Josh: When lockdown began Rob was doing a lot of videos about how tough he was finding it at home with two young kids. I sent Rob a voice memo suggesting we do a podcast where we interview other parents and we got the first one with Katherine Ryan out within nine days.

 

Rob: We were in a WhatsApp group called Lockdown Dad’s Pod. Originally we were going to call the podcast something to do with dads but then we decided we wanted everyone to listen to it. Mums are getting behind enemy territory when they hear it. 

 

It felt there was a need for it. There were parenting podcasts but not from a comedians point of view. There are parents who care about their kids and want to make banana bread with them parents who don’t and just leave their kids with an iPad and we sort of fall in the middle. We care, but we are not very good at it sometimes.

Rob: I think that’s because parenting dominates your life whether you want it to or not. Have you got kids? Should you have kids? Are you too old for kids? All your friends might be having kids. It’s always an issue. 

Josh: It’s like a reality TV show starring me and Rob.

Rob: We’re not close friends now either! If we ever chat before the show it ruins the show so we mainly communicate online. We’ve always got on but were in different social groups. A lot of Josh’s mates are comedians like James Acaster and Nish Kumar. A lot of my mates are people I grew up with.

 

Josh: What's really good about it is that we are so different. I don't really know what we have in common apart from being around the same age and being parents.

Rob: We do it 9am - noon every Monday. I find it quite therapeutic to offload and start the week with a clean slate.

Josh: Zoom has made things so much easier for everyone. Instead of asking a guest to be in a Soho studio at 11am we just have to ask them to be in their spare room. The commute for us is just going upstairs.

Rob: When my seven-year-old daughter came home from school and told me off for telling a story about her and her sister. I thought ‘this has escalated – seven year olds are talking about it in the playground’. My daughter said ‘stop talking about me being mean to my sister on your codpast. She called it a codpast.’

Josh: I expected it to be good but if you expected this you'd be clinically mad.

Josh: You can't just sit down in an arena and chat about your week. We want to turn the podcast into a show, but it's a balancing act because you've also got to keep the things that listeners love. We want to keep that improvised element but we also have to remember that people have paid good money. You've got to make it worth their while. I don't want to reveal too much but as well as chat there will be films, pictures, games and an unmanageably big prop we have to take around the country with us. It's Parenting Hell meets Graham Norton meets Saturday Night Takeaway meets The Generation Game.

Rob: It’ll be totally the podcast and totally not the podcast. The key thing is winding each other up and laughing at each other’s misfortune. There will be more interaction with the audience, I’ll be going into the crowd. The people coming will get something you can’t get anywhere else. Josh is very into the structure, I’m going to try and take the structure away and stress him out!

Josh: Louis Theroux. Absolutely loved him. He Louis Therouxed us. Somehow you get suckered in and before you know it he's doing his thing on you and you are opening up in a way you didn't want to open up. I enjoyed interviewing Robbie Williams from his bed. And comedian Tom Parry was the most insane interview that we've done. Alex Jones from The One Show was very funny. Everyone has a different parenting story. Because they are talking about their children you see a more personal side than you would ever see on a TV chat show.

Rob: I very much enjoyed Joe Swash. He was on Zoom and kept getting kicked out of rooms by his kids. In the end he was in the bathroom while he was running a bath for his baby. It’s about getting a guest at the end of their tether and then you press record. Peter Crouch was great. He’d answer the questions and you could hear his wife Abbey shouting out and disagreeing with him!

Josh: Rob is a lot more easy going but a lot more confrontational than me. I'm uptight but I keep it to myself. He's easy going but he tells me when he's pissed off. I like to think things through, he thinks that preparation ruins everything.

Rob: I’m more positive, Josh is more of a people pleaser but actually takes too much on and ends up annoying people. I’m a bit more direct and will say if I can’t do something. He avoids confrontation, I will say no. 

Fundamentally he really makes me laugh and I really make him laugh and that brings us together. I couldn’t do it with someone I didn’t like or who didn’t make me laugh. Ultimately I love Josh, his wife Rose and their kids but I’d hate to live in Hackney where he lives, it would drive me mental. And he’d hate living in the suburbs where I live.

Josh: Rob is one of the easiest people I've ever worked with, if not the easiest. Despite being very different we both respect the way the other one is.

Josh: There’s a line in The Simpsons – ‘Who knows what adventures they will have between now and the time it becomes unprofitable?’ I often think that. As long as people want it I'll keep doing it. It's so difficult to find something that you do that people respond to in this way. It'll probably never happen again. I love doing it and I love doing it with Rob. I can't see why you'd stop at this stage.

Rob: I’d like to do it until Josh’s youngest, who is one now, is eighteen. Then we stop and start it up again when we have grandkids. I’m always going to be a parent and there will always be content however old they get. Though it might be psychological warfare when they are older!

Josh: Paul McCartney. Either of the Gallagher brothers would be fascinating. I'm in awe of musicians, but a lot of them Rob wouldn't have heard of.

Rob: He'd probably like to have Damon Albarn on every week! I’d prefer reality stars someone from TOWIE. I’d love to have any Arsenal footballers but it would be about football not parenting, Lily Allen would be a good one. I think she had a crazy childhood. And Kim Kardashian. She’s my celebrity crush so I could put the groundwork in in case my wife Lou leaves me.

Josh: I’ve got a theory that you think the easiest people to work with to get the best results are people exactly like you, but then you are just agreeing all the time. If you look at Parenting Hell it's all about the combination of very different personalities. That's why it works. It's the contrast. If you were writing a sitcom you wouldn't write two characters who are the same.

Rob: There are loads of people who think Josh is a nutter and loads who think I’m mad, so we cover all bases, there’s something for everyone!