Pick of the podcasts: Where There’s A Will There’s A Wake, Red Elvis, Working It

Kathy Burke hosts Where There's A Will There's A Wake

Contemplating death and how the world will see you off may not seem like the most upbeat topic for a comedy podcast.

Unless you’re listening to Where There’s A Will There’s A Wake, the extremely entertaining new podcast by comedian Kathy Burke.

Burke sits down with some of her comedy friends to chat about how they see their deaths, funerals and wakes playing out. Basically, as Burke describes, it’s a fantasy football version of death and funeral planning with plenty of jokes thrown in.

The resulting interviews are actually hilarious and, at times, a bit moving, as guests including Dawn French, Joe Lycett, Stuart Lee, Diane Morgan and Roisin Connaty plot their own demise, and decide who’s in their will and who they’re haunting.

In the first episode, Dawn French rather enthusiastically forsees an accidental stage death involving a falling prop (that spells out a rude word) and a round of applause from her blissfully unaware audience as her ideal way to bow out of existence.

Her extravagant fantasy plans for her funeral and where her body ends up will have listeners in stitches. It sums up Burke’s hope to “laugh in death’s face”, a desire that may ring true for more of us than ever after the past few years.

“After all, every day lived is a day closer to death,” points out Burke, cheerfully.

There’s something oddly cathartic about listening to people’s irreverent and amusing takes on their own deaths. Burke, with her warm cackle and wonderful humour, is a interviewer who delights in riffing off her guests.

Red Elvis

US singer Dean Reed failed to make it in America but became a superstar in communist countries during the 1960s-80s. He became known as “the Johnny Cash of Communism” or “Red Elvis”.

But when Reed died in East Germany, his family questioned if it really was an accident or suicide as reported.

This podcast by his daughter, Ramona, investigates if there was more to his death.

Working It

Monday always comes around too soon, doesn’t it? Yet it’s no big deal for workers at the 70 businesses across the country that are taking part in the biggest-ever trail of a four-day working week.

In this podcast from The Financial Times, Emma Jacobs and Isabel Berwick visit four institutions to see if the premise works and if it can help to foster a better work life balance and more productivity.