From Spice Girls to Sugababes, how Britain’s girlbands conquered the world

The Saturdays’ Mollie King explores the history of Britain’s dominant female groups in Where It’s At. Plus: five of the most underrated podcasts

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Are podcast ads getting more annoying? This is something I found myself pondering this week, when my attempts to listen to a show were interrupted by Newlyweds (and former Made in Chelsea) star Jamie Laing doing a spot of self-promotion while pronouncing his surname in a wildly bizarre transatlantic accent.

I can barely stomach US shows with adverts, due to the irritatingly frequent lapse into promo spots that are either screechy or such patently nonsensical claims about their show’s true crime revelations that they border on insulting the listener’s intelligence. Along with the rise of paid, ad-free podcast subscription services, is it just possible that it’s in pod producers’ interests to carry promos that are so irksome you pay not to listen to them? No, clearly not. But my god, those ads are maddening, I can’t help but wonder sometimes …

If you’re after some excellent bits of podcast to listen to between the ads, read on. We’ve got plenty of great shows this week, from James Acaster’s new podcast to Sue Perkins tackling a scammer, and the lively tale of classic girl bands. They’re joined by a look at some of the finest podcasts ever to fly under the radar, from super-slick takes on food to an astonishingly good Brexit satire. They are so good, that even ads couldn’t ruin them – we hope.

Alexi Duggins
Deputy TV editor

Picks of the week

Springleaf
Widely available, episodes weekly
James Acaster is the award-winning standup comic behind one of the UK’s biggest podcasts – or is he? In this comedy crime series, he claims he’s actually an undercover cop called Pat Springleaf who has spent years using a career as a funnyman as a cover story. We’re plunged into the supposed wire recordings of his biggest ever case for a surreal and inventive slice of scripted comedy that cocks more than the odd snook at the true crime genre. Alexi Duggins

Where It’s At: A Short History of Girlbands
BBC Sounds, all episodes out now
Spice Girls, Little Mix, Cleopatra: this new series hosted by the Saturdays’ Mollie King is a lively look into the history of all-female musical groups. From archive clips of the Wannabe stars making vibrator jokes to interviews with the likes of All Saints’ Melanie Blatt, it’s a breezy, fun listen. AD

What Now? With Trevor Noah
Widely available, episodes weekly
Have people become too scared of uncomfortable conversations? Trevor Noah thinks so – that’s why he’s pushing the intimate celebrity format to the next level. First up: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opens up about parenting worries, depression and, err, running for president. Hollie Richardson

Legacy
Widely available, episodes weekly
Napoleon: brutal dictator and warmonger or visionary leader? Thought-provoking duo Afua Hirsch (pictured above) and Peter Frankopan look at historical figures through a fresh lens in this new podcast. Upcoming episodes feature Nina Simone’s contribution to civil rights and the “should Picasso be cancelled?” debate. Hannah Verdier

Sue Perkins Presents: Carrie Jade Does Not Exist
Widely available, episodes every Tuesday and Thursday
Perky and positive TikTok influencer Carrie Jade Williams built a supportive community by sharing her life with Huntington’s disease. But, as Sue Perkins and Katherine Denkinson document in this addictive and well-paced podcast, she lied about her identity and spun a viral yarn about a nonexistent ableist Airbnb host. HV

There’s a podcast for that

This week, Rachel Aroesti chooses five of the best underrated podcasts from a high-budget foodie affair to a comedy imagining what would happen if Britain brought back capital punishment.

Til Death Do Us Blart
It is, admittedly, rather hard to build up a head of steam popularity-wise when you only release one episode a year, but, alas, that’s a key part of the premise of this single-minded and giddily in-jokey podcast from the makers of the popular comedy advice pod My Brother, My Brother and Me. Since 2015, the trio – plus New Zealand comedians Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery – have spent Thanksgiving rewatching Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s even less illustrious sequel, before reconvening to (re)discuss the intricacies and idiocies of one of the most derided films of the century.

Gastropod
Presented by two accomplished journalists – Cynthia Graber and The New Yorker’s Nicola Twilley – this dense, fact-saturated and incredibly slick series is far more reminiscent of a high-budget audio documentary. Focusing on the science and history of food, each episode delves into a different gastronomical subject with the help of extensive interviews, on-the-ground reportage and intellectual but accessible insight from our extremely well-read hosts. Covering everything from individual foodstuffs – caviar, pineapples, ketchup – to wider trends (plant-based meat, edibles), there is no topic these two can’t turn into mind-blowing brain food.

Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists
A disorientating title and an incredibly specific conceit – each episode sees a team of comics improvise a roundtable set in the world of a particular media niche (food stylists, in-flight safety video directors, difficult actors, celebrity apology masterminds, you get the idea) – might have limited this podcast’s appeal, but anyone willing to overcome these obstacles will be rewarded with one of the most hilarious shows on the market. Working as both a pitch-perfect satire of the entertainment world and as a vessel for intense, corpsing-punctuated silliness, it is proof that when improv is this good, there’s nothing better.

Capital
Did you know that one of the best British sitcoms of the past decade is actually a podcast? Helmed by comedy writer Freddy Syborn and starring Liam Williams, Charlotte Ritchie and Harry Enfield, Capital is set in an alternative universe in which the people of this country have decided to bring back capital punishment via a controversial referendum (yes, it’s a Brexit satire). We follow the hapless and terrifyingly inexperienced civil servants tasked with orchestrating the big comeback of capital punishment as they quarrel and crisis-manage their way through this horrendous task. The end result is like a surreal, millennial-authored, doom-times version of The Thick Of It. In other words: incredible.

Budpod
You probably think the last thing you need at this stage is yet another podcast featuring two male stand-ups shooting the proverbial, but if you do have room for just one more, consider this offering from Phil Wang and Pierre Novellie. Instead of dealing in straightforward British banter – despite both establishing their careers over here, Novellie was born in South African and Wang grew up in Malaysia – the pair come across as simultaneously more erudite and more scatological than their peers, cracking wise about anything and everything with professional-grade wit and an eye for the grotesque.

Why not try …

• Love-Bombed, in which Vicky Pattison heads home to north-east England to investigate how a man maintained a relationship with a woman he met online while secretly still living with his wife and three children.
  

• The team behind Radio 4’s series Sliced Bread brings you Toast, a study of wonder products and businesses that ended up failing.

• Film critic Wendy Lloyd investigates how we talk about movies, who gets to do it and why it matters with fellow critics and social commentators in Open to Criticism.