Blindboy Boatclub to take on housing crisis in new series for BBC

Podcast host ‘would have loved to focus on Irish housing crisis’, but RTÉ ‘didn’t ask’ him

Blindboy Boatclub: the author and musician says he will tackle the Irish housing crisis on his podcast
Blindboy Boatclub: the author and musician says he will tackle the Irish housing crisis on his podcast

Blindboy Boatclub, of the Rubber Bandits music and comedy duo, is to present a BBC series about the housing crisis and its impact on young people.

The broadcaster says that the programme, whose working title is Blindboy Undestroys the World, will feature "a unique mixture of irreverent commentary, absurdism, secret filming and a band of undercover reporters" in which "Blindboy seeks to expose the socially corrupt practices that exist in the dark and shady world of property".

The project was announced at Edinburgh TV Festival on Tuesday by Damian Kavanagh, controller of BBC Three, who called Blindboy "a truly unique voice".

Soon after the announcement Blindboy tweeted that the series is "about the housing crisis IN BRITAIN. Because bbc paid for it. I would have loved to focus on the Irish housing crisis, but RTE would have to ask me to make that, and they didn't."

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He said he would cover the Irish housing crisis on his podcast, which he launched in October last year. It quickly became a hit: by January it had been listened to almost a million times, according to the host. The series, whose most recent episode is an interview with Spike Lee about his new film, BlacKkKlansman, now has more than 200,000 listeners a week, he said.

Blindboy will host live editions of his podcast in the Mindfield area of this year's Electric Picnic festival, as well as Illuminate, a series of "illustrated talks with artists and creatives".

Glen Murphy

Glen Murphy

Glen Murphy is an Irish Times journalist