Tony Martin on finding success and creative space with podcasts

Tony Martin is arguably one of the funniest men in the country. From his days with the D-Gen to the monster success of Martin Molloy, he’s been at the forefront of radio comedy.

Now he’s finding success as a podcaster, and recently picked up a gong at the Australian Podcast Awards with Childproof named Best Comedy Podcast.

A Bad Producer Production, Martin says the content was initially written as a TV show, then performed and recorded at Melbourne Fringe 2017.

“They wouldn’t make it, so we did it as a live show,” he told Radio Today.

“We then spent a couple of months adding a Sgt Pepper’s amount of sound effects to it all and put it out as a podcast.”

Martin explained that it was an unusual situation, because they opted to not remove all of the visual jokes from the content.

“Rather than turn it into a ‘radio play’, we wanted people to imagine what it would have looked like had it been a TV show.”

“So, we left all the visual jokes in, but we had a narrator and a lot of SFX and it was kind of ‘theatre of the mind’. And somehow, it’s won best comedy at the Podcast Awards. That was a treat.”

Childproof drew heavily on Tony’s experiences in radio with some very familiar characters. His current project, Sizzletown, also has a ‘radio’ theme of sorts with a very thin line between reality and make-believe.

“It’s supposed to be a late night talk-back show, hosted by me and with me playing all of the callers. We try to make it so you might almost think that you’re listening to a real talkback show.”

“Even just engineering that is quite tricky. And I would have to say that Matt Dower (producer) is like Australian comedy’s Phil Spector and I mean that in terms of the “Wall of Sound” and not the murder.”

Sizzletown is available for download via Podbean.