Like many people, I’ve always found it hard to listen to the sound of my own recorded voice, and inevitably squirm with embarrassment listening back to any interviews I’ve ever done on radio (TV comes with the added horror of seeing myself filling out the widest of wide screens; obviously a lot of issues!).
So it says much for the professional empathy and journalistic skills of food writer and journalist Catherine Cleary and her partner-in-crime, food historian and producer Juliana Adelman, who between them are responsible for the highly enjoyable podcast, The Comfort Feed, that I not only for once thoroughly enjoyed being interviewed but was actually able, for the pretty much the first time, to listen back without any of my usual ‘aural dysmorphia’.
Catherine asked gently probing and intelligent questions, all dressed in the lightest of humours, and then sat back to leave me ramble, even allowing me on occasion to mount my soapbox to talk about serious food issues alongside my more usual guff. Juliana’s subsequent edit was especially sublime, gathering up the aforementioned verbiage and fashioning it into an interview that made me sound like a vaguely rational being as opposed to some punchdrunk old barstool orator who’d simply wandered in off the streets. Have a listen and if you like it, there are even better episodes to be found elsewhere in the series.
Joe McNamee: Food Writer 