Detritus

Detritus celebrates its first Halloween season by treating ourselves to a seance with one of television's greatest-ever tricks: Ghostwatch. First broadcast 'live' by the BBC in 1992, this one-off drama shattered the national psyche so profoundly that it was banned from broadcast for a decade afterward. John and Jack revisit this iconic haunt, in which recognisable television personalities blend with slightly plummy actors pretending to be proles, spending a chilling evening in council housing beset by ghosts, ghouls and things that do bumps in the night (Craig Charles)

Send your impressionable children to bed before the watershed and steady your nerves for the gender-nonconforming antics of Pipes the Poltergeist, “third-party objects, flying around,” and worse; the subsequent wrath of the license-fee paying British public. And that’s before they’ve even caught wind of John’s historic egging antics…

Plus, scene reports from an isolated Aldi in East Berlin.

Following the global phenomenon of Little Britain, comedy superstars Matt Lucas & David Walliams returned on Christmas Day in 2010 with Come Fly With Me, reflecting their sudden international stardom with a new series keen to prove just how bloody funny airports are!

Dialling down the fake vomit, adult lactation and relentless catchphrasing of their best-known creation, but maintaining the fat suits, crap wigs and blacking/browning/yellowing up beloved by the British public, Come Fly With Me provides John and Jack the perfect opportunity to revisit a one-and-done series of pure televisual detritus, while also considering their own relationship with ‘offence’.

To think, if two white, privately-educated men hadn’t taken the risk of making this, they might not have inspired one white, privately-educated man to publicly divulge details of his school play casting as ‘Chairman Mao’, while another white, altogether less-educated man sits mouth agape, trying to recall when he was last offended by anything at all. Essential listening for allies and edgelords alike.

Plus, scene reports from SNL UK, Digger and raving in a former IKEA.

Widely regarded as the greatest television show of all time, The Sopranos premiered in 1999, changing the landscape of popular culture with its ambitious, uncompromising portrayal of modern American life in a state of malaise. The Sopranos: Road To Respect was released in 2006 and changed the ambitions of spin-off video games with its similarly uncompromising portrayal of punching people in the head, aimlessly walking around an empty strip club and occasionally being visited by the ghost of a wiseguy.

Sopranos devotee John and Sopranos casual Jack wake up this morning to visit recreations of iconic Sopranos spots like the Bing, Satriale's, and of course, Deano Buscetta's porn studio, testing that sweet, psychologically complex mob life for themselves, desperately attempting to spot any trace of approval on Tony Soprano's flat, depressed and pixelated face. It's going to be tough to win over this crew, all voiced by the original cast! Here, Christopher Moltisantia is a made man, and now you must make him a sandwich. Or at least fetch one to his liking. For reference, this game sells for around 70 euros on Ebay, and there's still a few months until GTA VI....

How did a spin-off of this drabness slip through creator David Chase's notoriously firm grip of quality control? Is it actually cool to just fast-forward through all of the scenes of Tony sitting in therapy with Dr. Melfi, when you could just be making your own fun by bashing someone's head against a sink? Could Quasimodo have predicted this? Detritus finally gets to grips with a weird juncture in the legacy of this familiar pop cultural juggernaut, settling things with a sit-down to quote bits from the show, as well as The Simpsons and The Office. Truly, this one's for the fellas... Stupid-a fucking game!

Plus, scene reports from Ed Sheeran's US tour, and the cold, hard concrete of Berlin's cycle lanes.

Calling all fashionistas, gussy yourselves up for possibly the most fabulous episode of Detritus yet! John and Jack transport back to 2015 to revisit the impact of…. The Dress. Discovered on the racks of an outlet mall in the North West of England, then finding global infamy via Tumblr, Facebook and Buzzfeed, no evening wear has made such an impact on the culture since Marge’s candy-pink Chanel suit hit the Springfield Country Club. But is it blue and black, or white and gold? Or some other variant that certain people (Lady Gaga) claim to see, presumably for attention?

A relic from back when divisions on the internet didn’t lead to the undoing of democracy, the Detritus lads test their very own eyes on this nostalgic item, as well as their ears, discovering more about themselves, and the world, through viral sonic illusions. You’ll laugh, you’ll sigh with nostalgia, you’ll want to hit up your family Whatsapp group to see if anyone’s opinion on this has changed. It’s fun, it’s breezy, it’s Detritus!

Plus, scene reports and analysis from the rise of the far-right in Germany.

E10 - Pod’s Gettin’ Better (Man!!) - Oasis, Be Here Now & Magical Pies

All around the world, you gotta spread the word… Because Detritus has reached a monumental TEN transmissions. If this podcast were a vintage prestige HBO television show, that landmark would usually signal a season finale. However, we all know podcasts have to LIVE FOREVER, so instead we’re treating ourselves to a lengthy dissection of Oasis’s legendarily indulgent 1997 folly, ‘Be Here Now’; albeit still coming up shorter than the album itself, assuming you discount all the complete bollocks talked for the first twenty minutes or so. But boy, when those thirty-two layers of guitar overdubs kick in, do we have some, er, different bollocks to chat.

How did a group of men so consistently opposed to experimentation write and record something this gruelling at the very peak of their powers? Why did Noel think it was a good idea to follow up the likes of ‘Cast No Shadow’ and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ by singing riddles about shoes and gnomically quoting Tony Blair? Why is Johnny Depp playing slide guitar on this thing? The answer to all of these questions is cocaine, obviously. But on the twenty-ninth anniversary of this singular release, John and Jack turn up a year early, or perhaps four late, to ask; Does ‘Be Here Now’ communicate more than initially meets the eye…? Or, as Freud might have concluded, is a bunch of crazy crap in a swimming pool sometimes just a bunch of crazy crap in a swimming pool? As you were, JL/JS x.

Plus, scene reports from humanity’s cruel disrespect for the beauty and culture that surrounds us.

There's no pod like home, there's no pod like home... John and Jack tap their heels together to explore the century-long fallout from one of the world's most recognizable pop-culture artifacts, The Wizard of Oz; a film so significant that one of your hosts can apparently recount the entire plot without having ever seen it. But don't worry, that's not the whole episode!

Finding extensively studied yet genuine horror in 1985's unremittingly bleak Disney spin-off 'Return To Oz', and at least slightly more fun in 1978's NYfuckinC African-American reimagining 'The Wiz', the margins of the Oziverse provide greater pleasure. For example, just what can we learn about the modern corporate nineties workplace from Dorothy's adventures over the rainbow? Can rumours of a Munchkin suicide cover-up be substantiated with the latest technology, or has the post-truth era reignited them? What do VeggieTales, Tom & Jerry, and The Muppets all have in common? Aside from being for children and adults who need a better excuse.

That's right, they're all chewing a strip from this public domain IP, and now we're getting our own taste. Finally, a podcast with brains, heart and courage!

Detritus reaches the inglorious finale of what some (us) are calling The Summer of Love trilogy. After the deeply British, hazy rave memories of Fatboy on the beach and a wide-eyed Keith Allen emerging from an MRI tube, we're turning back the party clock a decade, sailing across the Atlantic to sniff the already past-it chemtrails of ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC. Or EDM, as they call it. Was this really the most significant countercultural youth movement in America since Grunge? Or was it really a load of old shit?

John and Jack spend time with two films: 2015's 'We Are Your Friends', starring former High School Musical favourite Zac Efron as a chronically depressed mashup of AJ Soprano and Fred Again, then the altogether more sobering 'I Am Tim', celebrating the life of genre-pioneer, Avicii.

Can the pod handle the level of emotional dissonance between drops this massive and events this tragic? Can you? Can us? There's only 'One' by Swedish House Mafia way to find out.

Plus, scene reports from Friendly Fires Fanbase, William Orbit and Ricky Gervais's collapse into a big tray of catshit.

Detritus’ inadvertent Summer of Love continues to unfold with a revisit of Drugs Live - The Ecstasy Trials, Channel 4’s CONTROVERSIAL 2012 study of the effects of MDMA on the human body and mind...

With the legal support of the British government and top scienticians, witness a lovely lady priest, an SAS soldier, a Lib Dem secularist, Lionel Schriver, and Jack’s arch-nemesis, Keith Allen, each willingly lying down in an MRI tube, draining their brains of serotonin for science and your personal entertainment. With slightly less medical rigour, the Detritus Madheads get to grips with ecstasy nation, then and now, as well as revisiting some of their own formative trips, blissin’ out and simply monologuing to household appliances, rather than on a weekly podcast. Will never forget those nites… Wherever you are now, luv u m8!! x

Plus, scene reports from Mark Twain and Toy Story 5.

John and Jack return from their summer break, tanned and thriving, only to take a trip to the beach. Which beach? Brighton Beach, for Fatboy Slim’s Big Beach Boutique II. The good news? You’re invited! The bad news? So is everybody else, and there are already 250,000 people in the mix, all of them gurning, pissing in the sea and singing along to The Sexiest Man In Jamaica.

With a quarter century’s worth of distance, Detritus revisits the free party to end all free parties, as Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, aka Quentin Leo Cook, aka DJ Quentox, aka Cheeky Boy, brings chaos to his beloved Brighton seafront, utilising only the biggest of Big Beats. Closely studying the primary sources of Channel 4’s frenetically edited 2002 live footage, as well as the 2023 documentary ‘Right Here, Right Now’, alongside a backlog of misty-eyed Reddit memories, it’s clear that we’ve come a long way, baby (six episodes)

Plus, vital scene reports from Hamburg’s Miniatur Wonderland and the Falklands.

The 'Detritus Boys' return from their summer break with a razzlin', dazzlin' fifth episode at Jack's insistence, leading John to the West End, Broadway, Tokyo, Hamburg, and your home VHS collection to discuss Andrew Lloyd Webber's blockbusting, standard-bearing mega-musical hit, CATS.

Recorded weeks before Lord Lloyd Webber raised the muthafuckin' alarm for the future of musical theatre, having witnessed his recent CATS reboot be mercilessly put down, we consider the legacy of the Rum Tum Tugger, Old Deutoronomy, Mungojerrie & Rumpleteazer, Munkustrap, Grizabella, Bustopher Jones and especially, Mr. Mistoffelees. They thought he was on the roof... but he was asleep in the hall!

Equally yet unevenly focused on as the disastrous 2019 cinematic adaptation (19% on Rotten Tomatoes), as well as the 1998 live recording (20% on Rotten Tomatoes) we investigate just why something this bloody successful is also well within our Detritus remit, probably. Which cat do we think should ascend to the Heavyside Layer, aside from the one who clearly will? What would T.S. Elliot have made of this? Was he fatphobic? Have you ever been to a brass rubbing workshop, as we have?

Also on the agenda: What is a Backroom? Has the World Cup rendered John gay? That’s right, Detritus is back, and it’s still the podcast that’s asking ALL the right questions.