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by Adam Zmith

If you’re a man who wears shoes without socks, this is not a safe space for you. “Men who don’t wear socks repulse me,” says Scottee at the top of the most recent episode of his podcast, After The Tone. “It’s a fact that men who don’t wear socks are probably likely to ruin your life.”

Scottee is deadly serious about his opinions on socks — also wild swimming, sandwiches and especially gravy. But it’s also all a great big laugh. “Isn’t it nice to be somewhere where you don’t have to pretend to be normal?” he says, as he welcomes people into the ‘pub’ of After The Tone. The podcast started in lockdown in 2020, as a collaboration between Scottee, who is an artist and performer, and producer Debbie Kilbride. The unique offer of After The Tone is a Whatsapp number that listeners use to send voice notes for Scottee to respond to. Callers are not known to Scottee or each other. They’re just a bunch of regular people who pop into the podcast as if stopping off in the pub on the way home from work. They record voice notes in the street, in bed, while cooking, or even on the loo. And they talk about everything, from childhood trauma to, yes, gravy strategy. One recent caller confessed to pooing in Tupperware when their toilet was out of service.

“Some people say I’m nosy, but I just say I'm inquisitive,” says Scottee, who responds to the voice notes with a cocktail of support, mockery, love, and hilarious indignation. “Me and me mum and gran could have a conversation with a stranger for an hour.”

You could imagine Scottee talking to a caller who self-identifies as Amy the Ponds Dipper for an hour at least. Amy left a message for episode 10 of season 7, explaining how happy and free she feels when she swims. “Being fat makes me very well suited to year-round outdoor swimming in the UK as I rarely get cold and I’m about as buoyant as a giant pink inflatable flamingo floatie,” Amy said in her message, before revealing that she often feels excluded by other swimmers when they complain about putting on weight. “They don’t realise that what they’re talking about is the lengths they’ll go to, to have a body that looks as little as mine as possible. And that really hurts.” Amy signed off with a message of love and support for people who don’t feel they can join an activity that gives them joy, and that hopefully they can find a way to do it anyway.

Producer Debbie and the rest of the team keep all the voice notes like this away from Scottee until they’re ready to record his reactions. So what you hear is an authentic response — often a riot. “I do not want to be out there swimming around with somebody’s turd,” he told Amy. “I do want to be out there with a frog having a go at you down below.” It’s an example of how you are never sure how Scottee will respond — either offering support or just turning out a laugh. “I only ever rip people for the right sort of things — like, I’ve got strong feelings about gravy. But if someone’s having a hard time, I don't say ‘pull yourself together’.”

Of course he engages with the issue Amy and other callers raise. As an artist, he has made live work engaging with serious themes around masculinity, sexuality and class — including, in fact, one show about being large, called Fat Blokes. And although half the calls give Scottee the chance to state his preferences in his hilarious and distinctive style, often with a cavernous laugh, he responds more directly to the other half. It’s remarkable that he is able to hold both approaches at the same time, and it is the secret success of After The Tone. Often, podcasts about mental health are solemn. After The Tone is only ‘about’ mental health as much as it is about gravy. It really has the feeling of being in a pub, with a serious break-up conversation in one corner, and karaoke chaos in the other.

And of course, as in the pub, one of the exes may end up singing karaoke too — just as Scottee’s callers interact with other as the seasons grow. They refer to each other by the nicknames they use for themselves. It’s extraordinarily beautiful to hear strangers ‘meet’ in this way, and share similar stories. “Oh my god, I feel the same!” they often say, often linking around themes of queerness, exclusion and class. They also call back to update Scottee and listeners. In the final episode of the recent season, one person reminds Scottee that they previously called about feeling their bisexuality had become invisible now that they were in a relationship perceived to be straight. They report that posted that episode on Facebook, as a way of coming out to their friends and family as bisexual. “I know I would not have done that if it wasn’t for your positive response,” they told Scottee. “So I just appreciate it so much... Just wanted to say that.”

Scottee’s mum, who was a special guest on this episode, wells up and says how wonderful it is that Scottee has created a space where people feel able to do that. But Scottee won’t take credit — it’s the listeners who share their stories who create the safe space, he explains. This level of gravity never lasts for long in After The Tone. You only have to wait a few moments for the next bleep to introduce the next voice note from someone who says something like “I’ve got verrucas the size of cauliflowers on my feet”.

No doubt celebrities get verrucas too, and would probably mention them when they do the rounds on chatty podcasts — but there is something special about the fact that Scottee’s friends in the pub are not superstars in the usual sense. “To tell you the truth, most famous people are quite boring,” says Scottee, yawning at the idea of endless celebrity podcasts. “What they’ll say on one podcast they’ll say on another. There are a lot of podcasts out there that are podcasts for podcasts’ sake.”

After The Tone certainly isn’t one of those podcasts. It’s not even a podcast; it’s a pub. And it keeps growing. Every season finds more “FTCs” (first time callers), especially among “LTLs” (long-term listeners) — and they’ll certainly find their voices when season 8 launches on July 28th. The first episode will open with the controversial topic of what listeners are having for tea (or dinner, depending on where the country they’re calling from). And Scottee has strong opinions on people who call it “spag bol”...

Their work is to make weirdos feel less alone, and they’ll get together again soon. As regular caller That JRF says at the end of season 7, “Sending lots of love and light to everyone. I’ll miss you all while you’re away.”