Warning – article contains strong language
Josh Widdicombe, a.k.a. ‘Devon’s favourite son’, is a staple of the British comedy scene. Since starting out in 2008, he has performed two sellout stand up tours, starred in his own BBC sitcom, co hosted 31 seasons of hit Channel 4 show The Last Leg, and appeared on a plethora of the country’s most popular panel shows, from Taskmaster, to 8 out of 10 Cats, to Mock the Week. In April 2020, along with fellow comic Rob Beckett, Josh launched the Parenting Hell podcast – an audio phenomenon that has since exceeded 55 million downloads, and spawned both an arena tour and a bestselling book.
In recognition of his contributions to the Arts, and in light of his local upbringing, Josh was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Exeter. This provided the perfect opportunity for a chat.
Our discussion began in childhood. Josh grew up in Haytor Vale, a tiny Dartmoor village so sleepy and Victorian that it could have been dreamt up by Enid Blyton. There were only three other students in his school year, kids with names like Jemma Lee Waghorn, and not only did the family never bother to lock their front door, but they didn’t even own a key.
“I suppose wherever you grow up feels totally normal because you don’t know any different. It didn’t feel like I grew up in a weird place until I left Devon…but it was untouched by the present day.”
By the time Josh moved to the village from London at the age of three, he was already football-obsessed, and had a big decision to make. Who to support, Exeter City, or Plymouth Argyle? Unfortunately he landed on the latter.
“People will laugh at this because they think Argyle are rubbish now…[but it’s] because I’m a glory hunter. The first game we went to was Exeter…and then we went to Home Park to watch Argyle, which looking back was a total f**king state, but it was so much better than St James’ Park. I know this is an Exeter paper, but I don’t regret my decision…my only regret is people think I’m from Plymouth. Exeter is nicer than Plymouth.”
“My only regret is people think I’m from Plymouth. Exeter is nicer than Plymouth.”
After leaving secondary school, Josh attended Exeter College for sixth form.
“It’s a really brilliant city…where students aren’t an afterthought – they’re central to it. It’s got really nice bars, it’s got a culture to it. I think Exeter’s just brilliant. I f**king loved it…one of my best memories is the day we got our A Level grades, going straight to the Imperial, it was sunny outside – and we were in this amazing sloping beer garden. We drank all the way through to going to Timepiece in the evening…the fact that those two places are there, 25 years on, Exeter institutions, its f**king amazing.”
In Josh’s day, getting into Timepiece was as simple as showing up to the door with a few quid in cash. I told him how these days, tickets sell out in 10 seconds and are resold on Facebook for up to 500% profit – “there’s a touting market on Timepiece tickets? Amazing.”
“There’s a touting market on Timepiece tickets? Amazing.”
Yet not all of Josh’s memories from his Exeter days are happy ones. He told me, “I remember we used to go watch bands play at the Cavern, and there’d be small touring bands on their first ever tour. Someone told me there was this band called ‘Coldplay’ playing there. I didn’t go.”
After his A Levels, Josh went to university in Manchester, and subsequently completed a journalism masters at City of London. Before getting into comedy, Josh would work a number of jobs, from Waterstones to a Totnes petrol station, and also dabble in journalism – working as a sports writer at The Guardian and also as a contributor to the world-renowned Dora The Explorer magazine – “I wanted to be a writer, of some sort. But I didn’t know what kind…I think I always wanted to write comedy but I didn’t really understand how you got into it.”
Recently, on Sky Tv’s Hold The Front Page, Josh got to relive his early foray into journalism. For the show, Josh, along with fellow comedian Nish Kumar, travelled up and down the country to different local newspapers, working as trainee reporters with the aim of securing front page splashes. Much chaos and hilarity ensues.
Reflecting on his experience, Josh said “it’s a tough old game…I think journalism’s probably one of those things that you get out what you put in. The more you put into learning your trade, getting contacts, learning how to write, all these things, the better you get. And I think it’s incredibly rewarding in that sense. From meeting all those people, if you’re not passionate about it, it’s not for you, because everyone who does it, loves it.”
We moved on to the huge success that is the Parenting Hell podcast, a success that came as something of a surprise to Josh.
“I think you’d be insane to expect that will happen to everything you do. The more I do my job, the more I realise that all you can do is do something you want to do and try and do it as well as you can…whether it’s a success or not is not really in your hands.”
Rob and Josh have recorded over 400 episodes, featuring guest appearances from celebrity parents – everyone from comedian Jimmy Carr, singer/songwriter Lily Allen to UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall. Asked what remaining guests he’d like to get on the podcast, Josh gave a fairly ambitious answer.
“The King – that would be quite good…I suppose I’d love Paul McCartney – it’s unrealistic, but more realistic than the King I suppose. But you’d probably take anyone massive. The sad truth is you’d probably take Donald Trump if he offered – you’d kick yourself if you didn’t.”
“The sad truth is you’d probably take Donald Trump if he offered – you’d kick yourself if you didn’t.”
“As things stand, the two things that will probably be mentioned in my obituary are that podcast and The Last Leg and both of them were flukes in a way. One was a temporary thing for the Paralympics and one was a temporary thing for lockdown.” And it’s with his fellow hosts of the Last Leg, Alex Brooker and Adam Hills, that Josh will soon head out to Paris with, to provide daily coverage of the Paralympic Games on Channel 4.
“I can’t wait. We didn’t get to go to Tokyo because of Covid, and Rio, well I don’t feel like I’ve been to Rio, I feel like I’ve been to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Rio for two weeks and so I can’t wait to experience the Paralympics in Paris – it’s going to be brilliant. It’s just the best event to be a part of, it’s so much fun. It’s just a sweet job really.”
Whether or not Josh will insist on being referred to as ‘Dr Widdicombe’ during this coverage remains to be seen, but it is well within his right – on July 15th, the university from which this outlet was borne awarded Josh with an honorary doctorate for his contributions to the Arts. He told me his first reaction was…
“About bloody time. No, I was delighted. I was excited, and then you think oh god I have to do a speech and then panicked about that. It’s a bit like being asked to be best men isn’t it, you’re honoured for five seconds and then you’re worried about your speech until its over.”
He needn’t have worried – the speech was a genuinely inspirational one. To recent graduates, he says, “Don’t panic if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. There’s huge pressure…I understand that it’s different now from when I was a student when you didn’t come out saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt – there’s this feeling that you need to make your degree pay, and you need it to financially pay off for you instantly and have this job. But it does pay in just the pure experience of it. It’s an amazing thing to do for three years of your life…it’s a great way of finding who you are. Don’t feel any pressure to know what you want to do with your life – I didn’t know – pretty much all of my friends didn’t. You will find out in your 20s so please don’t panic, it’s not a race.”
“Don’t feel any pressure to know what you want to do with your life – I didn’t know – pretty much all of my friends didn’t. You will find out in your 20s so please don’t panic, it’s not a race.”
This is undoubtedly quite an achievement, but how does it compare to some of Josh’s other accolades? In 2017, Josh returned to the Taskmaster studio and won the ‘Champion of Champions’ special, beating off Bob Mortimer, Noel Fielding, Katherine Ryan and Rob Beckett. I asked him which has been the biggest honour.
“It’s sadly still Taskmaster. Only one person’s done that – actually they’ve done other Champion of Champions. They’ve given lots of honorary doctorates whereas Taskmaster is a very small group of people. But, as Taskmaster carries on for longer it will mean less and less, so come back to me in ten years.”
I told him I’d pass it on to the Vice Chancellor.
