The Comedian's Comedian Podcast - Episode 500: I Need Your Help!

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Complete the ComComPod survey 👉 stuartgoldsmith.com/surveyWell, episode 500 is nearly here... who'd have thought it?!To mark the milestone, we're gathering SOME DATA. Your favourite guests, moments, future plans and all that jazz which will be used in some extremely self indulgent special plans. The majority of the questions are optional, so feel free to skip if needed.As a thanks for taking part, we'll be gifting an Insider's Insider 12-month membership on Patreon to one lucky respondent (just make sure your email is correct!).Any questions, you know where I am! Thanks so much for all your support, exciting times ahead... 👀Keep up to date with all things The Comedian's Comedian PodcastYouTube: youtube.com/@ComComPodInstagram: instagram.com/ComComPodTikTok: tiktok.com/@ComComPodYou can also support the Podcast from only £3/month at Patreon.com/ComComPod where you'll get:✅ Exclusive access to full video and ad-free audio episodes✅ Hundreds of hours of extra content✅ Early access to new episodes (where possible!)✅ Additional membership offerings including a monthly “Stu&A”Everything Stu's up to:Discover Stu’s comedy about the climate crisis, for everyone from activists to CEOs, at stuartgoldsmith.com/climate. Find everything else at stuartgoldsmith.com.See Stuart live on tour - www.stuartgoldsmith.com/comedy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stu here. Episode 500 is somehow fast approaching. It's already in the cat. I can't wait for you to hear it. I need your feedback. I want to gather some data on your favourite episodes, your best moments, see if there's any fun anecdotes I can uncover along the way. Something must have happened in your life in nearly 500 episodes of podcasting. And as a thanks for taking part, myself and producer Callum, will be gifting an Insider's Insider 12-month membership on Patreon to one lucky respondent. You can pay this forward if you're already one. The survey's super short, all the questions are skippable, and this would mean a lot if you could just take five minutes out of your day to go and fill the thing in. Head to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey, or the link is in the show notes. There's going to be a very short break in September before we approach that milestone, but lots of exciting stuff in the works.

Episode 500 is coming up, I can tell you that much. I paused there, weirdly, 500, and that's something that the boy has been doing to me recently is pointing out when I missay. And I do have to admit that I worry, do you remember during either parenthood of young children or COVID, that you started to, and don't let me convince you you did if you didn't, but I started to substitute words for similar words in a sort of hazy thinking kind of befuddled sort of way, like similar words, saying like pond instead of pool or in the context of a. a swimming pool, but not saying swimming pond. That would make me worry slightly more. Or maybe saying, I'm just going to drag the mic closer to me as it should have been and check that it's on the right drop-down menu. Yes, it is. So, saying, or, you know, saying like head instead of face, similar words. Where was this going? God, this is a shocking start. Oh, yes, that was it. So the boy recently has started me picking up on those, picking me up on those. And, it's making me just aware, it's making me aware of how much I do it. And I'm worrying that I'm

slightly losing my marble. So really one thing you could do if you were kind is that you could give in touch and tell me that you do that too and you're absolutely fine. So here we are. This is by way of an introduction to the survey. We're talking about information. There we go. I've segue myself back on track, because if getting information right is important to you, then it is to me as well, like I mentioned with the words thing. And here we are advertising, launching, promoting the big comcom pod survey. So you will have heard already, perhaps, little adverts, a little pre-roll, as we say in podcasting, the little blurby bit at the beginning of each episode, explaining that the survey is now happening. So the first thing you need to know is that

it is at Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey. I wanted it to be at Comedianscomcom.com slash survey, but comedianscommedian.com is now, Stuartgoldsmith.com slash podcast. And aren't there a lot of fun hours to be spent deciding on URLs and pathways? In my experience, no. But you can go to Stuartgoldsmith.com slash survey and tell me anything you want tell me about the podcast. You do that already, and I'm pleased to say that my great big folder of, I've got a folder called Made a, oh, I was I going to admit this? I've got a folder called Made a Difference in my email client, and it's to look at when I'm old and grey, possibly with my mind falling apart at such a time when I will no longer know or understand the contents. But it's when people,

when you perhaps have got in touch with me and said that the podcast has made a big difference to their life or that it's helped them, helped you to start comedy or nudged you into something or helped you resolve some sort of personal issue or cope with a family issue or loss or something like that. Because I just love hearing about that. It's sort of this weird way in which the podcast has, I suppose, helped me to discover what I actually care about. You know, you can decide what it is you're going to care about and then do that for ages and then work out whether or not it was true. Or you can just do what you want to do. And then afterwards, if you're lucky, maybe it coalesces into something. You go, oh, I guess this thing that I spent

all that time on was my values. It turns out to have been, you know, that's taught me what my values are. And I think that's definitely happened with the pot. So I would just like to know more information. So not so much the kind of you've made a big difference to my life stuff, but things like, well, I'll look at it now. Why don't we go through it together? We're not going to do that. But I will just pull it up. No, don't say that. That's what he says. Things like where you first heard about it, what made you start listening to it, what's been your favourite episode of why, what are your most memorable moments, what particularly sticks in your head? There's something, I don't think I've mentioned this on the pod before.

Me and my dear friend Vince always do top five moments on the final day of the Edinburgh Festival and go, what were your top five moments? And I've taken that with me to, you know, family holidays of which one finished just yesterday and glorious it was too. And the top five moments of the family holiday this time were a lightning storm on the final day, getting smashed to bits by the waves at the beach and shouting rude words at the sea from a speedboat, which you might remember if you've been following the postambles carefully, or maybe you're just up to there at this point. But the wee girl, who's now six painfully, she two years ago shouted from a boat in the sea off Greece, she shouted anus. And we didn't know she'd

knew that word, and it was so great. So now that's become kind of a family tradition now. We hired a little boat, and we're razzing around on it, and I shouted anus, signaling that the game had begun. And we all learned that the kids knew some new swear words. Oh, funny story about the boy learning, I'll save this for a postal, but the boy came with me to Edinburgh for a quick trip, and he learned some new words, some of them from Uncle Nish. But more on that another time. favourite moments? What are your top five moments of the pod? What are the things, you know, bonus points if you can remember the number of the episode or roughly where it comes? Are there particular guests you'd like to see on the show? And, you know, that's a kind of

an ongoing conversation I know. And then there is some stuff about the Insiders Club and about why you might join it. What would you like to see in the future? Miscellaneous stuff like that. It would really, really benefit me, us, myself and producer Callum, to know just what you are. That is the at six minute mark where I go, did I press record? Yes, I did. It would really benefit us to know what you think of it all. And I suppose if you hate it, you could use the survey to send in lots of cruel things as well. But, you know, that's sort of up to you really and how you want to spend your time. Living well is the best revenge, as they say. I don't know why that would pop into my head. Now, I'm going to take a sip from my mug, which as you can see on the

video says, World's OK as Dad. And there's got a photo of me sitting in this chair, speaking to this camera and going, a face that I would describe as like, I'm doing it there, I'm doing the face. I love this mug so much. And I forget which delightful member of the Infinite Sofa community created this and then sold it to me on Red Bubble. But I, oh, I think I know who it was actually, but I won't say in case it wasn't there, but thanks again. So, that's the survey. So that's the survey stuff we want to know. I can't believe it's going to be episode 500. But although, to be Honestly, actually, I'm going to take that back. I can believe it's going to be episode 500 because I couldn't believe it was going to be episode 400. And that really knocked me for six in a way that this one doesn't seem to be. I think when I got to episode 400 and had a very memorable and intense burst of what next? I remember thinking, what next? Do I just do another 400? And the answer it turned out was yes. Because I think I've done fewer than a quarter. Oh, I can't fiddle with that. Sorry, I picked up a little thing to fiddle with, but it's Velcro. so I can't be doing that to you, God.

Unless you're into that, is that ASMR? Is it ASMR? It combined with the face I just did. I need a, oh God, well, a rubber band is at least silent. And this particular rubber band I have cut out of a used marigold washing up glove, which I probably, I've got access to rubber bands. I'm doing all right, but my little granny used to do that. And so I probably did this years ago, sort of as a tribute to her,

so I'll fiddle with that quietly. So I think episode 400 I went, oh, that was it. I think I feel like I've done fewer than a quarter of stand-up comedians in Britain. I mean, I've clearly done a few than a quarter, but like a few than a quarter of eligible ones, like people with like three solid, excellent hours under their belt, and stuff like that. So when I hit episode 400, I had a big wallop.

And episode 500, I feel like, oh, I've already had my big moment of freaking out. not freaking out about this. I'm just stoked that I've got who I've got in the can. And it was such a great conversation with a profoundly, one of the most kind of complete artists working in comedy, I think. Sounds like an insult, doesn't it? You complete artist. Speaking of complete artists as well, and this is, I have I done, I haven't done any kind of an Edinburgh debrief, and I'll save one for a future episode, but I will tell you two of the most incredible shows I saw at Edinburgh this year. The one, when I said complete artist, I thought of Josie Long's show. which whilst apparently, and actually, you know, it is a show about the end of a relationship

and it's a show about the difficulties of parenting and how hard everything is the moment, the difficulties of being left wing, the difficulties of the climate crisis, it also managed to be just this, I mean, brilliant, so full of jokes. You really think with Josie Long, you're looking at someone who has just been incredible for 30, like probably not 30 years, I'm aging here there unfairly, but at least 20. I mean, I've been going 20 years, and she was going longer than me. Let's say 25 years. She's been brilliant for 25 years since she was 16 or 17 years old.

And now she's at that stage where she's just so good that she can almost do a show about the fact it's impossible to do a show at the moment. And it's just brilliant. It completely blew me away. And the reason I mentioned it in the context of complete art is simply that it also had these incredible, massive banners everywhere. Oh, they just connoted stuff. the banners and this kind of lighting changing effect. And I don't want to spoil it because she's going

on tour. She's going to be in Bristol, I think, on the 18th of November, which suggests that there is a wider tour happening as well. So go and find out about that wherever you can. I cannot recommend the show enough. I don't want to spoil it. It was just completely full of everything. It was like it just connoted fucking loads of stuff. And I love when stuff connotes stuff. I remember a particular class at Dartington College, where I happily went for three years of extreme head exploring, the difference between connoting something and denoting something. It denotes lots of things, but I love it when stuff connotes stuff. You know, like the difference between I imply something, and when I imply something, you infer something from it. And it just, oh, fuck, it connoted loads.

It was just so good. It was so good. And in the other one, the one, the one I was raving to everyone about and I'm thrilled that she is going to be on the podcast very soon is Lucy Pierman's, Pearman, why would you say Pierman's show which was called Lunatic in which she was the moon, just came on stage as the moon and

like it is wonderful silvery moon costume with her arms and face sticking out of like a photographer's big sort of huge shiny light reflector thing and came on and just made her way to the stage in such a such a funny way and then started off by going

So, a little bit about me. I control tides. It's just absolutely wonderful. Like, I love all of the kind of the weirdos in the ACMS and all of the kind of bananas risk-taking stuff that you get these days and have done for a long time. Although I notice, at ACMS, I barely recognized anyone on the chalkboard at Edinburgh. I was just like, I'm completely behind the times on the new kids. But for all of that crazy risk-taking, to see someone who has done all of that exploration and all of those risks and then condensed them and trimmed any dead wood and it was just, just kind of what I think of as bang after bang after bang, comedy-wise. And it was just, I don't know that it connoted anything at all the better for it. It was just absolutely magical. I'm talking about

those because I was just, I think I was just absolutely exhausted going into summer. I've been working so hard on the show, on my show, and working so hard on the pod and doing loads of interviews and loads of all of the stuff that goes around Edinburgh and all of the parenting stuff that I was desperate to do really well because this year I wasn't doing a full run, so I had time to be a good parent. And I think I was just absolutely exhausted. There's a thing that happens to children at the end of a school term where they start being wankers, frankly, and then my wife will get, not just my children, but also my children. My wife will sort of go, oh it's just they're exhausted and you go what's just a regular week and you go no it's been it's like

it's been eight regular weeks in a row or four regular weeks in a row whatever it is they're just it's just exhaustion and I think I was just completely exhausted and so to go to Edinburgh and have and I meant it just an absolutely A1 brilliant time with nary a hiccup and a show that I loved that got better and better every day and has now given me this platform whereby I'm like oh now I get to spend an entire year. Okay, so here's the thing I love doing. I love in July when you have a show, if you're lucky enough to have a show by July, and what you're doing then is, not even July, almost like the first week of August, the bit where you're like, that's the show now. We're too late to worry about whether or not that's the show. That is the show. And then you can just individually

tweak and improve all the little bits. I feel like now I get to do that for a whole year, Although really, artistically, I shouldn't do that. I should probably throw it all out and start again. And then, yeah, I probably should do that. I should throw it all out, start again. And what I'm going for is the bit, the post, I've mentioned this before, the post-Edinburgh bit where you do like a 40-minute set, you've just done your hour for a month at Edinburgh,

and then in early October your book to do an unusually long set, to do like a 40-minute club set. And you basically just do all the best bits of the show without thinking about it. And you come out of that experience going, Christ, why couldn't this have happened to me in April? And then I could have written another 20 more minutes, and I'd have the perfect show. That is also excellent, and I'm going to fold that in as well. At some point, I'm going to need to have a real meeting with myself about what happens next to the show,

and with Deck Monroe, my director, to work out what form it takes and which chunks. Like, it all either works or was funny, or was meaningful, or was personal, and I need to just decide which bits of those to, to play with and increase and improve. So I'm really excited and I have now had a holiday and I've had a rest and I'm chomping at the bit. And I was just so fucking inspired by Lucy and by Josie's shows and loads of other, loads and loads of other brilliant ones as well. Jono from Sheeps, God, his solo was so, so good. So I saw loads of great stuff. And also, here's a slightly post-ambly thing, which I'll share with you and then we'll crack on, by which I mean, finish up. I also had a notion for, you could have, forgive me, this is more ADHD content, but I don't

feel we've done much for a while. Embracing my distractibility and embracing how hard it is to keep my attention and how quickly I get bored and how frustrating and kind of like how really recognizing, really this year, recognizing, I think, for the first time, just how how hard it is for me to sit still for an hour and watch a show. And as I fidget in my seat, I look around, even if I'm loving the show, I have to, I mean, there are shows, like I mentioned Kima Bob's show, where I just, the time flew by, I didn't even fidget. It was that good. But, and it was that, it wasn't just that, it wasn't just how good it was. It was because it was so personal and so honest and such a brilliant story, so brilliantly told. All of those things.

There are shows that I love that I nonetheless am thinking, I'm going to need four boiled sweets to get through this. I'm going to need to take my shoes and socks off, discreetly. and then put them back on. I'm just going to need to be doing things. Like, if I could, legally, and with the approval of the comics, play a little video game on my phone that was non... This is a disgusting idea, and I'd never do this. Just play something mindless that was just like moving things or like a fiddle toy or something.

God, it's pathetic. But it's not pathetic. It's absolutely fine. The whole point is I recognised, I think, for the first time this year, just how hard I find it to sit still. And I look around and I'm just like, no one else has fucking moved and I've been in five different shapes in the last five minutes and take my shoes and socks off I only did that in two shows that's awful and in a completely

non-destractable way non-distracting way um but to um to notice that everyone around me is just sitting still and just kind of inertly watching and taking in the show I just clocked how fucking hard it is for me to do that and I it isn't pathetic and it is it is ADHD and I'm fine with it and I'm trying to be mindful of people with ADHD listening to this. I approve of whatever strategies you need to get through watching stuff. But I also realise that it will sound pathetic to other people. And I suppose I worry about that, but I can't worry about it too much. I, like I've always said, you know, if I go and see my favourite band,

I'd rather they did their three best songs and then finished. That would do me. If I go and, you know, if I want to, like, if I'm fiddling and fidgeting stuff. I'm still listening. I just want to be doing something. So the point of the idea is, can't we have, at the very least, a directory of particularly ADHD-friendly shows, shows which, like Zoe Coom's Mars show last year, every single thing in my whole entire life, which is kind of, it was a show about ADHD in some ways, and it just was incredibly ADHD friendly because it was, why? Why? Because it was, there was a visual elements to it and there was a lot going on. Oh, Matt Ewins, there's so much going on, joke, joke, joke, joke, but also paradigm shift, paradigm shift, paradigm shift. I think it would be nice if someone made an ADHD friendly. A, listen, if babies can have special screenings, why can't we have special screenings where you're allowed to fidget and get up and walk around? The problem is, I think I've just been spoiled.

being a comic, and so I never have to sit in audiences, apart from Edinburgh. I just walk up and down at the back of the room, fiddle with my phone. I'm listening the whole time, but I just get to move around. So can we have special mother and ADHD child screenings of people's comedy shows? Because, I mean, I know how distracting that could be for the performer. There was a preview I did in Cheltenham, just in July, I think, where there was someone in the audience who was routinely interrupting me. and it did affect me and my flow, because the show was by no means finished at that stage,

and I was feeling a bit vulnerable. I wasn't having the best gig in the world, and I was, you know, when I'm not having the best gig in the world, you do what you think is a punchline, it turns out you just said a sentence and no one laughs. And then the laugh that you were expecting fails to carry you through to the next bit in the normal way. And so you're just kind of a drift going, what is the next bit? And then you suffer, the momentum suffers, and you know, a bit of a spiral, potentially. And this person interrupting definitely contributed to that. But I just got the sense from their vibe, and they were visible in the front couple of rows. I just got the sense that, you know, they didn't mean anything by it. They weren't being negative at all. They were,

they were, I think they were just like I would. They were just blurting stuff out. They were blurting stuff out and then slightly cringing that they blurted something out. God knows, I've done that enough times. So I dealt with it in a way that I sort of said, oh yeah like you know I'm a bit rusty for hecklers because a lot of the work I do doesn't really have hecklers anymore and um I'm I just I sort of I think I dealt with it well in that I just said to that I kind of made a joke at their expense and then sort of went and do you know what I don't mean that mean joke I just made at your expense I understand I my the sense I said something like the sense I get is that you're joining in without being able to help it and they kind of nodded sheepishly

and I was like and it's absolutely fine and I felt good in saying that even though I wasn't having the best gig in the world. So it might be distracting. But let's focus on the positives. I think it's said, I mean, it may be that if you just look at the shows I go and see, what's Goldsmith been seeing. Hill have been self-selecting for ADHD-friendly stuff. Glenn Moore with 400 absolutely impeccable jokes. Very, very easy to watch on that basis. Ted Hill, I really enjoyed this year. I mean, my son went to see Ted Hill. And he had this extraordinary kind of audio, visual, you know, loads of kind of interactive thing, kind of like Matt Ewansey, Zach Zucker style, you know, sound pre-kewed interactions with people and stuff like that.

But, you know, my son absolutely loved it. I enjoyed it. I don't mean to it. My point is I really enjoyed it. But my son absolutely loved it. That's the way round I meant to say that. So there, yes, so maybe I'm just self-selecting for that anyway. I fear this has turned into a bit of a post-amble rather than a specific launch of the survey. But it is what it is. And I think in the context of the last five minutes, you'd be very mean to judge me on that basis. So, listen, just by way, my point is I was absolutely knackered. Now I feel really rejuvenated, and I always forget to myself just how I forget to myself. All forgetting is forgetting to yourself.

I forget just how rejuvenated I feel after a holiday. And I do have that now. And then there's the show. There's how an inconvenient time went. Look at this. What a lovely poster image. If you're looking, if you didn't see the fly, look at that. Every time I look at that photo, it's me, for the benefit of those just listening,

it's me holding a half-dead plant pot and looking at it with, I think, the funniest expression I've ever done. And every time I look at it, it's like I'm looking at the audience like, I'm sad about this in like four sets of inverted commas. And I did wonder, will people find that funny or will they take it at, oh, there's the focus, or will they take it at face value and think genuinely Goldsmith's angry about a slightly dead spider plant. But every time me and my friend Andre who took the picture, every time we looked at it, we just pissed us and I was laughing, so I was like, nope, it's going on. So I had, I just had the best time. I just had the best time. And I tweak the show every day. I didn't do the big writing on it. I was going to, I had a dream that

I would. I did little bits of writing on it. But at the end of the day, with an 11 o'clock show, on Edinburgh time when you want to exercise as soon as you get up. You just don't have the two hours that I need to be able to do 40 minutes of good writing work. So that bit didn't happen. So I did, to a certain extent, polish some stuff rather than I was hoping I'd take more risks and include more new big stuff, but like brand new stuff that I'd just written. But it really quickly, it quickly really coalesced into. something that felt really meaningful and positive and I loved. I was literally bouncing up and down

in the wings before in the wings, in the bit by the toilets before going on, really bouncy and excited to do all the stuff, excited to say all the stuff. And then I made a sort of a bigish decision about halfway through the run. Three days in, I went, there's all this stuff I've got about Tony's chocolate-only slave labour in the chocolate and phone industries and coltan, columbite tantalite in our phones being a mineral with lots of slavery implications. And I did think this is stuff that I feel passionately about and I have managed to make a lot of it funny whilst also really implicating myself and the audience. I'm proud of the gear, but I thought I'm also already asking quite a lot of the audience with the whole climate

comedy shows. So that stuff might be part of the next show rather than sit neatly in this. Because that Edinburgh thing happened whereby you have the show and then you just take more time with it and have more fun with it and it grows and grows. You should only ever have 45 minutes on day one of Edinburgh. That's my feeling. The idea being that you know it's just going to grow organically. I just had a great time. I just had a great time. I loved it. I don't know that I can say I think what my plan now is to, I've not thought about it now for a whole 10 days. And I think I'll probably not think about it for another five or six. And then I'm going to see already.

Then I'm going to sit down and watch the video. Unbearable. What I'm going to do is go for a long walk and listen to the whole show. And try not to stop every two minutes when I think of another joke, but instead try and listen to it all in one go and think, what is that, what is that shape, what does that make me feel? Who is this person? What is he saying? And why? Is there enough personal stuff in it? Is it too didactic? You know, I'm very excited to talk about electrification, for example. But is it, the stuff isn't dry, but it is dry compared to someone bearing their soul on stage. So how much of that will sit neatly in it? If this is the big moonshot show, which it is, then it needs. to be everything, but if it's everything, then, you know, basically how can it be as good as

Josie Long's show whilst being a completely different thing about similar subjects? So there we go. So that's where I'm at at the moment. And thank you once again to everyone that came to it. Please crack on with the survey if you can. I imagine relatively few of you will have made it all the way through 100% of this. And I can see the stats, although I don't. So if you go to Stuart Goldsmith.com slash survey, S-U-R-V-E-Y, you know, like a survey, then you can, Jesus, Ben Moore, God, Ben, I've got to get, yeah, Ben's coming on as well. Ben Moore's show was just an incredible cornucopia of, I'll tell you what Ben Moore's show was, it was, I think every show I'll write one or two witty little things on the way to a joke.

Or not, that seems like I'm being, again, backhanded. I don't mean that. I'll come up with like a beautiful funny sentence. And I'm like, oh, there's one. But that isn't what I do is to come up with those. I just sort of accidentally stumble upon one whilst doing the chunky stand-up stuff that I do. His show is like watching someone do just an hour whilst telling a story. But the story is composed of an hour of those beautiful, funny turns of phrases.

It's just gem after gem after gem. Amazing. Anyway, I was trying to say goodbye. Goodbye. It can't be that quick. Yeah, it can. You can just, you can just leave. Stuartgoldsman.com slash survey. Let me know your thoughts. Bye for now.