Welcome to –And Now The Podcast Starts!
Meet Kirsty, Stella, Howard, Ian and Dan. Five British fans of horror who have each been wondering about the possibility of making a podcast about… something for years. They thought it would probably be horror-related, but didn’t know exactly how, and they each have diverse other interests and expertise too. So it had to be flexible. They’ve been mulling over the format for some time and weren’t quite ready to launch… But then a pandemic happened, and lots of people became stuck at home, desperate for content. So it seemed like a good idea to finally release something!
Each episode of –And Now The Podcast Starts! will focus on a different topic for review or discussion, usually taking horror as a starting point, but going in an unexpected direction, and often featuring special guests. There will be repeating strands to the show which come up regularly – there are more details of those here – but one regular item will be new episodes of The Lee/Cushing Podcast, a show originally started by Howard and Dan in 2016 to investigate every one of the many films co-starring the great British actors (and friends) Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
And if you’re wondering where we get our podcast title from, –And Now The Screaming Starts! is a mostly-forgotten, frankly not-very-good gothic horror film from 1973, starring the aforementioned Mr Cushing. It has a great title, so we thought we’d steal it.
Meet the hosts…
Kirsty Worrow is a regular contributor to Media Magazine and likes to think of herself as a professional fangirl. Since graduating in Film Studies with Production from Sheffield Hallam University, she has been teaching film and media for 14 years. A proud ‘acafan’ of horror, especially in a Lovecraftian or aesthetic vein, she also has a deep and abiding love of true crime documentaries, deep fiction podcasts, a myriad of sci-fi/fantasy shows and movies, and many other disparate and incongruous things!
Stella Gaynor is an actual Doctor of Horror, having written her PhD on TV horror serialization on contemporary US television, and is now a lecturer with several academic publications under her belt. She has loved all things horror from as far back as she can remember – from watching Trapdoor and Duckula as a kid, to 1970s horror films on TV in the afternoon, to her present day fascination with digital horror, creepypasta, cults, serial killers, and horror podcasts – and, before academia, spent several years as an SFX makeup artist. She regularly blogs for Critical Studies in Television Online, is a unrepentant fan of The Walking Dead, and will tell people random details about serial killers even when they don’t want to know about it!
Ian Winterton is a film journalist, award-winning playwright, university lecturer, screenwriter and perfectly-positioned namedropper (prepare for frequent CLANG!ing). His website is ianwinterton.co.uk and his current projects include writing for Cutaway Comics and an upcoming audio adaptation of Ramsay Campbell’s The Hungry Moon for Room 5064 Productions. He loves horror deeply: his favourite film is The Exorcist.
TD Velasquez – but you can call him Dan – is a well-informed fan of film and TV and is a reviewer for We Made This and The Digital Fix. With a degree in Film Studies, in a previous life he was an actor, playwright and fringe theatre producer. He has loved old horror films since he was a teenager, because they have always had the weird effect of making him feel grown up (something he never does at any other time), and blames his late and much-missed sister Maureen, who made him watch Stephen King’s It and Dr Terror’s House of Horrors when he was about 12. He’s always looking for new scary entertainment.
Howard Whittock has been watching British horror films for as long as he can remember. In fact, such was his enthusiasm for vampires and monsters, his parents booked a holiday to Romania when he was ten so that he could visit Dracula’s castle. He is equally passionate about comedy (everything from Stan & Ollie to Vic & Bob), 1940s film noir and Columbo. He studied drama, film and drinking at Liverpool John Moores University and after graduation has worked unsteadily in the theatre. Having got into that habit of talking about the films that have given him so much pleasure in The Lee/Cushing Podcast, he greatly enjoys continuing this on — And Now The Podcast Starts!
Podcast additional credits
Huge thanks to Greg Hulme for our original theme music and Brian Gorman for the Lee/Cushing artwork
Additional fulsome gratitude to Richard O’Neill, Rick Reddyoff, Dan Brazier, Sven Worrow, Ross Kelly, Biff Roxby and Edward Barry for miscellaneous lifesaving contributions
Sketch segments written by TD Velasquez
An Ambidextrous Solutions Limited production, hosted on Podbean
-- And Now The Podcast Starts! 