Five minutes with… podcast superstars Chris and Rosie Ramsey

In London alone, the South Shields duo, both 36, sold out The O2 Arena, Wembley Arena and The Palladium.

Then came the fittingly named Chris and Rosie Ramsey Show, which imported their same comic chat to the realms of TV, airing last year on BBC Two.

A huge hit, a second season is about to start – though this time on BBC One.

Filmed in front of a live studio audience, the latest series will see the co-hosts welcome more celebrity couples to air their candid confessions, vent their hilarious ‘Beef’ and share in incredible audience moments.

Other popular elements, beloved by fans, such as Please Keep Me Anonymous and It Goes or I go, will also feature. Which, judging by past standards, will certainly bring the laughs.

We cannot wait. So what else can the Ramseys tease ahead of their latest six-episode run?

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE NEW SERIES?

C: We’ve got a couple of good names floating around for celebrity guests, but I don’t want to jinx it because we had dropouts last series, as with the nature of the industry. But we’re excited. Whoever we get on, we always know it’s going to be a laugh, because we’ve got me, Rosie, and the third presenter, which is our audience. They’re like another member of the cast.

R: We’re just looking forward to doing it all again. And we’ll be on BBC One this time, so it’s even more exciting. It’s a real honour.

WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT FILMING IN FRONT OF A LIVE AUDIENCE?

R: We prefer it. We’ve got more experience with a live audience, than TV.

C: It’s our natural habitat. The podcast is just me and Rosie, but a TV show with a studio audience, I find excruciating. I find it really, really hard to do. [The live audience is] like a night out, a raucous gig, the fans are fantastic, and they get involved and they’re really happy to be there. Which helps us a lot. We try to make the audience at home feel like they’re in on the party.

THE SERIES SEES THE RETURN OF YOUR FAMOUS ‘WHAT’S YOUR BEEF?’, ‘IT GOES OR I GO’, AND ‘PLEASE KEEP ME ANONYMOUS’ SEGMENTS – WHICH IS YOUR FAVOURITE?

R: I love It Goes or I Go, where members of the public bring stuff in that they want their partners to get rid of. That was so much fun. We’ve never done anything like that before, so we didn’t know how it’s going to land or what it was going to be like. But when we were filming that, I looked forward to that part of the show every time, because it was just so crazy.

WHICH STARS WOULD FEATURE ON YOUR DREAM GUEST LIST?

C: Well, what we see as an unrealistic dream couple is John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. I’d love to sit them down and pick through their relationship, not even for the TV show, just for our own amusement. I did have a dream that we got Barack and Michelle Obama on.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE FORMAT WORKS SO WELL WITH CELEBRITIES AT THE FOREFRONT?

C: I think it’s getting them into our world of oversharing. We’ve never had anyone after the show go, ‘I wish I hadn’t said that; make sure that doesn’t go on’. Relationships are so relatable to people at home, to everyone everywhere, and so when you hear someone who you regard as a big celebrity come on our show and say, ‘My partner does this’, it makes a connection with people. As long as they want to come on, have a laugh at themselves and laugh at each other, we’ll have a mint time.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER?

R: For me, personally, it’s nice to work with somebody who I trust wholeheartedly. He’s my husband, I trust him, and in workplaces, it’s really hard to get that sort of relationship to build up. It takes years, whereas we already have that.

C: I just love that everyone else is seeing how funny and talented Rosie is. When she says something on one of our arena shows, or on the TV, and it gets a massive round of applause or a massive laugh, just a joke or a little quip, it’s amazing.

YOU GO ON ANOTHER TOUR LATER THIS YEAR WITH YOUR PODCAST. ARE YOU EXCITED?

R: The tour is brilliant, we loved [the last one] so much. We did arenas, it was unbelievable, it was the best experience ever. The crowds were great, everyone was on board, everyone just had such a laugh, and everyone wants to just have a good time.

C: The TV show and the arenas are some of the best nights I’ve ever had in my life. Dare I say, I enjoyed the live show more than I enjoy stand up. Stand up is my main love, but the arena shows, when I was pouring my second or third glass of wine, I was thinking, ‘I couldn’t do this in stand up’. I am enjoying this so much.

HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO STAND UP FOR YOU?

C: I was standing at the back of the O2, in the interval, opening a second bottle of wine and thinking, ‘All I have to do now is just go out and react to whatever filth or stupidity that Rosie has found in these emails’. I love the idea of stand up and I would love to do a tour where I just speak to the audience, but you don’t always get an audience that you can get an hour’s worth of stuff out of – that’s the roll of the dice. But our audience is so up for it, that the nights are just like a big party. I didn’t have to prepare much.

WHEN YOU STARTED THE PODCAST, COULD YOU EVER IMAGINE THIS LEVEL OF SUCCESS?

R: It’s a real privilege, it really is. We’re living a life I never thought we’d live.

C: Can you imagine if when we started the podcast, we sat down and said, ‘Right this is the plan: we’re going to do the Palladium, Wembley and the O2, sell them out on the same run, and then we’re going to have a BBC Two show and after one season jump to BBC One’. We’re on a roller coaster that’s still going and we’re having a lovely time, so we’ll ride it until it breaks down.

The Chris and Rosie Ramsey Show will start on BBC One on Friday, at 10.40pm.