Olly Mann

16/08/2024

I don't know what you've been up to today, but I have been at the Flamstead Scarecrow Festival and here are my highlights

14/08/2024

"Your donor hair is coarse and thick".
I don't get many compliments on my looks these days, but I'll TAKE IT!

13/08/2024

Hard to believe Tom Price, Stuart Goldsmith and I have been making these annual 'How To Be A Dad' episodes on The Modern Mann, about our weirdly synchronised fatherhood, for nine years now!

I haven't decided when to listen back 🙈 - maybe when my sons are both in their 20s?

On the menu this time: playing with knives, navigating the ‘Dad Race’ at Sports Day, getting a ‘backstreet assessment’ for dyslexia, dealing with TikTok addiction, grappling with the instant gratification of Amazon deliveries, trying to hack the marble jar, transitioning from ‘performative parenting’, moderating the YouTube content on smart TVs, and facing the inevitable spectre of turning into your own father...

12/08/2024

Was ISAAC SINGER the STEVE JOBS of the 19th Century?

📆Today in history in 1851, he got a patent on his iconic sewing machine.

The product - which drastically reduced the time it took to make garments - was good.

But his marketing acumen was EXEMPLARY, as I explain in today's edition of 'Today in History with The Retrospectors '

10/08/2024

In a blatant, outrageous example of two-tier presenting... I will again be guest-hosting Darryl Morris’s Times Radio show.
This Sat/Sun evening - and the remaining weekends of August! 🍾
Join me, 10pm-1am. x

05/08/2024

Back from holiday (and accompanying news-detox), to see what's happening in my country😞

Aptly, I had spent the last fortnight in tiny German towns, spotting Holocaust memorials everywhere, thinking: fascism happens in the most unlikely places, when the circumstances are right.

16/07/2024

One week since I ate this breakfast for The Modern Mann and I've still not recovered

13/07/2024

Catch me this Sat/Sun at 10pm, on Vladimir Putin!
Sorry, not Putin: I mean Times Radio. I’m just so focussed on beating Vladimir Putin…

Anyway, I’ll be sitting in for Donald Trump this weekend.
Sorry, I mean Darryl Morris 🤦🏻‍♂️
The IDEA!
I wouldn’t have made me Vice Presenter if I didn’t think she could do the job... Etc.

11/07/2024

In this time of intense focus on the highs of the national game, I must say I'm fascinated by the devotion of lower-league football club owners. ⚽️

For this month's Modern Mann podcast I went to Bedford to meet Peter McCormack, a self-described ‘budget Ryan Reynolds’, who's on a mission to take his local team all the way to the Premier League.

He's a Bitcoin guru and podcaster. When he bought Bedford FC in 2021, they were in the tenth tier, and unknown outside the town. After rebranding them as 'Real Bedford' (!), and securing investment from the Winklevoss twins (!!), he has internationalised their business model, and achieved back-to-back promotions for his club - despite having zero experience in professional football.

How has he done it? With a mix of chutzpah, arrogance, planning and perseverance… and it all benefits his local community, too. An inspiring conversation!

10/07/2024

Mon Dieu! The July edition of The Modern Mann has landed in your pod-feeds and it's a BIG 'UN 🇫🇷

02/07/2024

I think election coverage somewhat pre-emptively divides voters into the parties we'll vote for on Thursday.

Centrist, floating voters like me - who inherently resist tribalism - think hard about the issues that matter to us before casting our votes, and I haven't seen much nuance around that.

e.g. here's what I've been weighing up:
• The 8 hours I spent in May sitting on the floor in A&E
• Protecting the green belt countryside I live in
• My personal beliefs in kindness, tolerance, fairness
• What I think of my current local MP
• Sustaining public service broadcasting

There are other things I care about too but the point is it's a balancing act / compromise to find the party that best represents how I feel, and focussing on slogans and gaffes doesn't help!

29/06/2024

This time next week, one of these men will be Health Secretary...

22/06/2024

My cat is so greedy he polishes off the BBQ between sessions 🙈

14/06/2024

I'd always imagined that McDonald's had somehow invented 'fast food'... so was surprised to learn this week that at the turn of the 20th century there was a popular, cheap fast food chain in the US - and it served freshly-cooked food from decent ingredients...

12/06/2024

Truly, I have listeners in every walk of life... A few months ago I mentioned in passing on the pod that I'd love to interview an Intimacy Coordinator and, hey presto, a very experienced one slipped into my DMs.
Scan the QR code for my
chat with Lucy Fennell - who's staged s*x scenes for All Of Us Stangers, True Detective, and Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story 👇. Fascinating stuff! 🎬

27/05/2024

What has three years of history podcasting taught me & Rebecca about history?

We discuss with Producer Matt & co-host Arion (who is off-screen for this clip, but very much part of the full, HOUR LONG video to celebrate 🎉 our 3RD BIRTHDAY!)
.. In which we also discuss:
• How our format came to me in a dream!
• Rebecca's 'ever decreasing circles' process of history research!
• Why Arion wouldn't want to live in the past!
• How we choose our topics and divvy up work behind-the-scenes!
• Why Chat GPT is not our friend!

Watch for FREE - just sign up as a free member at http://Patreon.com/Retrospectors

20/05/2024

I'd never sat down to read 'Protect And Survive' - the UK Government's 1970s pamphlet for surviving a nuclear attack - before researching today's ep of 'Today in History with the Retrospectors'.

The whole experience is chilling, in a 'Zone of Interest'-type way; that dissonant clash between domestic mundanity and international catastrophe.

Yet this sentence, for some reason, particularly made my jaw drop 👇

“If you live in a caravan or other similar accommodation which provides very little protection against fallout your local authority will be able to advise you on what to do” 🤢

12/05/2024

Doing a history podcast has changed me and for my birthday I have come to look at some Plague graffiti from 1348

11/05/2024

This is Patricia, who came to her adoptive family in a cardboard box, on the first Korean Air flight to Canada, 1989.

She was raised by a white family in Toronto, and felt awkward and embarrassed when people perceived her as Korean.

She never knew her birth parents.

But, in her twenties, at the insistence of family and friends, she began a journey of discovery to uncover her roots: a bumpy ride that would take her to the other side of the world, into the arms of dubious private investigators, a fistfight, and institutional corruption.

In this month's 'Modern Mann', Patricia tells me how her sense of identity as a trans-racial adoptee has radically shifted - and reveals why, despite so much heartbreak, she considers herself lucky…

I'm excited for people to hear this interview - it's compelling, poignant and full of twists. x Olly

“Who's lying to me here? Am I being lied to now? Was I being lied to then? How do I even know this is true?”

08/05/2024

You could buy this T-shirt all over Camden in my youth.

I thought it was just a cheeky pun... but actually the original Coca-Cola recipe - released today in history in 1886 - really *did* have co***ne in it.

The formula was created by John Pemberton. He'd fought in the Civil War (on the wrong side) and come home with a crippling morphine addiction.

So he was dabbling around with pharmaceuticals to aid his own pains when he came up with 'French Wine Coca', a rip-off of 'Vin Mariani' (one of the Pope's favourite tipples) which brought together coca, co***ne, and WINE in one delicious 'tonic'.

Unsurprisingly, Pemberton had a lot of repeat business.
But then Georgia banned booze, so he had to pivot.

So, he cut the wine but *kept the co***ne*.
Yes, there really was co***ne in Coca-Cola until the turn of the century.

And it really was sold as a medicine - which is why Americans still buy fizzy drinks from drugstores, even though we all know sugary soda is bad for you.

(Apparently, however, the 'best' Coke is at McDonald's - because the syrup gets shipped directly to the company in stainless steel tanks. Personally I refuse to believe the best of anything is at McDonald's.)

Anyway, in 1888 Pemberton sold his rights to Coca-Cola for the sum of $1,750 🫣.

Though some of his legacy remains: the Spencarian script on their iconic typeface was created by his partner, Frank M Robinson, who believed that “the two Cs would look well in advertising”.

Thus concludes today's Coke lesson - but there is more, much more, in today's 'Today In History with the Retrospectors' podcast.
Try it, it's the Real Thing 😉.

03/05/2024

I'd written my column 📝 for the June issue of Reader's Digest, which of course now won't ever be printed 🥲.
Fittingly, it is a reflection on death...

Since it won't make it into the magazine, I thought I'd post it here:

---

Forty years ago, Tommy Cooper died on stage. If you’re of a certain vintage, you may even remember watching it, on Live At Her Majesty’s, as ITV cut hurriedly to a commercial break, and called in the paramedics.

Perhaps, like my friend Brett, you were actually in the room, guffawing along in the Stalls as the great comedian suddenly collapsed, and the curtain came down. Brett thought it was all part of the act; unsure what he’d witnessed until he got home and switched on the News at Ten.

I was only two at the time, but the story reached me via oral tradition, in the form of pub trivia (thanks mainly to its metaphorical potency: “You know how comics always talk about dying on stage? Well, Tommy Cooper actually did!”).

But – until this week – I had never actually seen ‘the moment’ for myself. All the documentaries I’d ever seen about Cooper’s life and career had tastefully slowed down, faded out, or blurred the footage of his final performance one or two frames before he keels over.

And I hardly felt as if I was missing out: I’m not an innately morbid person. I visit friends in hospital without glancing into neighbouring wards; I scroll social media without lingering on War-torn towns; I bury dead pets without peering into their eyes. In general, I try to avoid witnessing tragedy when I can.

So - though I recall hearing, about a decade ago, that unedited footage of Cooper’s cardiac arrest was now viewable on YouTube (from tabloid websites affecting outrage, yet embedding the clip within their articles) – I’d never felt tempted to watch it.

For one thing, I feel a personal connection with Cooper. He was my grandmother’s favourite performer: she’d hoot with laughter when he was on the box. After she died, Dad watched Cooper re-runs with me - because it reminded him of watching them with her – and, continuing the cycle of nostalgia, whenever I’d then encounter Cooper’s comedy on Gold or BBC Four, it reminded me of Dad, who has also now passed.

I didn’t want to tarnish these wholesome associations by rubbernecking the darkest moment of his career. (Side note: I appreciate that, for some fans, subsequent revelations about Cooper’s off-stage behaviour have damaged their perception of him as a ‘family’ entertainer anyway. Fair enough, but, for me personally, his drinking and philandering evaporates once he dons the fez).

Plus, I’ve never bought into the common misconception that dying on stage was somehow ‘What He Would Have Wanted’. It’s true that the last thing he would have heard would be the audience laughing and applauding… but it seems to me very obvious that he’d be devastated to have so lost control of the gag.

Cooper’s act – an apparently unplanned shambles, clumsily stumbling around the stage, gurning, failing at various silly magic tricks – was, in reality, a carefully crafted and choreographed ballet. Like a ‘free solo’ rope-less rock climber, he pulled off the feat of seeming to be simply responding to events because he had, in fact, meticulously prepared for all eventualities. His schtick was that his tricks failed, yes, but in precisely the way he had planned for them to fail: not as a result of him copping it halfway through.

However. One of the podcasts I present (‘Today in History with the Retrospectors’) has a specific mission to revisit curious moments, and, as the fortieth anniversary of Cooper’s death approached, it became evident we would inevitably cover it. Given that many of our listeners would have unwittingly watched Cooper die on live TV on the day in question, I felt I couldn’t really express an opinion without having seen it myself.

So: this week I sat down and watched the death of one of my comedy heroes. Repeatedly.

My first thought? I really wished I hadn’t. It is, of course, terribly sad. There are some compelling details: the dramatic irony of knowing what is about to happen; the bizarre dissonance of the orchestra striking up a jolly theme as the curtain descends. But, basically, grim.

But, then, having processed it… I felt a bit better about this notorious televised fatality. It’s so brief! Ten or twenty seconds, perhaps? Not his first heart attack, after all. And it seems (relatively) painless, compared to other unexpected fatalities that could have befallen him, such as a road accident or (how my own father died) falling downstairs.

Then, I clocked the ‘Related Videos’ recommended by YouTube’s algorithm. Some were equally distasteful incidents caught on camera – none of which exactly whetted my appetite. But others were Cooper’s classic sketches: the hat routine, the glass bottle, the Duck Trick…

And I thought: there are perhaps now millions of people around the world who only know about Cooper because of how he died. But, by seeking out the footage, they might then be exposed to his best work. And, if they were to click on it, they’d be likely to smile, laugh, and feel good.

And, that – THAT – is What He Would Have Wanted.

01/05/2024

Thank God they found my best angle. 🙏

01/05/2024

Not every day I have ITV News in my house! Talking to the Evening News about the end of Reader's Digest...

30/04/2024

Now Reader's Digest is closing, I'll miss lots of things about writing my column.

Perhaps, foremost, the agonising anticipation of opening each new issue to see... a cartoon of myself.

I have over 100 of these!

The thing about Readers Digest was, you'd never know who was reading, because they'd often inherited a subscription.

I'll never forget the Rabbi at my Grandma's funeral being excited to meet me because he'd read my column about mattresses...

Thanks to all of you who've followed my writing for the past twelve years (!). It's been a pleasure.

Thanks too to all the illustrators, and of course editors Anna, Eva, Simon and Tom for the opportunity. X

23/04/2024

"An object's momentum depends on both its velocity and mass", he says, like he knows what that means

22/04/2024

I keep this freaky headless toy next to my desk at all times and here's why https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/inspire/olly-mann-stretched-to-the-limits

11/04/2024

Stu Otten was raised on a tough Liverpool estate, where drug-taking was rife, and established crime families enacted violent retribution.

Aged 17, he became a bar-room bouncer - and soon found himself dealing drugs, protecting human traffickers, and defending his territory in a turbulent turf war.

I met him for this month's edition of 'The Modern Mann' (link in Comments) - and Stu told me about the self-loathing, drug-induced hallucinations and spiritual awakening that led him away from his marriage, his city, and organised crime - and into seeking forgiveness from those he’d hurt the most.

Stu now works for Causeway, stepping in to prevent today’s young people from echoing his mistakes.

30/03/2024

Outrageously, my cover-presenter shifts this weekend did not make it into the listings mag in today's Times, so I've fixed it for you, you're welcome 📻

22/03/2024

What's it like getting to adulthood before realising you're autistic?

One listener's story - plus the usual trends, relationships and music chat - in this month's 'Modern Mann'

12/02/2024

This month I've had the privilege of meeting Sue, whose husband John was jailed for a £53 million drug-smuggling plot.

He’s spent time in maximum-security prison and lost two appeals.
But she has never doubted his innocence.

Appeal continue to campaign for his conviction to be quashed - and for all the implicated in the alleged co***ne conspiracy to be exonerated.

I heard Sue's compelling account first-hand - from John’s unexpected arrest to the shocking outcome of his trial - and how she has battled stigma, financial struggles, and the British legal system… from her family home on the Isle of Wight.

I hope that, at the least, our conversation raises awareness of the work Appeal are doing to help those let down by our justice process.