A Hole in Two Or, a ‘hole’ lotta trouble

Jack and Jacob are two gay men who are seeking holes.

NO really. They’re also two single friends living in London and although in their words they’ve very different attitudes to sex and dating, they’re both unlucky in love and hoping to improve their romantic lives. Either as a strategy with which to snare the perfect love match, a way to pass the time, or a medium to diarise their ongoing struggle, they have set up a comedy podcast. Craig Hanlon-Smith offered them a break from their quest for the perfect hole and pumped them with a load of questions.

Hello boys. So the podcast then? Dish:

Jacob: The Hole Seekers is a comedy podcast in which two gay men (Jack and I) travel in time by sliding through inter-dimensional holes to learn lessons from the past and future that will help us improve our love lives in the present day.

Jack: Yes, we’re two gay men who’ve discovered the ability to travel in time and each week meet a new guest from the past or future and chat to them to see what we can learn. In most cases we do not know who we are going to meet or where we are going to travel to before we start recording, so it’s a lot of fun for us too!

Did you have a particular aim or achievement in mind when you set out on this project?

Jacob: It’s first and foremost a comedy podcast and so if our listeners are stifling laughter on public transport then that is a win for us. However, we did also want to create a show that reflected our friendship as gay men and that would give us a space to talk about our shared experience of love, sex and dating in the modern-day, however funny or tragic those experiences may be. As members of the LGBT+ community I think there’s always value in speaking up and sharing your own experiences, especially if we have the potential to reach people who might be struggling with their own sexual identity.

Who are your comedy heroes?

Jack: Anything by Julia Davis you can’t go wrong with. Maybe I shouldn’t be promoting another podcast in this interview but Dear Joan and Jericha is, I think, one of the best comic creations of the last 10 years. Kate Berlant and John Early are phenomenal, and everyone should buy and watch their series 555 on Vimeo. Sarah Silverman is a genius, so is Chelsea Peretti. I also love Matteo Lane – he’s a great gay comic who has just had 15 Minutes come out on Netflix which is worth a watch. Anyone who is doing something I feel like I haven’t seen before I’m going to be on board with.

Jacob: I’ve always been a huge fan of surreal comedy and grew up with The League Of Gentlemen on TV. That and Monty Python are the influences which have created the weird man-child that you see before you today.

Comedy aside, who are your LGBT+ heroes?

Jacob: It has to be Alan Turing. I would give anything to travel back in time and meet him. Maybe in a future episode of The Hole Seekers!

Jack: The Babadook.

LGBT+ communities are forever changing and expanding. Who is your audience and how do you appeal to our broadening community base?

Jack: At the moment I think our audience is my mum and dad… No, as we’ve said, it’s very much a comedy podcast so whilst there’s definitely an LGBT+ focus, and we are producing the show with the LGBT+ community in mind, it’s definitely not going to alienate anyone. I think with regards to the expansion of the LGBT+ community, it’s important to remember that expansion is a great thing and we should celebrate our differences within the community, together. The podcast is absolutely for everyone, but as two white gay men living in the UK, Jacob and I can only speak about our own experiences and we would never try to suggest otherwise. Ultimately though ours is a show about finding love and the trials and tribulations of doing so, which I think is something everyone can relate to no matter what your sexuality and gender identity.

What challenges do you think face our LGBT+ communities over the next few years?

Jack: “Complacency is always going to be a threat especially when you’re living somewhere as progressive as Brighton or London. I think it’s easy to slip into the mindset that the work is somehow ‘done’ because most of the time we’re lucky enough to exist very comfortably as queer people here. It can sound trite but I think it’s important to remember that the world is a very big place; homosexuality is still illegal in 72 countries and, even within the UK, the experience of growing up as an LGBT+ person will vary hugely depending on the geography and socio-economic background [of your upbringing. It’s important not to lose sight of that as we hopefully continue to move forward and grow as a community.

What are your plans to make a mark on an ever-growing podcast market?

Jacob: We’re obviously relying heavily on word of mouth and opportunities like this one to get the word out about us especially in the early days! Thanks to the comic talents of our guests, the episodes we’ve already recorded in our first series are genuinely hilarious and we have cried laughing recording most of them, so hopefully people will enjoy hearing two gay men losing it over a microphone. We will build up an audience who are also looking to learn lessons in love from the past and future, just like us!

Brighton has a significant LGBT+ community and an established arts scene. Do you plan to take live shows on the road? Would they be a reflection of, or different to, the podcasts.
Jacob: We would love to! Obviously there is a significant improv component to the show given that the conversations with our guests are entirely improvised so it would be nice (and a bit scary) to let a live audience in on that bit because it’s loads of fun to record. It would be great to speak to audiences about their own love lives too, maybe try to give a bit of advice to them? Anything that would make the audiences more a part of the show would be fab. Brighton would definitely be a priority on the list of places to visit though, I’ve done comedy here before and the audiences are great, particularly at the Fringe.