Russell Howard’s Five Brilliant Things

This episode of Five Brilliant Things is an enormously powerful listen; an emotional journey through the extraordinary life and times of the TV Host and endurance athlete Ashley Cain.  He talks with disarming honesty about finding strength and wisdom after the tragic death of his daughter, and his Five Brilliant Things are actually borne of his adversity.  He also goes into detail about what it was like to canoe around the British Isles with the threat of Killer Whales over his shoulder. Scary stuff! Ashley is hosting his show (that he mentioned in the show) on the BBC called ‘Into the Danger Zone’ and you can find that on iPlayer.  And you can keep up with all of Ashley’s latest charitable challenges by following him on Instagram where he’s @mrashleycain.  If this show is your bag, you can make it baggier (what? Why would you say that?) by becoming one of our treasured inner circle and joining our Patreon. You get all this, and an exclusive extra show every week, and no ads, and get it early. It’s a phenomenal thing to be a part of.  Click this link to join or just have a sniff around: patreon.com/RussellHoward   There we go. Another episode complete, and a much heavier one than we’d usually have but it’s nice to have that variation. I’m sure next week will be a refreshing counterpoint of sillness (well I know it will because I’ve planned it all out to be honest). See you then.  Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The best of our June shows! Starring Jake Humphrey, Harriet Kemsley, Jordan Banjo and Max Fosh. A snippet from each show that you can sample as a little amuse bouche (amuse oreille?) and see if you fancy listening to some more. It's the perfect way to find out about people you don't know or just trot away an hour or so. Please enjoy. Normal shows are still released as always every Wednesday, this is just an extra bit for the indecisive listener. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Australian actor, comedian and infectious company (can we say that positively in a post-covid world?!) Felicity Ward is in the studio with Russell today. She’s here to talk about the five things that make her happiest, and they are belters.  Felicity shares her passion for turning up as a surprise when you said you couldn’t make it, she talks about the joy of passing on generational family weirdness and she reveals just how gruelling it is to star on Strictly Come Dancing (Australian version). She wouldn’t tell us if she won. Did she win? We’ll find out soon enough… If you’re in Australia you can watch Dancing with the Stars with Felicity on 7Plus (or plain old channel 7). You can watch Felicity in the Australian Office on Amazon Prime, and you can keep up with her live dates by visiting her website, felicityward.com. Felicity has live dates coming up in Manchester and Bristol in September 2025 so follow those links to get your tickets for her super funny live show. And if you enjoy this podcast, you can get it with the brakes off by joining our Patreon where you get the whole thing without adverts, you get an extra exclusive show every week and you get it all a day before everyone else. It’s super easy to join and it costs less than one cup of fancy coffee every month.  Click this link to join or just have a sniff around: patreon.com/RussellHoward   And that is what we in the business call that. It’s been emosh. Now let’s all flap back to our nests and sit on those eggs until we feel the sharp peck of a tiny beak in the ass that means it’s time to double the worm harvest. I don’t know. Something like that. Bye!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Having dinner sitting next to a grizzly bear. Provoking a hundred muscle-bound men in Coventry. Visiting a laboratory in Spain to cook food using lightning. It could only be YouTube’s most innovative creator… Max Fosh!  Russell and Max sit down to discuss Max’s Five Brilliant Things, which include many tales of his extraordinary life and the mad challenges he sets himself. Also mayonnaise. He bloody loves mayonnaise.  A delightful show, delightful company, a delightful man. He also gives a sneak preview of a massive upcoming video… You can watch all of Max’s work (and you should - it’s clever AND silly - the best combination) at his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/maxfosh Also please give our Patreon show a look - it’s a whole second show every week with our guests. This week Max gave his solution to the North/South divide, told us his dream projects for the future and he also gave a very in-depth answer (the definitive answer?) to the hundred men vs one gorilla question… It’s really fun. Have a look by clicking here  Now be gone. Get out. You are no longer welcome. Come on, haven’t you got homes to go to? I’m trying to cash up here. No you can’t use the toilet. Get out.  Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

JORDAN BANJO Jordan Banjo, from the Diversity street dance group, from I’m a Celeb, from Kiss FM is in the studio and his Five Brilliant Things are a huge amount of fun; from watching videos of Mums cutting fringes badly through to smelly pens and a surprising revelation about how old Jordan was before he’d tasted water… Get thee into this podcast and enjoy Russell and Jordan talking all over these good things. Jordan also tells what it’s like to suddenly become well-known after winning BGT, how surreal that whole experience was. And as we chatted about on the show, you can hear Jordan alongside Perri hosting the breakfast show on Kiss FM every weekday from 7am on your radio or digital thing.  And in our extra show, Five Brilliant Questions, Jordan gives some incredible advice for anyone who wants to take dancing seriously as a career, and gives Russell a hilarious run-down of his many tattoos. So many stories!  Click this link to listen to that show: patreon.com/RussellHoward   And that’s all the news and weather. Until next time, stay safe and look after each other. Now here’s Julie with the news where you are.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Last One Laughing it’s comedian Harriet Kemsley, who is great company and with some surprising stories; her youth flying in World War Two Fighter Planes to her snowboarding exploits PLUS find out why she could end up imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay… it’s all in this fantastic episode of Five Brilliant Things.  🎭 Harriet has just a few tour dates left, notably one on 12 June at Leicester Square Theatre in London. If you can go, you should go, she’s a great comic with a superb show. Tickets available here.  🎭 📻 And as discussed in the show, Harriet’s podcast with Amy Gledhill, Single Ladies in your Area is well worth a listen even if they don’t actually go on many dates. Link to listen is here.  📻 🕸️ And finally you can keep up with all of Harriet’s other projects, shows, tours and gigs at her website: https://harrietkemsley.com 🕸️ ✨ And if you’re here reading this (who are you?!) then you’re clearly over-invested in this podcast. You should join the hundreds of other enlightened beings who have joined our Patreon Crew. They get all the inside scoops. They find out guests who are coming soon. They get the podcast before anyone else. They get it with no adverts. They also get a whole second show every week, that they help to make. You could be one of those lucky few. Find out what outstanding value it is by clicking here. ✨  That’s it for this week. Please do something this week that scares you, unless that thing is, y’know, murder or a coup in a small African republic. Keep it vanilla baby.  Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to May's moments of the month; a show where we round up the highlights of all the episodes of the past month so you can have a nibble at all of them and see if they take your fancy. May 2025 in the studio we had Kae Kurd, Jeff Innocent, Jordan Stephens and Adam Buxton. Please enjoy this new monthly taster show. This won't change our normal shows released as usual every Wednesday (or once every seventeen days for our listeners on Jupiter). If you've already listened to all these episodes by the way there's nothing new really apart from some little bits and bobs in-between the excerpts from the existing episodes. You know how compilations work. Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How did the F1 anchor cope when David Coulthard was so hungover he’s got a bucket between his legs just out of shot? When he was hosting the football, how badly was Jake reprimanded for jeering at the Ipswich fans from the commentary box? Jake Humphrey from the High Performance podcast (and formerly of CBBC) is in the studio with Russell to wax lyrical about his Brilliant Things including the mud in Norfolk, Greylag Geese, his terrible A-level results and more and more and more.  Jake’s podcast is the one you’ve most likely heard about - the super-successful High Performance podcast where he talks to people about their extraordinary achievements and lives and how they get to those places. Have a listen at https://www.thehighperformancepodcast.com ✨ Aaaand if you like all this that we do, then you can get it unemcumbered by advertisements, and get an extra show every week for a small monthly cost. Find out what an insane bargain it is by clicking here. ✨  End of message. Please don’t drop litter, and yes that means putting it in a hedge. Hedges have feelings too. Also if you’ve got a dog and you can’t pick up its poo, get it a nappy. It’s a small price to pay for clean streets and a funny stupid looking dog.  Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adam Buxton, the OG, the Podfather, king of all things Pod is here and he’s not just brought Five Brilliant Things - he’s also brought a load of nearly-ran Brilliant Things!  Fascinating and funny as always, Adam takes us through why dinner is so important, how he’s unable to invent bedtime stories and which bird has a song like EDM.  It’s just great! An hour with Adam just flies by and you will come out amused, invigorated and fresh, like a shower if it was funny. 📚 Adam has got a new book out! It’s called I love you Byeee and it’s all about his time making the Adam and Joe show and (this is a quote) ‘the drug hell that led me to nearly dying in the arms of a comedy legend’… It’s the follow up to his Ramble Book, it will be excellent and you should get a copy now from this link here!  📚 📻 And of course, Adam does his weekly podcast which you can and should get in all your podcasts places. Here’s a link for the lazy-fingered amongst you. 📻  ✨ Aaaand if you like all this that we do, then you can get it unemcumbered by advertisements, and get an extra show every week for a small monthly cost. Find out what an insane bargain it is by clicking here. ✨  And that is all that nonsense. If you are still with me, congratulations, you are one of about four people in the world who stick to the end of the blurbs. It’s a real badge of honour and those other quitters don’t know what they are missing. It’s just us down here, me cranking out wordage and you, somehow addicted to this but at the same time wondering if it’s all a waste of time. Well it isn’t. Here, just for you hardy perennials, is a fun fact: Ketchup was originally sold as medicine. There you go. Your reward for reading to the end. Bye! Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Rizzle Kicks it’s the fabulous Jordan Stephens, and his brilliant things are brilliantly wide-ranging.  What’s the greatest ever TV show intro theme? The answer is in here, as well as some mind-expanding discussions about the profundity of vegetables. 🥦 Hell yeah.  💿 Rizzle Kicks have recorded and released a new album which is called ‘Competition is for Losers’ and you can preview it or buy a copy here.  💿 🎤 They’ve also got some live shows coming up in 2025 and 2026 so to find out where they are playing and experience one of their incredible live gigs, check it all out here.  🎤 ✍️ And as promised, here's also a link to Jordan's substack which is a great dose of weekly ideas - give it a go. And in our extra show just for our Patreon crew, you asked some phenomenal questions that led to finding out more about Rizzle Kicks break up and reforming, and a fascinating insight into what it’s like to be an actor on the set of a huge Star Wars film (Jordan was!). It’s not all fun fun fun… Click this link to join or find out more: patreon.com/RussellHoward   Thanks for being part of this blurb, I feel like we did this together, you and I. I mean I did most of the heavy lifting, typing away, thinking up new things for you to enjoy and you just made your eyes move slightly and then made sense of these squiggly lines we call letters and had your brain transform them into ideas and pictures…actually that’s pretty impressive when you think of it. Imagine describing that process to a slug it would have its slimy mind blown. Well done you.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices