my mind, this has happened twice. So then take us through the next time.

So next year, sort of new job, same me. Did the same thing. It worked so well the first time. So obviously laid the groundwork, coughing Monday, Tuesday. And then, yeah, Wednesday went there. Unfortunately, on Saturday front of Louis Capaldi bumped into my new boss. And so then on Monday, was there a sense of, like,

what happened? Did he fire you at Louis Capaldi? I guess two. Said, did you enjoy Lewis Capaldi? Oh, God. Yes, you're fired. Oh, God. Do you know what that reminds me of straight away?

The Rat Who Orgasm to Death? Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you all on the same page as me? I heard games, I thought, the Rat Who Orgasm to Death, yeah? The Rat Who, okay, this will take as long as it takes. So the Rat Who Orgasm to Death was like a mad science experiment from the 1950s. Yeah? The Golden Age of Mad.

science. You know, one of those experiments you read about on Reddit where it's like, finally, after all these years, we've taught a butterfly to hate. You know, you think, yeah, really nasty, horrible, cruel, horrible. So these two mad scientists called James Olds and Peter Milner gave a rat an ability

to give itself an orgasm, by a kind of lever and electrodes that were then placed into the rat's brain. And what resulted was probably the most interesting experiment in the history of neuroscience. Until tonight. Because what they discovered

is that the rats would press the lever as many as 7,000 times per hour. And self-stimulating male rats, right, we've got to stop locking eyes now, James. Self-stimulating male rats would ignore a female in heat. And self-stimulating female rats

would cross over. electric shock delivering floor grids to press the lever again and again and again. And in the end, the experiment had to be abandoned because the rats kept dying from exhaustion. Now, that is what we call, in the comedy industry, relatable content. Have you ever felt more akin to anything in your life

than a rat that were... If I had a lever that gave me 7,000 organ... Well, I wouldn't be here for a start. And we started to draw the dots about where we're going here. about how that reminds you of James. Do you know what I mean? This desire to do the same thing again and again and again.

Yes, expecting the same result. Quite right. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. I got into big trouble once. When I was a teacher, there was this demon French teacher, James, and he was one of those colleagues who kind of messages you sort of near the end of the week

being like, do you think you could sort of fit me in for one drink tonight? We went out, immediately had like six or seven glasses of wine. And then he said, right, it's a school night. We've got to do the right thing. And I said, you're absolutely right. we've got a text for deputy head now. Say we're not going to be in tomorrow.

So this can carry on. And you've got the kind of pretending to be sick. I love that thing of trailing to be sick, James. That's huge. Sometimes I'll send like a drunk text the night before. People think a drunk text is like a slurry affair, but it's not, right? The drunk text is conspicuous by its over-punctuation.

And it's taking you so long to write. And I'm like, James, I fired off. this masterpiece, you should have seen this text, it was like, Dear sir slash madam, comma, I trust your well, why are you apostrophe R.E?

You're not going to catch me out. I regret to inform you that I have succumbed to a terrible disease. You've got to try this, James. Which upon consultation with my family doctor is either fatal or,

24 hours Keep you abreast of developments Yours John Seymour top hill Seymour, not my middle name And of course, you know There always comes that point where you think Oh God, this isn't fun anymore You know, now I'm going to have to face work tomorrow

And what if I get found out? And it's scary I remember that night coming home 5 o'clock in the morning And the thing is, I live in London, so as you can imagine I live with about 56 flatmates Loads of us, ridiculous, which I quite enjoy because if I lived on my own, I'd take up crystal meth. But if you live with flatmates in London, my bedroom is my only private space,

which means my bedroom is filled with everything I've ever owned. And if you come in from a big night out, five o'clock in the morning, the room's sort of spinning around you, and you get into bed, it's very difficult not to feel like an Egyptian pharaoh. Being buried with all his wildly possessions. to afford swift passage into the next life.

Weird. And I woke up the next day and I felt surrounded by McDonald's rappers and flashing vapes and that kind of thing. I thought, oh my God. Is this worth it? And of course, of course it's not worth it. But what am I supposed to do?

I am a rat. I've had my orgasm. And now I must face my death. And I see that in you so much, James. Was it worth it? Was it worth losing a job? Probably not. But it was inevitable.

You know, of course I'm going to go back to Glastonbury. It was amazing. Okay, give us a cheer if we forgive James. What do we say to James? We forgive you. Right, my darlings, my initial hope had been to get through about 20 confessions, but you've all spoken far too much. It's just so sad.

Let's whizz through some of these quick-fire style. Okay, I've never done anything quickly in my life, but let's see if we can do it. Right, this comes from Delilah. I had a... I had a new sex toy delivered to the office on a workday and decided to charge it on my boss's desk. He wasn't there. God. I forgot about it overnight.

And had to sprint to the office in the morning to unplug it before anyone got in. I made it by ten minutes. What do we say to Delilah? We forgive you. This comes from Anonymous, okay? instead of reducing the milk delivery order, I drank a litre of milk each morning before other colleagues noticed the excess.

I don't know if we can, forgive them. Not because it's bad, but because it's profoundly value neutral, isn't it? What do we say to anonymous? We forgive you. I agree, I think. Okay, Lorna says, I was so hung over on my commute,

I threw up on the tube into a Greg's bag. told everyone next to me it was morning sickness What do we say to Lorna? We believe you. Here comes Lewis, age 30, he's written his age, that's good. Lewis says, I once sent an email to our office manager asking if she wanted the chocolate orange after a stressful day, that's nice.

A colleague then informed me that I had sent it to everyone in the company, including our offices in Paris and Hong Kong. Okay, and finally, I emailed HR as my colleagues were having a lock-in in the office, and two of them got fired. Give me a cheer if we forgive then. Give me a cheer if you don't. Interesting, what a fascinating place to leave this. What have we learned, my angels.

Well, the world is full of self-improvement experts, and I don't use that term correctly at all, offering unsolicited advice on how to be more productive. Here is a genuine quotation from a lifestyle influencer called Ed Milet. In fact, can we play it? My day is 6 a.m. to noon, and I'm not crazy. You're crazy for thinking it takes 24 hours, just like some dude in a cave did 300 years ago.

My second day starts at noon and goes until 6 p.m. That's day two. and then the next day is 6 p.m. to midnight. What I've done now is I have changed a manipulated time. I now get 21 days a week. Stack it up over a month, I'm going to kick your butt. Stack it up over a year, you're toast. Stack it up over five years. My entire life is different than it would have been otherwise.

My favorite bit of that is when he says, some dude in a cave 300 years ago. So since everyone is giving advice on the ideal working day, I thought, by way of conclusion to this, I would throw my hat in the ring. And to be clear, my hat is an Easter bonnet. I want you to take this advice as gospel, by which I mean would be better if sung by a choir.

So, first of all, wake up early. I really do think that. It's good to wake up early. If you're like me and you struggle to wake up early, can I suggest have lots and lots of spicy margaritas the night before? You'll wake up with such a dry mouth, yes, that your body will actually wake you up, yeah? Five o'clock in the morning, out the bedroom,

on a quest for liquid, yeah? Sometimes I'll just drink. the vase water of my friend's birthday bouquet. I don't care. Fantastic. Next, wellness expert Wim Hof says you should begin your day with an ice cold plunge.

I say, I see your ice plunge, Wim Hof, and I raise you a boiling hot bubble bath and a beef borgignon. Next tip. Beware of caffeine after midday. I have four full cafettires at 1159. That brings me up. 1201, April Spritz, number one.

That brings me down. I'm ready to work. 12-10, work finished. Nothing. Good, was ever done after 12-10. You don't need to do it. Now, people say, be the first into the office and the last to leave. And I completely agree.

First in, last to leave. Doesn't mean you have to be there for the middle. That's fine. And with that, my perfect little monsters, we're coming to the end of the show. God. I hope that tonight we've exercised those horrible, modern demons of

self-improvement in favour of being a human being. And I hope most of all that you've learned as much from me as I feel I have from myself. Thank you very much. You are forgiven. Go forth and do it all over again. Goodbye. John Tockhill forgives Your Sins was performed by me, John Totfield. It was written by me and Eve Delaney and the producer is Sasha Boba. It was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecided. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like evil genius,

but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, evil animals. Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room. Are vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes, are bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages, and we're going there. Domestic cats. Or genius.

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