Comedy of the Week - The Lively Life of Lindsey Santoro

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

Today Lindsey is dragged to a rock climbing centre by her athletic friend Jenny which results in a life changing discovery about her over-zealous anatomy. She helps her mum rescue a missing rat and, with the help of Elton John, hosts an intimate funeral.Welcome to the life of the most beautiful princess in all of Birmingham and its surrounding areas. This week Lindsey Santoro has started a diary. But she’s not 13 years old daydreaming about her latest crush and sleepover plans. She’s a 37-year-old no-nonsense Brummy whose days are more likely to involve thrush cream and a bargy with a bus driver. You are cordially invited to step into her world and learn lessons from her lively life.Producer: Sasha Bobak Production Coordinator: Katie Baum Script Editor: Ruth Husko Executive Producer: Pete StraussA BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.

BBC Sounds music radio podcast. Hello and welcome to the lively life of Lindsay Santoro. It's me, Lindsay Santoro. I'm a stand up comedian from Birmingham and I've got some very exciting news. This week I started a diary. And what's the point of having a diary if you're not going to share it with absolutely everybody? I want to use this diary to sharpen my mind and learn from each day.

So welcome, take your shoes off when you come in, I won't have your trotters dirty my carpet. Three things I learned today. Sometimes exercise can make you look worse. Be careful who you make eye contact with. And never trust an animal with your eggs. 9am. I start today like most people, rolling over like a fat skewered kebab and picking up my phone.

My favourite thing is to have a good gulp at whatever drama is kicking off on the local Facebook group. Today it turns out that someone has lost a rat in the Northfield area. 905, I was just settling down to get seriously invested in a busy morning of Candy Crush when my mate Jenny starts ringing me. Jenny, by the way, she's my mate,

she gets on my tits but I can't get rid of her because I knew her in the slag years, you know what I mean? No, she's lovely, but she's trying to, like, she does this stuff where she tries to get me to be more, like, healthy and active. I am body positive, and I will say that the only issue I have with myself is my neck. That's not vanity as well, because it's just when it's warm out

and you look down and look up and feel it peel off itself, eh? 9.20. Oh God, she's calling again. I will describe Jenny to you with one sentence. She's got eyelashes on the front of her car. 10.30. After a delightful ride up the M6, watching the eyelashes cling on for dear life past Wensbury, Ikea. We arrive at what can only be described as a warehouse next to a disused car park. I mean, in this situation,

you start to think all sorts of things, don't you? You think, am I gonna be murdered? Are we doing a drug deal? Is someone about to harvest my organs to pay off an unfulfilled debt? My heart sinks when I realise it is none of those things. And we are at an indoor rock climbing centre called Rock Hard. 10.35 we go in and I wonder why there is a little boy sat behind the desk. I'm about

to ask him if his dad is in. He stands up, thrust his badge in my face. Brian, Rock Hard handler. Turns out he's actually a 42 year old man with a child's face and a mullet. He declares that he wants to get us strapped up and then asks have you ever climbed a wall before? He looks at me skinny ankles and I realize he must think I must be umpty-dumpty on a day off. 10.40 I put my helmet on and he hands me a harness which I hoist myself into like a sumo in leggings. I pull the harness up to show Willan, but all this has done is push my fanny forward

so it looks like a horse's face. Brian comes back with a sugar cube for it. Come the wall, come the wall. 10.45. So I'm lying down at the bottom of the wall. Brian is straight over as if I've shat on his lanyard. Asking, what are you doing? I said, I'm ready for you to wince me up like a bag of flour. Well, you can imagine my surprise when he tells me that I'm not going to be lifted up the wall and I've got to climb it. How is this possible, I think? How is this legal? 11.25, I go to work and climb the wall

in a sprightly 38 minutes. Brian said, I probably would have been a bit quicker if I hadn't spent so much time vaping on the ascent. I get to the top, no problem. And you're not going to believe this. There's nothing up there. Not even a biscuit. What was the point of all that then? I get to the top no problem and you're not going to believe this. There's nothing up there. Not even a biscuit.

What was the point of all that then? What's my incentive to be here? Just I'm about to start getting outraged. I look down and realise I'm quite high up. I forget about the absence of a Jaffa cake and I start to panic. I shout down, Brian! Brian! Brian! What do I do now?

Brian shouts back, we told you when you get to the top, lean back and walk down the wall. All I heard was Brian shouting, jump off the wall. 11 28 as I'm falling backwards through the sky I thought to myself I've messed up here then out of nowhere the rope starts getting tighter suddenly I'm not plummeting to my doom as it turns out the harness is connected to Jenny's and now she's become less of a friend and more of a human counterbalance. LAUGHTER Oh, just for reference, Jenny's about 5ft2 and 6ft1 with earrings on. LAUGHTER I watch as she flies off the floor.

LAUGHTER And I cannot express to you how beautiful it is to be falling through the sky backward, seeing your best friend shoot past you shouting you stupid fat bitch 1145 driving back home in silence Jenny's in a mood I Can tell because I am in tune with these things It's very subtle and she's called me a bloody idiot three times. Suddenly Jenny drops a bomb shout. Don't forget, Lindsay, you've agreed to help me organise Sue's hendo.

I had forgotten and anyway, I'd never agreed to organise it. I'm just going to stress that. I was just standing near her when she agreed to organise it. Sue, or Nutty Sue as she's known to her friends and family, is one of my mum's mates and I would describe her as interesting. She once bought an ice cream van because she liked the music.

And then there was the time she claimed she'd found a seal outside the Sea Life Centre, right, and she threw it back into the canal. But it turns out it was just a drunk man that had fallen off Broad Street. She only got a caution for that and that's because they couldn't work out how she'd thrown an adult man that far into a body of water.

This is all Jenny's own fault. When we were at the social club last weekend, Jenny made the mistake of looking into Sue's eyes directly. Never look Sue in the eyes. Everyone knows that. She's like a laser pen. Much like Medusa with the snakes on her noggin. After just one glare, Sue said,

organize it for me. If it's crap, you'll live to regret it. That's how powerful Sue is, I'm not joking. I remember she once caught the eye of Lionel Richie, right, and now he won't come back to the UK. 11.50, I think we should book a weekend abroad for the hen-do, squeals Jenny. In the old days, of course, you could miss out on endos easily but nowadays because of modern technology you just randomly get added to a WhatsApp group. Oh no don't start. Do you know what I do?

Because sometimes you have these people that join these groups don't you and you don't know who they are they never say anything and one day they just leave the group look there. They just leave. Do you know what I do? I add them all back in. I add them all back in. I add them all back in. I go, why did you leave the group? Is it because you hate fun? Is it because the brides are racist? And then I leave the group.

That's the last one. The last one I got added to, it was cool I want to say it was very posh but it wasn't because I got added to it and she pipes up the maid of honor She goes she goes hi everyone. Thanks for greens. Come on the hen do it's 800 pounds It's 800 pounds. So we're going to Blackpool You could buy black poor for 800 Blackpaw. Blackpaw! I said you could buy Blackpaw for £800. You could buy Blackpaw for... Can you all pay me tomorrow? Tomorrow, £800 tomorrow.

By the way, we're all staying in the equivalent of an adult orphanage. OK, that's what I want. 2pm, blimey. Nice to be home. Thought I could have five minutes, please. But as soon as me arse hit the sofa, me phone's ringing. Oh, it'll be me mum. Now she's retired and got free time. She manages to fill her days by finding out everyone's gossip.

But it's not, like, big gossip. It's normally a bit boring. You know, the standard, like, Julie's cat's died. Your nan's got her hands on 14. Katherine wheels. Your cousin's been radicalised again. Um... So by the time she... Can I just stress as well? By the time she was my age, right,

she had three kids under the age of, like, ten. And yesterday, I had to convince myself not to eat a dishwasher tablet. LAUGHTER Why do they make them look so nice if they don't know what people eat? 230. Oh, she's left me a voice note. I need your help. 2.45. Don't ignore your mother. What if I were dead? 3.30.

I arrive at my mother's house to see her sat on the steps, arranging a circle of eggs. This isn't the issue, by the way. This is normal. My mum's current entertainment is she feeds these foxes that turn up outside her house every night, a diet of raw eggs. I mean, God forbid a woman can have hobbies, do you know what I mean?

However, work must have spread, and now there's a minimum of seven foxes there. And they just come waiting for their egg buffet. My worry is that they're unionising. She spots me and starts waving her arms around like she's flagging down an ambulance. You're too late, I've caught it. I caught a rat with my laundry basket and I've put a brick on it. Why have you hit it with a brick? I've not hit it with a brick, I've put a brick on it to weigh the basket down.

I read they can carry 10 times their body weight. That's ants, mom. It's the same thing. I can confirm that mama's indeed caught a bloody rat in the garden in an upturned basket with a brick on it. And we know it belongs to someone because it's got a little hat on. 3.45, me and Mum decide the best thing to do is post on the local Facebook group about the rat.

Who's got a loose rat this morning? 4 o'clock. All replies keep tagging a woman called Samantha. And further investigation, clicking her name, Poirot. It turns out she loses this rat every two days. 4.30. Mom's decided the best thing to do is set the rat free and she's getting vibes that the rat clearly doesn't want to go home to Samantha. I tell my mom to get her rat out. 5 o'clock. Jesus Christ, it's a bloodbath. As soon as mum took the basket off, the rat scuttled away, only to then be jumped on by a bloody fox.

I'm never feeding you my eggs again, you bastard. It's still ringing in my ears. Six thirty. Me mum's got her hands up her arse about the rat. I've suggested we have a little funeral for it. She's also asked that I stop referring to her as the murderer. We never found the body so it's not much of a wake. Mum's playing candle in the wind out of her phone.

And we've got no real candles so we've just plugged in the Airwick automatic air freshener. Nine o'clock, so nice to finally be in bed. What did we learn today, eh? Number one, sometimes exercise can make you look worse. It's not every day you find out you've got an equine fanny that can run the 330 at Chepstow. Two, be careful who you make eye contact with or you may end up planning their major live event and becoming admin of a group chat unwillingly. That's why I always wear sunglasses around Sue. And number three, my main takeaway from today is just because you feed something doesn't

mean it loves you. So never trust an animal with your eggs. This applies to both foxes and men. Right, no no, bedtime now, give me free rings when you get home, see you, bye. The Lively Life of Lindsay Santoro was written and performed by me, Lindsay Santoro. It was produced in Birmingham by Sasha Bober and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4. Hello, it's Lindsay Santoro here. If you want to hear more great episodes of the lively life of Lindsay Santoro then search stand-up specials on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Helen Lewis. And I'm Armand Inouche. We're the hosts of BBC Radio 4's Strong Message Here and over the summer we are bringing you a series of short episodes called Strong Message Here, Strong Recommend. Armando, what is a strong recommend? It's something we recommend strongly from the cultural recommendations. It could be a book, it could be a TV show, it could be a play, it could be a... It could be a video game and if I have anything to do with it, it will be a video game. It could be not necessarily something that's just out this week or just out now.

For example, I will be recommending Richard II by a writer called William Shakespeare. Ah, there are big things ahead for him. I'll be talking about taxonomy, I'll be talking about Elden Ring, I'll be talking about why it's worth standing just off Oxford Street at 9pm this summer. So that's strong message here, strong recommend. It's a shorter programme with a longer title. And you can get it now on BBC Sounds.