Hello there and welcome to the show. I'm Stuart Goldsmith and the eagle-eared among you.

We'll have noticed that on this, the first episode of 2025, I've still lost my voice.

So it won't take a genius to work out joining the dots that I'm recording this on the 15th of December

and have no idea what the future holds. I can tell you, however, that this is an absolute scour of an episode to start the year with.

Max Fosh has built a massive audience on YouTube.

He has over 4 million subscribers and has had global news coverage for his various

YouTube-type mischief that he does.

He's responsible for writing Welcome to Luton in massive letters on a field in Gatwick, in order to wind up people flying into Gatwick.

He's become the world's richest man for seven minutes

and caused an absolute storm at London Fashion Week

and also hundreds and hundreds of other things that we can't go into.

Max has now carved out an extraordinary path, a unique path in the comedy world, as he's now coming to the

end of his sold-out international tour with loophole. In the first half of this episode, we are going

to discuss Max's relationship with comedy, whether he's a comedian or a stand-up or exactly what it is.

We will hear a mind-blowing sort of opening gambit about how he crafted his show.

I mean, I won't spoil it now, but the reason for him going from being a YouTuber to sort of almost doing live YouTube shows.

And we're going to talk about the conflict of success in another industry where you haven't necessarily earned your stripes in an adjacent

industry. This is a doozy. I'm so, so pleased to have Max on the show. I'm so grateful for how

charming and candid and very happy to talk about some of the vagaries of this stuff, Max, is.

And it really, I didn't know what to expect from this one. It really flawed me.

I had a wonderful time doing it. And I think it says a lot of really interesting stuff about where

not the comedy industry necessarily is heading, but where sort of mass media is heading and where

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