Ordinarily, if a podcast purports to be revelatory, you can assume it is anything but. There’s a glut of programmes at the moment featuring interviewer and interviewee locked in passionate heart-to-hearts in which a few, carefully selected beans are spilled to no real consequence or effect. The Last Bohemians makes no claim to shatter the earth with secrets, but the guests are so unguarded that the episodes possess that longed-for bite.
Maggi Hambling reels off a to-do list she made at art school while she was seeking to lose her virginity: ‘Older man, younger man, black man, woman’. Dana Gillespie, singer and former flame of David Bowie, describes undoing her top button to be photographed in the cleavage-obsessed press of her youth. And actress Cleo Sylvestre speaks of the fungus-filled mess of the young Rolling Stones’s flat and of turning down a marriage proposal from Mick Jagger (she felt it wouldn’t last as he became more successful; the dirty milk bottles couldn’t have helped).
Hutchinson makes no attempt to apologise for the odd un-PC remark or to filter what these women say
The first series of this podcast aired in March 2019, and a new series has been released each spring since, except for last year when, presenter Kate Hutchinson explains, she experienced a crisis of confidence. Her task is by no means easy. Her guests are mainly older women who grew up in the 1960s and retain a certain rebelliousness of spirit. There is no use in being obsequious towards them. Hutchinson pleasingly makes no attempt to apologise for the odd un-PC remark or to filter what these women say. If anything she earns their respect by assuming something of their demeanour. It is one thing for Gillespie and Sylvestre to reflect that they might have been more successful than they are.
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