Podbit · Parenting Hell with Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe
Rob Beckett cracked a joke on his school's WhatsApp group suggesting he'd send his daughter to swimming survival lessons in dungarees and a turtleneck. One brave soul replied 'exceptional buoyancy' and then silence fell. The whole exchange spirals into a meditation on the tragicomedy of being a comedian in a civilian group chat.
Where this was said
At 8:30 · chapter starts 2:01
The episode proper opens with a kids' intro from Molly Ruth, aged four, from Builth Wells in Mid Wales, whose grandmother is a devoted Parenting Hell superfan. This innocent submission sends Rob down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, reading out the most obscure notable residents of Builth Wells with increasingly mystified reactions from Josh. The only person Josh recognises is Kevin Sheedy, the Everton and Republic of Ireland midfielder — notable, but hardly a Welshman. Josh's own village, Haytor Vale in Devon, barely registers a Wikipedia page, let alone a famous resident. Rob's Mottingham fares somewhat better — W.G. Grace, Dennis Healey, and Rob Beckett himself appear, though Rob's photo is him visibly drunk on the television show Drunk History. Producer Michael, born on the Isle of Wight, offers Anthony Minghella and Mark King of Level 42 — including the detail that King insured his thumbs for a million pounds — before the segment is mercifully declared the most boring four minutes the podcast has ever produced.
No one from Haytor Vale has ever been famous. Rob Beckett pulls up Wikipedia notable residents for Builth Wells, Haytor Vale, and Mottingham and the results are a masterclass in British obscurity. The only common thread: most of them nobody has heard of.
Mark King, bassist of Level from the Isle of Wight, had his thumbs insured for a million pounds due to his distinctive slap bass technique.
A broken pipe turned the Bad Friends studio into a hydrogen sulfide chamber. The crew denied smelling anything — which, as Andrew pointed out, makes their home lives deeply suspicious.
At a childhood sleepover in Sacramento, Bobby Lee's friends drew penises all over his face while he slept. He woke up, cried, and walked 7 miles down a dirt road before Eric Purvis's mom drove out to retrieve him.
On KSI's Make Me Laugh show, Bobby Lee got slapped so hard he fell and briefly blacked out — 5 minutes into the event. The rule was to use a tortilla, but the contestant used his bare hand instead.
What starts as a riff on Amber Alerts turns into an elaborate Speed remake: Bobby is a Hollywood tour guide whose bus shares a route with a kidnapper's identical bus, there's a bomb on board, and Keanu Reeves needs to be called immediately.
Their producer riffs a conspiracy theory about Lindsey Graham's death in Kyiv, which somehow leads to Bobby and Andrew discovering that every lyric of 'A Whole New World' from Aladdin secretly describes 9/11. They are disturbingly convincing.
Bobby Lee woke up Saturday morning to find three children splashing in his pool, along with a professionally hired swimming teacher — all arranged by friends who have keys to his house. His response: 'There's just too much joy here.'
Harold Ramis told a story about Caddyshack's cast doing drugs all day and night during Florida storm delays, with half their pay going to cocaine. Bobby Lee immediately wants to make that exact movie — and offers to relapse to do it.
Robby Hoffman had never heard of 'new towels.' A towel, in her world, was built with the house. When Sarah Silverman announced she'd bought new pool towels, it was a class-gap revelation.
Will Arnett pitched the perfect rich-person home for Robby: seven-hundred-thread-count sheets and brand-new towels — but a tiny, wrecked kitchen with a coil stove, chips, and Sprite. Best of both worlds.
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