Remember Me? lets the once famous relive their time in the limelight

A couple of new two-hander culture podcasts last week for the chat lovers among us. First up, the poptastic Remember Me?, a show that takes a look at people who were once enormously famous but have faded from view – and also interviews them. A nice touch, and not that usual: celebrities often only want to talk about what they’re doing now, not what they did in the past, no matter how successful they once were.

Our hosts are the warm and friendly comedian Maisie Adam and the equally welcoming journalist Scott Bryan. Their first guest is Kelli Young, from the 00s pop group Liberty X, made up of the plucky rejects from the 2001 ITV talent show Popstars. To refresh your memory: the series winners formed Hear’Say (you do remember them; Myleene Klass, Kym Marsh et al) and the five kids left over were Young, Michelle Heaton, Jessica Taylor, Tony Lundon and Kevin Simm. These supposed “losers” bonded over their weird, alienating experience and decided to form their own group.

“We went on the Lorraine show,” said Young. “And when Lorraine asked us what we were gonna do next, we said: ‘Well, we’re going to be a band!’ – much to ITV’s dismay. We didn’t give them a heads-up that this was what we were going to do.” The Popstars bosses hadn’t considered that their castoffs would have such gumption, so hadn’t bothered to sign them to a record contract. Great stuff.

Young proved calm and likable, even when revealing some grim details such as the Daily Star superimposing the faces of Liberty X on the bodies of adult film stars, in a grubby forerunner of Elon Musk’s AI assistant Grok. Young was still at college when this happened. In that era, the tabloids were powerful and rabid. Young, Heaton and Taylor would leave clubs to find the paparazzi lying on the ground, trying to get upskirt shots, and Young’s life details were leaked so often that she closed herself off from people. “That still affects me now,” she said.

This is a timely, sympathetic show that will no doubt have a lot of celebrities to choose from, especially now the 00s – the era of the loopiest reality shows – are coming back into focus. Future interviewees include the Gladiators star Hunter and the living legend that is the X Factor contestant Honey G.

Our second new culture show is The Book Club, which is – you guessed it – a book club from Goalhanger. Podcasts such as this aren’t the easiest of sells: those who host them always say that they worry about appealing to people who haven’t read whichever novel they’re discussing. You wonder why it’s only book show hosts that angst about this. Film critics never concern themselves with whether people have seen the latest movie, and neither do music shows or ones about TV, and neither do music shows, or ones about TV. Maybe books seem more like homework.

Anyway, as I’ve said,this is a Goalhanger offering, which means that everything is smoothly tailored into an appealing, unthreatening package. Our presenters are the clever and charming Dominic Sandbrook, who co-hosts The Rest Is History, and the unknown Tabitha “Tabby” Syrett, one of the producers on that show. Syrett is good: lively, informed and funny. Her teasing of Sandbrook seemed a little forced for this first episode, but that will change as they relax.

The first book was Wuthering Heights (you might have heard there’s a film out) and their insights ranged from the everyday (too many people in the novel with the same or similar names) to the more insightful (a discussion of how violence runs through all the characters). Their chat of the Brontës’ upbringing was funny and illuminating, especially of how odd Emily was: she punched her dog and was awful to the children she taught. “Not immediately likable,” as Sandbrook had it.

I enjoyed hearing both presenters changing their minds about Wuthering Heights – Sandbrook becoming more positive, Syrett more negative – and their acknowledgment of how your reaction to a book changes as you yourself change. Syrett loved it so much when she read it, aged 12, that she set herself the challenge of reading it every year – and did so until she was 17. On rereading it, she realised, as many women do, that Linton was actually great, Heathcliff a terrible abuser and Catherine quite the idiot for mooning after him

They’ve made the sensible decision to alternate the classics with more contemporary literature (next, they’ll be talking about Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go), and no doubt they’ll be delightful. The Book Club won’t change your life (personally, I prefer Cariad Lloyd and Sara Pascoe’s spikier Weirdos Book Club), but it will provide easy, illuminating company while you live it. Just space for a true crime show, as I know everyone is constantly in search of a new one. Unfortunately, I can’t really recommend Blood Will Tell, interesting as its premise is. It’s the story of Vietnamese-American twin brothers, Trung and Anh, who go to a party and get into a fight. One stabs a guy to death, but, through a series of policing mistakes, the other twin goes to prison for the crime.

I would have found it easier to share the obvious sympathy that host Jen Miller has for the brothers if they had been honest about the murder. “Suddenly I was covered in blood” isn’t enough, no matter how much lovely background detail we get about their difficulties and strange relationship. An interesting story, but one that ignores the victim so much that, for this listener at least, it left a nasty taste.

Photograph by WireImage