Podcast Corner: Alison Spittle and Fern Brady return with a new show
New episodes of Alison Spittle's bantercast with Fern Brady are released every Tuesday. Picture: Matt Stronge
Comedians Alison Spittle and Fern Brady launched with BBC Sounds during covid. It featured former Atomic Kitten Kerry Katona joining as co-host before it came to an end three years ago. Brady and Spittle have teamed up again for the bantercast Episodes are released every Tuesday but you can sign up to their Patreon for early access. Here’s what we learned from the first episode.
How does compare with It’ll be the same dynamic but there won’t be any themes. A big thing that frustrated Brady about the last show, acknowledges Spittle, was coming up with a new theme for every episode. “We were like slaves to the themes,” says the Scottish comedian, admitting they just ran out of ideas - and ended up talking about the same thing anyway. We’re sure they’re not the only podcast feeling this strain in 2026.
Spittle says she believed in Santa until she was menstruating. After relating schoolyard rumours to her mum, she received a handwritten Santa letter addressing the claims. Spittle says that after that, she believed in him 1000%. With no one correcting her as she got older, the illusion lasted until a Christmas Eve when she walked in on her dad assembling a toy kitchenette. “Do you not fucking know?” he asks. Brady’s response: “How does that relate to what we were talking about?” The first of many welcome tangents.
From the beginning the pair are in cahoots of uproarious laughter. By the time they start talking about the longest orgasms in mammals - detailed within the first 10 minutes of the episode - the laughter is loud, shared, and impossible to resist joining in on. The conversation can often be staid or forced as podcasts find their feet, but not on Ignore That Feeling.
Brady confesses that, inspired by the psychologist Nicole LePera on Instagram, she’s trying to stop giving blunt, life-upending advice to friends. Previous examples have been telling fellow comedians to just cancel their shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. She says what you’re ‘supposed to say’, is “I'm sorry. I can't imagine what that feels like for you.”
Spittle counters by explaining how that same stark pragmatism and venting has helped shape things for her. She tells Brady: “I realised a lot of bits in my show were kind of inspired by being friends with you.”
Brady is on day two of taking oestrogen gel, which can help manage some of the symptoms of menopause. Her rundown of menopausal symptoms includes memory loss, bone pain, and volcanic rage at taxi drivers in Cork Airport, men playing their phones out loud, and those in the gym. How does it feel, being a ‘menopause baby’, asks Spittle, who admits ignorance. Brady explains: “Imagine having something physically wrong with you every day, and feeling like your bones are being squeezed.”
