By blending banter with heartfelt discussion, rising radio stars John Robins and Elis James have created a forum that allows men to open up about masculinity and mental health – with jokes attached
In the two days between the announcement that their weekly Radio X show would be ending and the final broadcast, comedians John Robins and Elis James received 110 pages of emails from their listeners. One of the emails they read out in that final show in April, from a fan called Frank, said the show had been his greatest solace in his darkest moments, during its five years on air; that James and Robins were “the most constant positive voices in my life”. Frank added that he’d been moved to try out standup comedy himself, and finished by saying, “You’ve both inspired me to be a better man: a man who isn’t afraid to tell his best mate that he loves him.”
It was a typical message. Almost every one of their 264 podcasts – edited down to an hour from the three-hour radio show, with the Kasabian songs and adverts taken out – begins with heartfelt letters of gratitude from their “PCDs” (Podcast Devotees), male and female alike. There are more than 11,000 PCDs in the dedicated Facebook group, and they have often shared their experiences of depression, anxiety, loneliness, grief, breakdowns, break-ups, addiction, suicidal thoughts – with each other and with the two DJs. And each of them contained some variation of the phrase: “The one thing that got me through this period was knowing that, every Saturday, your podcast would cheer me up.”
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