I've revived my podcast, Comic Cuts The Panel Show. I'm not completely sure why, I think I just feel it keeps me in touch with people, and might be useful for networking. Certainly when I did the first season, of 19 episodes back in 2021, I then found I knew people when I met them at conventions. So it's a calling card, and it's also good fun to listen to. Mind you, it's a real time-consuming thing to do and I'm already starting to realise why I stopped the first time!
Look at those listening figures. Does that make it sound like something worth doing? Well, I'm told there are people who get fewer listeners, so I mustn't grumble. What I've done so far is this:
Tues 6 and Thurs 8: I recorded my first four episodes, with Scott Agnew & Mitch Benn, Alex Milway & Marc Jackson, Helen Quigley & Paul Savage, and Louisa Gummer & Paulus The Cabaret Geek. And already I felt I'd let myself down in a couple of ways. First, in season one I vowed never to have an all-male episode, and I managed it for all 19 of them. Then for my first two, purely as a result of how many fewer female contributors I have to choose from, and then who was available, I ended up starting off with two all-male shows out of four. Let's see if my next batch improves on that.
Next up I think my recording quality isn't as good as it could be. As I went along last time I learned more about recording, and bought myself a proper microphone. This time I went back to using the headphone cable mic and I think that was a mistake. I'm sure nobody else thinks the episodes sound as bad as I do, but I do.
The thing that I'm remembering, that I'm sure made me stop last time, is how long they take to edit. Getting two episodes in the can took two hours, that was the easy bit. Editing them then seemed to take me all of the following day. So four episodes have taken most of four working days. Which, for something that generates no money, is not the most productive use of my time. It is, essentially, a fun hobby, and I have to enjoy it as that. It was easy to do during lockdown, but when there's proper work to be done, which involves travelling round the world or drawing comics at my desk, it's going to take a lower priority. I have one more day of recordings lined up, then that may well be it for season two.
As a bonus, as I was editing up my initial shows, I found some old cassette tapes that have been in boxes hidden away for years, and on them I found interviews with Steve Dillon and Alan Moore. I also found a tape-to-mp3 converter that Hev had bought me years ago, probably a decade back, that's never been opened, and opened it. As a result of which I had myself a ten minute bit of Steve Dillon which I edited and uploaded as a little novelty teaser for the new season. It's fun, and something I was glad to be able to do. It's virtually unlistenable to quality wise, but it's a great thing to have found. Here it is.
I also dug out the only photo I appear to have ever taken of Steve Dillon (who very sadly died a few years ago). It's from sometime in the mid 90s, and is cropped in from this shot...
The full series of Comic Cuts The Panel Show is here, and I'm also putting episodes on Youtube, starting here.
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