110 - CERYS BRADLEY - WORLD'S WORST SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT

March 18, 2019

We're down in the lab tinkering with equipment, mixing dangerous substances and generally causing chaos. We're conducting the World's Worst Scientific Experiment under the watchful eye of the hugely qualified and clever Cerys Bradley. There are a surprising amount of stories involving puppy-torture, probes being stuck in surprising places, elephants on drugs, Jesus get-togethers and much more.

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you’d like to support us as we venture forth into professional recording studios: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

109 - ANDREW ELLARD - WORLD'S WORST EVIL GENIUS

March 11, 2019

*swivels around in enormous winged chair*

Ah, Mr.Podcast Listener, we've been expecting you. The guest in our deadly lair this week is master script editor Andrew Ellard, who joins us on a tour of the most woeful evil geniuses in fact and fiction.

Andrew brings an astonishing movie abomination from the 1960s making an absolute hash of the memory of 007. Meanwhile Barry tells the tales of the most dangerous Xhosa tribeswoman ever, the man who amplified Hitler and the scariest quiz contestant to make it onto TV. To finish off Ben has two mighty tales of a Nobel prize winning Japanese novelist whose homoerotic cult went badly wrong and the self-made growth-hormone millionaire who dreamed of a creating a New Utopia at the end of the 1990s.

108 - DR ROB CROMARTY - WORLD'S WORST MILITARY TACTIC

March 4, 2019

Quick, march! Into battle we go under the leadership of our general, classicist and quiz-show boffin Dr Rob Cromarty. We're seeking out the world's worst military tactic and you bet we've found a few contenders to skirmish with. There are war elephants galore, French plans that backfire spectacularly and the Pyrrhus behind Pyrrhic victories. Attack!

107 - DEAN RODGERS - WORLD'S WORST PUZZLE

February 25, 2019

This is an episode for anyone who has become so frustrated with their Rubik's Cube that they've ended up unpeeling the coloured squares and sticking them back on to help you solve it!

Joined by incredible escape room auteur Dean Rodgers, Ben and Barry travel from Ancient Greece to musty 90s gamer bedrooms, via the court of King Rudolf of Bohemia and Lewis Carroll's very twisted imagination. By the end of this, you won't look at a black cat, a raven or a fishing rod in the same way again...

106a - BEST OF THE WORST OF THE BEST 4

February 18, 2019

With the first inklings of spring in the air, Ben and Barry are feeling positively positive about things and so once again are delving back into the archives in search of some of the World's Best. In this instance, we look at the topics from Episodes 16 to 20: Conspiracy Theory, Haircut, Teen Movie, Parasite and Wine. There are missing landmasses, Polish plaits, classical literature, sniffer-wasps and Buzz Aldrin's sherry, all in this potpourri of pleasantness. Normal negativity will resume next week.

Tickets to Barry's play VESPERTILIO, which opens this week, can be purchased here: https://vaultfestival.com/whats-on/vespertilio/

106 - DAN SIMPSON - WORLD'S WORST LULLABY

February 11, 2019

Sleep well, dear listeners, and sweet nightmares to you all as Ben and Barry, in the company of poet Dan Simpson, hasten you to slumber with the World's Worst Lullaby. We truly travel the globe in this one, with contributions from Iceland, Haiti, Brazil and Indonesia, essays from Lorca and compositions from Brahms, and Dan introduces us to a particularly horrifying cover of an already horrifying song.

105 - SETH THEVOZ - WORLD'S WORST VOICEOVER

February 4, 2019

In a world where two trivia nerds are able to trap the honorary librarian of the Liberal Club in a posh shed out the back of a nice flat in Hampstead, anything is possible. And this week, in that world, we chat to the marvelous journalist, academic and storyhouse of anecdote Dr Seth Thevoz about the worst voiceovers in history. Ben has trouble with Republican sausage rolls, Barry finds out about fomenting revolution and Seth bring us a very drunk Orson Welles behaving very badly indeed.

104 - MYQ KAPLAN - WORLD'S WORST GUEST

January 28, 2019

Be our guests, be our guests - in fact, the man doing just that (via Skype) is American stand-up Myq Kaplan, who is getting very meta as he chose the topic World's Worst Guest, and strives to live up to the title. Meanwhile, Barry tells us about the man who broke into Buckingham Palace and served himself a cheeseboard, while Ben looks at chat show meltdowns and Japanese retirement parties gone horribly wrong.

103 - TOM HALL AND ANDREW GRUEN - WORLD'S WORST ESCAPE

January 21, 2019

Over the past five years the phenomenon of escape rooms has exploded all over the globe and this week our two guests are creators of several remarkable ones in London. Tom and Andrew join us to talk about what goes wrong when people try to escape. There are tales of hidden papal tunnels, ice skating queens and the most Australian disguise in history.

102 - OLLIE POWELL - WORLD'S WORST ADVERT

January 14, 2019

We’re indulging our consumerist instincts this week in the company of actor, host of the Average at Best Podcast and star of countless commercials, Oliver Powell. Ollie helps us glaze over in the face of the World’s Worst Adverts, with insights into life on the set of his recent Durex ad. Barry examines the product placement habits of 007, and Ben describes the public service advert of your nightmares.

101 - SOOZ KEMPNER - WORLD'S WORST DIVA

January 7, 2019

Pop on your diamante slippers, swish your feather boa around your neck and strut your way in 2019 with tales of the world's worst divas. Accompanied by magnificent musical comic Sooz Kempner we tell the tales of Handel's warring divas, Freddie Mercury's run-ins with Sid Vicious (and a lot of dwarves) and why the heir to the British throne doesn't understand how sandwiches work.

Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can now donate to us on Patreon if you’d like to support Ben’s new baby and Barry’s crippling trivia addiction: https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward

100b - THE WORLD'S WORST 'BEST OF 2018' EPISODE

December 31, 2018

New Year’s Eve, the clocks tick towards midnight with the prospect of turning the page on 2018. BUT NO! We keep you firmly rooted in the past as we look back at our so-called “best bits” from episodes released over the past year. There are returns for several old friends, not least the French president who died in flagrante delicto, an unwitting newsreader with a numerical disadvantage, and an English toff brandishing a wasp gun. Thanks for listening in 2018 and here’s to a 2019 full of more of the world’s worst stuff. Love, Barry & Ben.

100a - THE BEST OF THE WORST OF THE BEST 3

December 24, 2018

This week we head to the appendix of our encyclopaedia of heroic failure and talk about some stone cold heroes.

Way back in early 2017 we talked about the worst board games, fairy tales, professional wrestlers, TV comedies and first dates - now Ben and Barry return to the scene of the crimes to laud some champions. On our way we uncover the real story behind Beauty and the Beast, why Calvin Coolidge was a hit with the ladies and laud a big, battle-scarred bear with a scabby heart of gold.

100 - BARRY & BEN - WORLD'S WORST CENTURY

December 17, 2018

Sweet holy mother of everything that's heroically awful: we made it to 100 episodes! To celebrate Ben and Barry drill down into everything terrible about the number 100: from dodgy bank notes to terrible cricketers and golfers, suspiciously young super-centenarians, premature wartime celebrations and bang average cars.

As ever, we take you on a journey including all human life from Ancient Etruscans to disappearing Carolingians, via the Venerable Bede and Edward VII.

099 - ANUVAB PAL - WORLD'S WORST EMPIRE

December 10, 2018

We are boldly setting out to civilise you this week, as we talk about the World’s Worst Empire. Our guest this week is regular contributor to satirical podcast The Bugle, comedian and writer Anuvab Pal. As a native of India, and with Barry’s as his sidekick, Anuvab gives the British Empire a bemused and loving revision. Barry takes us all the way from Haiti to a galaxy far, far away, and Ben has a nosey around the micronations of the world, in all their tax-evading glory.

098 - LUCY JOHNSTON - WORLD'S WORST VENDING MACHINE

December 3, 2018

Inspired by the mot batshit crazy Patreon suggestions we've had so far, we plunged head first into the surprisingly fertile and unsurprisingly weird world of terrible vending machines.

Thankfully we had a responsible adult with us as our guide in the shape of Lucy Johnston - author, curator, futures consultant and, as it turns out, a fairly impressive authority on vending machines.

This week we discover a Roman inventor to rival Da Vinci, the folly of Piggly Wiggly, a lobster nightmare and, of course absolutely loads of bizarre stuff from Japan.

097 - ANDREW O'NEILL - WORLD'S WORST GOD

November 26, 2018

Our listeners, who art in the internet, hallowed be this episode of Worst Foot Forward. We are getting blasphemous this week in every possible religion by denouncing the World's Worst God with comic, musician and practicer of magic, Andrew O'Neill. We look at obscure ancient deities, eternal bacon, Dutch eel-vendors and Andrew tells us about the ultimate case of 'cutting your nose of to spite your face'.

096 - ANNA PLOSZAJSKI - WORLD'S WORST MATERIAL

November 19, 2018

We're joined this week by the eminently qualified Dr Anna Ploszajski - Young Engineer of the Year, Channel Swimmer, science explainer and graphene-hater to talk about the worst material on earth.

As eclectic as ever, we uncover a World War 2 plan by the British military to create aircraft carriers out of icebergs made of ice and sawdust, the blackest substance on earth, an astonishingly petty art spat featuring Anish Kapoor and how to make a prison that Ant Man could never escape from.

095 - SCHALK BEZUIDENHOUT - WORLD'S WORST GIG

November 11, 2018

Testing, one two one two, is this thing on…? We’re met by a mix of cricket sounds, flying bottles and scathing reviews this week as we perform the World’s Worst Gig. We have the company of South African comic Schalk Bezuidenhout who shares a first-person tale of steakhouses, strippers and stand-up. Ben takes us to the worst Beatles gig ever (those of you playing the Ben/Beatles drinking game, down it) and Barry goes to the not-so-genteel theatres of Covent Garden.

094 - MIKE STUCHBERY - WORLD'S WORST EPIDEMIC

November 5, 2018

This week we're donning our sterilised plastic gloves, three face masks and a full hazmat suit as we prepare to deal with the world's most peculiar, disturbing and deadly epidemics. We're joined by outstanding historian and curator of one of the most informative and sinister Twitter feeds around, Mike Stuchbery.

Together we talk about renaissance nuns pretending to be cats, Singaporean men who think their wangers have disappeared and why it’s never a good idea to throw a smallpox party. We also discover the unusual genesis of cooties (hi America listeners!), dabble in some medieval witchcraft and discover why Portuguese schoolchildren have taken the biscuit with excuses for taking days off school.