menkind

Michael Chakraverty (Bake Off legend) is gay, brown, and obsessed with girl band Little Mix to a degree that is a bit strange; Mark Watson (scrawny cult comedian) is straight, white, likes football and drinking. The two of them have almost no interests in common. They hadn’t even met until they recorded the first episode of this podcast. Also, Mark is 40 whereas Michael is a baby and doesn’t remember things like Teletext and hadn’t heard of Bovril until recently (Mark is writing this, incidentally). The intersection of their worlds provides a space for a series of fascinating discussions with a diverse range of remarkable people.It’s been observed that there is no shortage of podcasts out there in which men talk back and forth, sometimes – for variety – including a third or fourth man as guest. What you don’t see enough of is men stepping back and examining masculinity itself. What does it mean to be a ‘man’ in 2020? How many of the traditional expectations and tropes of ‘manhood’ still stand up, and how many need to be discarded? How can we be better men, and how can ‘men’ in general be a better, gentler, more positive influence upon the planet they’ve done considerable damage to for (to be generous) a couple of thousand years? How, at the same time, can we celebrate all the things that are good about man-ship? If we were building a new model for a ‘perfect’ man, what would it look like – temperamentally and also dick-wise? And can we address these questions with the sense of fun that only a comedian and a world-class baker-turned-entertainer can offer?

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