Sinful and sporty tales to make you sing

We’re already into the second month of 2020, and are returning to work and school routines. Back in the pod-isphere are three well-known podcasters, who have all launched new series.

The third series of the popular football podcast, That Peter Crouch Podcast, returned in early January. Presented by former England footballer Peter Crouch with journalists Tom Fordyce and Chris Stark, the trio discusses the latest football news and provide comic insight into what it’s like to be a professional footballer.

There is heaps of footy banter in this weekly show, and Crouch is pretty candid about his time on the pitch. The podcast is produced by BBC Sounds, and is one of its most popular podcasts, with around 12 million downloads.

Actor, presenter and all round intellectual Stephen Fry is back with his second podcast, Stephen Fry’s Seven Deadly Sins.

His first, 2018’s Great Leap Years, focused on inventions and looked at how innovation in technology has changed the way we live.

This time, he’s delving into the history of the seven deadly sins and, in each episode, focuses on one sin.

He’s a wonderful storyteller and his commentary reaches wider than history, as he dissects modern culture as a whole. The first two sins he describes are pride and greed, but all of the sins or, as he says, ‘‘the banana skins’’ in people’s lives that stop us from being happy, will be examined.

Finally, for the music fans out there, the newly launched 27 Club podcast serialises the lives and untimely deaths of famous musicians who died aged 27. The series is hosted by Jake Brennan, whose 2019 podcast Disgraceland looked into famous musicians getting away with murder and bad behaviour.

The first musician to get the

Club treatment is Jimi Hendrix. Other musicians’ lives set to feature in the series, include Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison.