Who remembers that phenomenally famous TV show, ‘Tumbler’s Willy’? Well, that very much depends where you’re watching. According to a new podcast, Tumbler’s Willy is “an institution in its homeland, beloved by over one hundred percent of native ‘Britishors,’”; but less than nought point zero percent of Americans have ever even heard of it.

In each episode of The Tumbler’s Willy Podcast, American television writer Andy Bobrow (Community, Malcolm in the Middle) joins British children’s author Andy Stanton (Mr Gum), to discuss their mutual love of a television show that they completely made up. ‘Tumbler’s Willy’ is (not) a cultural behemoth which has (definitely not) graced the airwaves for over 120 seasons and is (not even in the slightest) still going strong. As you can imagine, a show as long-lived as Tumbler’s has an unimaginably rich and at times almost unbelievable history. And the two Andys are more than happy to delve into even the strangest of details.

For example? Well, the very first episode ever aired, going out as a radio show in 1902, consisted of one hour of complete silence – and yet it became an instant hit. The second episode repeated the trick. Meanwhile the third episode took a different approach, incorporating literally every sound ever recorded, before finishing with the piece de la resistance: a man barking like a dog for an hour and a half. Then there’s the show’s titular character, Tumbler, who didn’t even make his first appearance until some fifty years into the program’s run, appearing first as a tiny speck on the horizon, and then walking slowly towards camera over the next ten years (although he wasn’t to utter his first line for a further decade and a half). There’s the cast of thousands who in the Roaring 1960s literally gave their lives to satisfy the whim of the show’s head creative, Nate Turpington (he had some of them trampled to death by horses and others crushed by industrial machinery in order to trim the payroll); the infamous, flood-prone episode filmed two miles beneath the Thames… And then there’s David Hunch, the 8-year-old wunderkind director, who, along with his 6-year-old accountant Simon Feathers, revitalized the franchise in the 1990s… before making the maverick decision to take it off the screen altogether and turn it into a travelling religious roadshow.

You couldn’t make it up – but such extraordinary and outrageous incidents appear to be almost everyday occurrences for this most fascinating of shows. And The Tumbler’s Willy Podcast is the only place to hear about them. Yes, this is the podcast that hardcore ‘Tumbleheads’ simply can’t live without, and yet have been living without until now.

The Tumbler’s Willy Podcast is part of the Starburns Audio network, and will be released on all podcast platforms on March 15th, 2022.