In this special, and slightly sillier episode of the Everything Electric podcast, Imogen Bhogal turns the tables on our founder, Robert Llewellyn.
As Robert celebrates his 70th birthday, the pair look back on an extraordinary six-decade career spanning bespoke shoemaking, fringe comedy, cult sci-fi fame, and becoming one of the world's leading voices for electric vehicles and clean energy.
They chat about Robert's time on Red Dwarf and the show's enduring legacy as one of the BBC's most-watched programmes (outperforming Top Gear, dare we say it?). There are also fond memories of Scrapheap Challenge, the bizarre Mojave Desert story involving a children's deckchair and a 3,500-foot flight, the hidden psychology behind the Carpool series, and of course, Robert's slightly alarming habit of writing far too many books.
Enjoy!
Watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/edkwTFblDMA
00:00 – Introduction: A different kind of podcast
01:40 – Robert's 70th Birthday & The "Umarell" nickname
07:05 – The Geodesic Dome & School Expulsion
10:32 – Life as a Bespoke Shoemaker
13:00 – "The Joeys" and discovering the joy of comedy
18:50 – Becoming Kryten: The Red Dwarf years
24:10 – Red Dwarf vs. Blackadder & The BBC
28:30 – Scrapheap Challenge: 5mm aggregate and flying junk
37:20 – The birth of Carpool and "Suicide Cameras"
42:20 – Pitching Fully Charged to a confused BBC
46:10 – Ghost Camera: Writing, Optimism, and AI
54:00 – Conclusion: Humour as the "spoonful of sugar"
