336 - Robert Popper
The Comedian's Comedian Podcast
Stuart Goldsmith
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2020
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An experiment was performed in which the co-creator of Look Around You, creator and writer of Friday Night Dinner, former commissioning editor for CH4 and expert Timewaster Robert Popper was subjected to an interview. We talk about FND and why it has become Robert’s best known work, his experience with death threats in the South Park writers room, and how he and Peter Serafinowicz rolled on the floor crying with laughter at “...thants”. Make a note in your copy books now…
30 mins of extra content available exclusively to members of the Insiders Club includes Robert on his one big disagreement with the writers of Peep Show whilst working as series producer, as well as some delicious insight into the world of The Timewaster Letters, and a hilarious toolkit for your own frivolous phonecalls… Join the Insiders Club now at www.comedianscomedian.com/insiders for all this and much much more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Are there any words more guaranteed to strike terror into people's hearts than climate comedy? |
| 0:04.6 | Well, I thought so, and then I took my show Spoilers to the Edinburgh Festival and everyone bloody loved it, |
| 0:09.7 | including Brian Eno, if you can believe that. You can see it at the Soho Theatre from the 29th of November for four nights. Get your tickets at Stuart Goldsmith.com. Hello and welcome to the show I'm Stuart Goldsmith and today my guest is Robert Popper. |
| 0:39.0 | Now not all of you will be familiar with Robert's name but you'll certainly know his work as well as being the writer and creator |
| 0:45.0 | of Friday night dinner now in its sixth season on channel four he's also |
| 0:49.2 | partly responsible co-responsible with Peter Sererefinowitz for one of my favorite ever comedy shows, |
| 0:56.0 | Look Around You, a spoof science show, and even that description doesn't do it justice at all. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece of work, most of which |
| 1:05.9 | you can now find on YouTube. So do search look around you for a sort of 70s science lesson. Also, he has had multiple bestseller books with the time-waster letters. |
| 1:17.0 | He also likes spending his spare time ringing into people's online radio, phonins and sort of wasting their time in a very, very funny way. |
| 1:27.3 | He's also written for South Park, he's been a commissioning editor for Channel 4 comedy, he's |
| 1:31.9 | done pretty much everything. He's produced |
| 1:34.4 | seasons three and four I think of Peep Show and it is just such a privilege to |
| 1:39.9 | engage with his marvelous comic brain. |
| 1:43.7 | So that's all coming up in a second. |
| 1:45.4 | I just quickly want to thank a few of you. |
| 1:47.5 | Melanie Matthews and Perry Passison |
| 1:49.6 | have in the last week up to their subscription payments to the insiders club which is very |
| 1:55.1 | kind lots of you have been clustering what's the phrase rallying around the |
| 1:59.2 | podcast at this time of live comedy disappearing and I have been using that extra |
| 2:05.4 | a little bit of extra income to buy me time |
| 2:08.0 | to create a pretty exciting project which I'll tell you more about in the |
| 2:11.4 | middle of this episode. |
... |
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