The Week

Podcasts... pop culture, food, and Harry and Meghan

- Fortunatel­y… With Fi and Jane Dishes, Desert Island Archewell Audio,

For those listeners still mourning the end of last month, here are three podcasts to help fill the gap left by Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes’s weekly pop-culture fix, said Katie Strick in the London Evening Standard.

The High Low

Holiday Special

friendship on display” and answer listeners’ questions about food and cookery. Another recommende­d food podcast is

said Hollie Richardson in Stylist. Chef and food writer Margie Nomura’s series returned late last year, with guests including Nadiya Hussain and healthy-eating author Alice Liveing. Listening to them “talk about food glorious food” in loving detail will make you “feel very, very hungry”.

I didn’t have high hopes for

the new podcast series from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. Famous people who lack broadcasti­ng experience often talk over their guests or ask blandly unsearchin­g questions. Also, the freedom to cut loose that many find in podcasting doesn’t apply here: this pair may no longer be “senior royals”, but they still have to “mind their Ps and Qs”. But despite all that, Harry and Meghan have come up with a podcast “which, while not reinventin­g the medium, is definitive­ly not terrible”. In the first

episode, their famous friends (Elton John, James Corden) and celebrity guests (including spoken word performer George the Poet) reflect on the challenges and tragedies of the year. There’s no “toe-curling celebrity chumminess”, the spirit is optimistic, and though “the tone is often sentimenta­l, as we knew it would be, there are moments of genuine poignance”.

 ??  ?? Hirway and Nosrat: the “audio equivalent of comfort food”
Hirway and Nosrat: the “audio equivalent of comfort food”

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