The Complete Guide To Everything arrives in London

Words: Rebecca Kent

No one is more surprised at the soaring success of weekly podcast The Complete Guide To Everything than its creators, Tom Reynolds and Tim Daniels. Their goal to vanquish Wikipedia as the go-to reference for knowledge about anything and everything may not have been acheived yet, but it’s turning out to be an highly entertaining journey.

From North Korea and Nicolas Cage toGordon Ramsay, not much is off-limits as the pair continue their quest to make the world a more informed place.

“At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, it’s very tongue-in-cheek that we’re actually a guide to anything,“ Daniels, 29, says. “We’re not very well informed on any of the topics we discuss, so we just end up going into a free association, identifying what we know, then heading off on tangents.“

Indeed, a recent podcast about Reynold’s trip to Austin’s South By Southwest 2012, featured ruminations on St Patrick’s Day all-nighters, bathroom shenanigans, aggressive jerks at bars, a house with no privacy, and homeless 4G hotspots. You may scratch your head, but, with more than two million downloads since the friends launched their first podcast on June 25, 2009 – the day of Michael Jackson’s death – the formula works.

In the UK, The Complete Guide has featured prominently on the nation’s iTunes podcast directory since its inception. Worldwide, it’s had 50,000 downloads a week, with 50 per cent of those coming from the UK and 35 per cent coming from the US.

This week, Reynolds and Daniels step out from behind the recording equipment to perform their schtick live at London’s King’s Place. Accompanied by a host of visual elements, the world-weary men will share outrageous personal stories, concoct harebrained schemes, solve audience members’ personal problems, bicker with each other, and crack jokes
of varying levels of taste.

It’s the podcasters’ second UK visit and Daniels is eager to put some old ghosts to put to bed. “Last time London provided endless fodder for our subsequent podcasts,“ he says.

“However, unfortunately, the real wellspring of inspiration came from the fact that I stupidly did not keep my eye on my bag when I was in a pub in London, and it was stolen. So that was basically the thrust of the post-London shows that time: me saying awful things about the city, which I’d like to take this opportunity to retract.