The Wednesday Audio

This episode may get banned. I can’t say anything else, but it might be to do with copyright infringement. I skirted around the edges, danced on the dangerous precipice. But I may have tipped over. I may have jumped off.

Listen to it whilst you still can.

No, this is not an eng*gement t*ctic.

Get full access to The Wednesday Audio at yeahwednesdays.substack.com/subscribe

Excerpt from the foreword of Tim’s upcoming book

I first came across Craig in the Summer of 2001. He said to me, “Hello. Welcome”. At the time I thought his turn of phrase to be strange, along with much else about him. He seemed to always walk around with music playing, but not in an annoying way. He wasn’t playing ‘rap’, or whatever the kids call it these days. He seemed to be attempting to soundtrack his movements and make ‘features’ (his words) out of his every day life. As I said, I found much about him to be strange.

He seemed to carry a soundboard around with him attached to his back. When he heard a funny conversation or turn of phrase, he’d ask the person to repeat it, then he’d record it straight into his soundboard. At a later date he would play the soundbite back to the person, whilst staring deep into their eyes. They always looked bemused, often offended. But Craig seemed to know something they didn’t.

I witnessed many such strange activities. I caught him—and admonished him—many times playing an extremely loud censor beep into people’s faces. When somebody would say ‘value’, he would hit his censor beep and stare deeply into their eyes. Never a smile, never an indication of a purpose. Craig, again, seemed to know something they didn’t.

When he began to play music, he became obsessed with playing heavy metal music out loud. He never listened to a full song, and seemed never to settle on one. When he’d finished playing the music, he mumbled something about ‘naval gazing’ and wandered off. I witnessed him listening to hundreds of different pieces of heavy metal music, as if he was looking for the perfect piece, never to be found.

As he moved through the years at the Polytechnic, he appeared to have developed an invisible friend called ‘Off Mike’. When I asked him who he was talking to, he would tell me he was talking Off Mike. At first, I never quite understood whether he was assuming the role of Off Mike, or he was talking to Off Mike.

Many years later after he’d left the Polytechnic, I got an email. It was from a Craig Burgess, somebody who I’d remembered as the slightly odd student. In the email was a link to The Wednesday Audio, a podcast he’d claimed to have been recording for a year.

It was at this moment I spotted his genius. All his oddities, all his foibles, all came together to make sense. He had been preparing for the biggest role of his life. That role was a little-known, little-downloaded podcast called The Wednesday Audio.

This book has been written with the approval and help of Craig, but not by him. Only a critic of the arts such as myself could dissect the myriad messages Craig has left us in the year of episodes 1-55 of The Wednesday Audio.

I trust you will enjoy my analysis as much as you will enjoy reading the transcripts of the episodes. I truly believe Craig is set for stardom, destined to be as big—if not bigger—than Ken Dodd.

Tim Angler, Head of Comedic Studies, Barnsley PolytechnicJune 2022

This episode actually had me crying with laughter as I recorded it.

You can hear moments in the audio where you can hear me laughing, but I’ve had to edit out the amount of laughter I did so you didn’t think I’ve gone completely crazy.

Of course, now I’ve told you that this episode was so funny that I laughed as I recorded it, you won’t find it funny at all.

Four episodes ago I intended to do something, but I didn’t do it. The reason I didn’t do it was out of my control, at least it was taken out of my control. It’s nagged at me ever since that episode, the fact that I’d not managed to do it. I still wanted to do it, but I’d lost my confidence. Lost my pep and verve. Reminders of failure loomed everywhere I turned. I put it to bed, decided not to do it.

Well, today, for the only fan left of The Wednesday Audio, I did it. I finally did it. Episode 50st now a distant memory, I did it.

I did it. I recorded the evidence. And now the evidence is ready for you to listen to, to prove I did it.

I did it.

I’m contractually obliged to inform you that this week I have not delivered on my promise of The Wednesday Audio.

This is only the second time in one year where this has happened, and I insincerely apologise for any inconvience caused.

Normal service will resume next week, but in the meantime I have attempted to make amends and plan our future listening experiences by providing you a peace offering.

I have (rather) un-creatively decided to call it The Thursday Audio.

It is identical in all forms to The Wednesday Audio, but released around 24 hours later.

Enjoy?

HOW CAN I MAKE YOU PAY ATTENTION?

DO I JUST HAVE TO ASK YOU QUESTIONS?

POSE RHETORICAL QUESTIONS?

POSE REAL QUESTIONS?

DO I?

DOES THIS WORK?

IS THIS THE FIFTY SECONDST EPISODE OF THE WEDNESDAY AUDIO?

WILL YOU LISTEN?

DID YOU LISTEN?

DID YOU ENJOY IT?

IS THIS ANNOYING YOU AS MUCH AS IT’S ANNOYING ME?

HOW ARE YOU TO KNOW?

WILL THIS END?

CAN THIS END?

COULD IT END?

WILL IT GO ON FOREVER?

CAN YOU BELIEVE YOU’RE STILL READING?

THIS IS MODERN DAY ENGAGEMENT TACTICS ISN’T IT?

PATHETIC, ISN’T IT?

So about 50 episodes ago I started a new project. I decided to make a podcast about Wednesdays because my mate Tom said it might be quite fun to make a podcast about Wednesdays. I quickly realised that there wasn’t much material available out there for Wednesdays, so I had to start making note of this fact in my podcast about Wednesdays that there was now no content left about Wednesdays.

At some point, I think it was around 15 episodes, I started further referencing the fact that the podcast wasn’t about Wednesdays all that much any longer and had actually become satire. Around #40 I officially announced my new categorisation and fully leaned into this.

Then sometime from 40-50 there was this long gap of nothingness where I just mumbled through the episodes but for some reason people kept listening. I even began to write these intros to the podcast as quite self-referential pieces that spoke about the podcast and how the podcast wasn’t really about the podcast, at least not the original stated aim of Wednesdays.

Now, at episode 51, the podcast is a former shell of itself. Complete nonsense. No sense to be found anywhere. No points. Less points than a basketball game with no basketball.

But that’s OK.

It’s all OK.

You won’t read this anyway.

You barely listen to the podcast.

No, for real.

This is not a joke.

I will make amends tomorrow in The Thursday Audio.

So a guy walks up to me and asks me a question.

“Am I in a podcast intro?”

At the time he wasn’t, but I thought I’d go along with it anyway. It felt right to go along with it.

“Yeah. You are actually.”

“Oh. I’ve never been in one of those before. Last week I was in a podcast, but I’ve never been in an intro.”

I nodded to him.

“So what’s this podcast called?”

“Well, it’s more of an audio really.”

“Well what’s this audio called then?”

“The Wednesday Audio.”

“Oh. That’s the podcast I was in.”

“Yeah I know. I recorded it. And entirely made you up last week. All this bit is doing now is to serve as a spoiler for this week’s episode.”

“Oh.”

And he walked off. Never to be seen again.

She didn’t believe me.

Every Wednesday I scurry away to my recording room and record a new masterpiece. Every Wednesday I name that masterpiece The Wednesday Audio and present it to my adoring fan.

She didn’t believe me.

She asked me what it was about. I said the podcast wasn’t really about anything at all, it’s just me answering people’s messages and some silly features about James Clear and banning words.

She didn’t believe me.

I said to her, well, come and listen to an episode if you don’t believe me. Come and see how this works. She said she didn’t want to. I said, well, you can sit in the background if you want as a live audience member and enjoy a live recording of The Wednesday Audio.

She didn’t sit in the background.

She didn’t sit in the background at all.