Lynch the comedy monster - Alex Lynch interview

Written by: Nicholas Thompson
Published: Wednesday 4th June 2025

Ensuring a new generation is disturbed and amused seems to be par for the course when your surname is Lynch. British Comedy Guide is delighted to welcome Alex Lynch, the host of the Out of Character podcast and writer/producer behind Ramon Fear's Terror Tapes, to talk about his creatives process and influences. 'Oh baby I hear the blues a calling toss salad and scrambled heads'...

Hello Alex. How would you describe yourself? You wear a lot of hats! You're a writer, you're a producer, you're an editor...

I wouldn't call myself an editor! I can put bells and whistles on a drama but as for 'my hat', I'm a writer.

Producing audio and working in production has been really good because I've managed to network and meet other people in the industry and get my writing off the ground and commissioned, and that's all from working in production. That definitely wouldn't have happened if I had just been writing and sending stuff out. You might be making the tea as a runner, but you'll be sitting right next to the producer, and that's how I've ended up wearing a few hats. Purely just being freelance. You just have to keep working.

We're now in the era of podcasts and decimation of the traditional content services. We know that you work in both radio and podcasts. Can you tell us if there's a difference in your work and your approach for the different mediums?

With radio you have to tailor it more to the channel and its audience, so you might be more limited in terms of guidelines and compliance. If you have something for BBC Radio 4 you have to do it to a strict duration. You can't really do 28 minutes one episode and then 42 the next. With podcasts you have more free rein in terms of how long it is and the content you put into it.

It really depends because obviously BBC shows now wind up as podcasts and there are big networks that do radio! Radio is for a set time, a set schedule. Podcast - you put it online and it's on the internet forever really, well until someone takes it down... You have no limits and you can really let your imagination run wild. It's the reason so many people create podcasts, because it's doable. You can mostly make these things on a shoe-string budget.

It's really tricky because, if you'd ask me this 10 years ago, I could have given you a more defined answer of 'oh yeah what's radio and what's podcast' but now they're very similar.

Collaboration is massively important for creative people, can you please talk about your process and how you get the best out of the people that you work with?

Just being open to ideas, not trying to rule the roost. If someone comes in with an idea often it'll be something that I might not have done before but it doesn't necessarily mean that I don't take to it.

In the last few years, I've found more of my kind of people who I feel I work really well with, so it is all work and it's a kind of trial and error. But, with collaborating, it's interesting because I've always been a solo writer from a teenager and over the last few years I've started collaborating more, and it's motivating me to write more because of the other person and being able to bounce ideas off them because they're excited about a project. And that in turn makes me excited.

You do have to be a team player when you're working on any project. Especially if you're working on an audio project like Ramon's Fears Terror Tapes, the horror anthology that I co-write, which has so many different voices. There's my co-writer, Sam Thomas, and my co-producer Odinn Orn Hilmarsson, who is also the show's composer and sound designer. Then we also have our series director, Alexandra Morris. That's four different voices but we all listen to each other.

Horror and comedy is such a lovely line to play with. How do you toe the line between the two? What are the conscious choices to shape your work?

We're all horror fans so it's that thing that we tried to be genuine in terms of the authenticity of what we're writing, showing the sort of homage and love for it and for comedy just because that's both Sam's and my background. We always put comedy into what we're doing with Terror Tapes. We didn't want to make it so much spoof but more just tongue-in cheek, taking some of those horror tropes and then turning them on their head a little bit.

When you look at those old horror anthologies like Hammer Horror or Amicus and even listening to old radio horror that we really enjoyed, like The Inner Sanctum and Lights Out. It's all there, there's a funny element to it absolutely. It's one of the things particularly with Inner Sanctum which we took and put into our thing; you've got this very melodramatic horror story with this host that is kind of taking the piss a little bit, and then it just cuts clunkily and reverts to a real advert for Colgate tooth powder or Lipton soup and you think 'Christ! This just doesn't match!' That's what Sam and I loved about it!

So we thought - right, we've got to have this company that also doesn't fit with the show and obviously the products that we're trying to flog are fake, but it's that thing of imagining this corporate company has been given this money and they're paying a lot for what's being advertised. Our 'stuff' is definitely dangerous and not what anyone should be investing in! It just gives the show more variety because it's not just a ghost story. It's got a host, it's got a product placement, and it's got a fake trailer at the end for a film that doesn't exist.

That comedy is in there because we love those kind of old trailers, those Grindhouse trailers where you only know so much of it, especially when it gets really strange, when you have a foreign film that gets repackaged for a European audience and it's all out of context. It doesn't make any sense, but that's what's so brilliant and we wanted to basically do an audio version of that!

The comedy and the horror really automatically go hand in hand, we just have more fun. When you can make it silly but you can also make it genuinely creepy and horribly sounding and gruesome with a proper horror element, but when you use that with comedy you just have more fun making it, and first and foremost it's very much an independent project. If we're not having fun with it, what's the point in doing it?

Out of character! (British Comedy Guide loves a meta narrative)... You also run the Out of Character podcast where you talk with character comedians. Can you discuss the genesis of this and the future?

In lockdown, I taught myself how to record audio starting out on Audacity and I then moved on to Reaper. There were so many podcasts of people talking to stand-up comedians and no one was talking to sketch and character which is the world that I love. I spoke to a few friends where I said I want to interview you, and I had this idea of it as a career chat, but there's also this element where I get them to make up a character, solely based on a name given to them by the previous guest which has turned out to be a really great part of the show and makes it a bit different.

I made a real rod for my back because I now have to record, edit and release those episodes in order for continuity. I didn't think I'd end up doing it for 55 episodes so far. I'm very thankful to the people that did it originally, particularly Tom Crowley who was my guinea pig at the start of it all. When you hear people such as Kieran Hodgson and Anna Morris suddenly becoming those characters. It's good to hear more about 'that person' under the skin of the character. It's fantastic listening to them embody the character that they are making up on the spot.

I've ended up speaking to people that I didn't know personally, like Alex Lowe (Barry From Watford and Clinton Baptiste) and people that I did, like Georgia Pritchett (one of the writers of Succession). When one person agrees to do it then suddenly other people agree to it. I didn't know Andy Riley from Adam! I reached out to him and I think it was because he saw some of my previous guests that he was happy. I went to his office and we had a three hour chat and that was put out as a two parter.

When I first started Out of Character, the episodes were only 45 to 50 minutes. Now I like to keep them to around an hour or so for quality control. It's important when you're putting stuff out. You have to ask the question 'does this really benefit the podcast?' I could chat about comedy until the cows come home. I get to chat to people who do comedy about comedy, that's a luxury for me. I've continued because it doesn't cost me to do it. I record it, edit it, produce it, host it.

What have you learnt from talking with so many comics? Do you have any clear takeaways that have helped you with your own work?

It always really fascinates me how different everyone's background is and how they got into comedy, and the presumptions of people thinking 'well maybe they went to drama school?' Or 'They went to uni and they met that person etc etc.' I know people who I made assumptions about and I was totally wrong, and it's really fascinating to find that out and learn the true story.

Richard Soames said 'I think you should speak to David Reed, he'd be really good for this' and, of course, I knew of David's work but I was nervous because he was the first person I was having on the show who I hadn't spoken to before. Yet as soon as he picked up the phone I knew I could talk to this guy. He has this whole thing about 'sketch being about play'. We love watching these comedians because it's 'play' and how sketch is all about managing your time by zero pounds. Everyone's take is unique in terms of why they did comedy, and how they approach it and their stance on comedy in the future. I take away a lot, in every interview when I'm editing, there is always some line where I am just like 'that's a brilliant quote' it's something that makes the show special.

People who are downloading and listening to this are there for the guests and not me, so I want to make sure I get the best out them. Being able to give people space is so important when you're doing these interviews. There'll be a moment where they go 'oh wow I never really thought about this until you brought it up'. Especially the writers, the ones who are writers more than performers where they don't really get to talk about their writing that much. As Andy Riley said: 'I don't have a therapist - I'm not being paid for this chat but nor am I being charged...'.

It's nice to feel that people feel comfortable enough to talk to me about whatever is on their mind in terms of their process, their love of comedy, their history of it and anything else really! Recently comedy writer Alice Etches spoke to me about how she got the official diagnosis of ADHD and I asked her 'how does that manifest itself in your creativity in your writing?' It was really interesting to hear about it, and that was completely by accident I didn't know that, and I hadn't intended to talk about it but then it was that moment of thinking if she feels comfortable talking about it let's find out how her writing process and attention span all coalesce.

Is there something that you want people to watch or to read or to listen to as a view into your own tastes?

Frasier for me is possibly the perfect sitcom. I adore Frasier, Spaced and Fawlty Towers. Perhaps for me they're the holy three.

Fawlty Towers doesn't have a small dog in it whereas Spaced and Fraiser does... Would Fawlty Towers be better with a small dog?

You know, I think that could be the only way it's slightly improved, perhaps especially, if the dog is as good an actor as Moose!

Also the golden age of The Simpsons...

The Simpsons is a work of genius and my 'golden age' of The Simpsons would be Seasons 4 to 8. I still watch them and I still find a joke I missed 10 years ago - or 20 years ago - and I think that's what makes it such brilliant writing, as well as comedy. There are so many layers you find as a kid and even more layers you find as an adult so I think those four things would be the best insight into my taste.

Alex, you are a busy boy! What's next and what can you talk about?

More Out of Character with some very exciting guests. More Ramon Fear's Terror Tapes. We've got a Patreon which we have just launched in order to try and build funds so that we're able to make our second series next year. We'll be making small things like little mini episodes and we'll still have stuff coming out this year, but in terms of making a full official cast series that's something that hopefully we will be doing in 2026.

We're going to use this year to try and build our 'brand' and our audience. We want people to keep listening to Ramon Fear and keep spreading the word and telling people about it. I'm also looking forward to other collaborations with people - including a short film I made recently with the super-talented trio of Sally Hodgkiss, Michelle Fahrenheim and Zoë Morgan Chiswick, which is currently in the edit. Other than that, just the simple task of keeping things ticking over and surviving in London!

For Ramon Fear's Terror Tapes visit ramonfear.com

Out of Character can be found at on podcast platforms including Acast