Worst Foot Forward

This week's episode has been thoroughly spot-checked by a crack team of cardinals preparing Barry, Ben and their guest, comedian and animator Alasdair Beckett-King for canonisation.

There's the usual rogues gallery you'd come to expect from the Catholic Church, plus a very good dog, a very bad murderer and our old pal Simeon Stylites, doing unspeakable things from atop an enormous pillar.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @MisterABK @Loremenpod

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

Our guest this week is perfectly designed in every way to give us an insight into the World's Worst Design Flaw. A designer and author of the book Tragic Design, Jonathan Shariat is also a podcaster with a bone to pick with the Florida ballot papers during the 2000 US Presidential Election. Ben turns his fire on badly designed guns (and promptly shoots himself) and Barry has a wander through the history of QWERTY.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @DesignUXUI

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

This week we don our sheepskin jacket (with a bribe sown in the lining), enjoy a cheeky post-match half (plus a wee nip from our hip flask) and stand on the sidelines hollering impotently into the wind, as we reveal the worst managers of all time.

Alongside our guests from the Absolute Worldie podcast we discover the very formal early history of Scottish football, a black magic bank job, the astonishing tale of Nicholas Anelka's blagging younger brother and why you should never prank a Belgian goalkeeper during the World Cup.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @WorldiePodcast

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

We're in uncharted waters this week, as Ben and Barry are confronted with technology far beyond their understanding, otherwise known as our guest Andrew Somerville. An immersive theatre-maker and tech whizz (we don't really understand IT job titles...), Andrew's experience is brought to bear on the World's Worst Algorithms, with the boys tagging along gamely in his brainy wake. There's plenty to enjoy, from the story of Ada Lovelace, the chilling effects of living in online bubbles, and the man who can definitively tell us where Wally is.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @SomervilleA

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

Hold your noses and dive into the open sewer of the most olfactorily repulsive episode yet.

Joined by Sarah Jones, an expert on microbes, minerals and a bunch of really pungent jobs we delve into the eye-watering world of the world's worst smell. There are tales of the Asian "King of Fruits", canine flatuomancy and The Great Stink, plus our old friends at the World War 2 Special Operations unit turn up again with yet another plan to win the war using maverick means.

We might all come up smelling of roses* by the end...

*Axl Rose's post-show gusset.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @Sarah_Jokes

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

As promised a couple of episodes ago, since we've hit our target on Patreon of 25 supporters, we'll be throwing out an extra show per month for all our listeners in which we focus in more depth on some of our world's worst winners.

For this first extra edition we went all the way back to our first episode and explored the grisly world of trepanning and lobotomies. We're not gonna lie, it's pretty grim stuff, but even amongst the horrific excuses for medical science we manage to find the entertaining oddities of a man who fired a particle accelerator at his head and somehow survived, JFK's family secret and the reason why you should never trust the Swiss with anything medical.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

We're down in the lab tinkering with equipment, mixing dangerous substances and generally causing chaos. We're conducting the World's Worst Scientific Experiment under the watchful eye of the hugely qualified and clever Cerys Bradley. There are a surprising amount of stories involving puppy-torture, probes being stuck in surprising places, elephants on drugs, Jesus get-togethers and much more.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @hashtagcerys

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

*swivels around in enormous winged chair*

Ah, Mr.Podcast Listener, we've been expecting you. The guest in our deadly lair this week is master script editor Andrew Ellard, who joins us on a tour of the most woeful evil geniuses in fact and fiction.

Andrew brings an astonishing movie abomination from the 1960s making an absolute hash of the memory of 007. Meanwhile Barry tells the tales of the most dangerous Xhosa tribeswoman ever, the man who amplified Hitler and the scariest quiz contestant to make it onto TV. To finish off Ben has two mighty tales of a Nobel prize winning Japanese novelist whose homoerotic cult went badly wrong and the self-made growth-hormone millionaire who dreamed of a creating a New Utopia at the end of the 1990s.

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @ellardent

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

Quick, march! Into battle we go under the leadership of our general, classicist and quiz-show boffin Dr Rob Cromarty. We're seeking out the world's worst military tactic and you bet we've found a few contenders to skirmish with. There are war elephants galore, French plans that backfire spectacularly and the Pyrrhus behind Pyrrhic victories. Attack!

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @DocCrom

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com

This is an episode for anyone who has become so frustrated with their Rubik's Cube that they've ended up unpeeling the coloured squares and sticking them back on to help you solve it!

Joined by incredible escape room auteur Dean Rodgers, Ben and Barry travel from Ancient Greece to musty 90s gamer bedrooms, via the court of King Rudolf of Bohemia and Lewis Carroll's very twisted imagination. By the end of this, you won't look at a black cat, a raven or a fishing rod in the same way again...

Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @deanjrodgers

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you'd like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com