“It isn’t like anything else we – or anyone else – has done”: Tony Martin on the success of ‘Sizzletown’

Tony Martin and Matt Dower have just put to bed the latest episode of Sizzletown; a series that’s making waves in comedy podcasting.

In ‘Waiting for Carbo’, Dion poses as a ‘Docklands entrepreneur’, it’s Matt versus the Volcano and Tony calls Jack Nicholson to find out why he’s emerging from retirement.

It’s the ninth episode of Sizzletown and while the audience continues to grow, Martin admits he wasn’t sure that it would ‘click’ with listeners.

“At first, many people were simply confused by the pace and tone of it,” Tony tells Radio Today.

“Because it isn’t like anything else we – or anyone else – has done, we knew it would take people a few eps to get the hang of it.

“Luckily we had a few high profile supporters early on – Wendy Harmer and Tom Gleisner in particular – and they gave it a big leg-up.  

“And the comments we get show that people are really getting into something we thought might only have cultish appeal. It’s very encouraging, given that we’re really only doing this for the mad fun of it.”

Martin and Dower might just be doing it for the ‘mad fun of it’, but they take the process very seriously. Literally hours of work goes into the creation of each 30-minute episode.

“We worked out that each episode takes about three full days to put together. I start by recording the callers, who are all improvised in sessions that can go anywhere up to an hour. Then I have to write and record the other side of the call – the host part.

“A lot of time is spent making it sound like I am two separate people interacting with each other. The editing of each episode takes about six hours, and then Matt puts in many more hours refining it and adding all the bells and whistles.”

The results speak for themselves. Nine episodes in, it’s already had more than 100,000 downloads and continues to do well in the iTunes Comedy Charts.  And there’s still more episodes to come.

Hear the latest episode below or at iTunes.

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Trudy
2 Aug 2018 - 2:53 pm

This podcast is the greatest gift, thank you Tony.

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