Best Interview Podcasts UK: 15 Shows Worth Your Time in 2026

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Jonny Hoffner of Paper Antler Photography and Good Lion Golf on 17 years of wedding photography, building two creative businesses, and why good doesn't have to mean safe.

The UK has produced some of the most distinctive interview podcasts in the world. There’s something about the British approach to conversation that makes for genuinely good listening: the self-deprecating humor, the willingness to sit with silence, the refusal to wrap things up too neatly.

Whether you’re in London or just curious what’s been happening across the Atlantic, these 15 shows represent the best UK interview podcasts available right now. Some are household names. Some deserve to be.

What makes a great interview podcast?

Before the list: the shows here were chosen because they do something specific well. The host listens. The conversations go somewhere unexpected. There’s a reason you come back for the next episode.

Great interview podcasts don’t just feature interesting guests. They create conditions where something real can happen. That’s rare, and it’s worth seeking out.

1. The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett

Steven Bartlett built one of the UK’s most successful podcast franchises by doing something deceptively simple: taking his guests seriously. His interviews blend entrepreneurship, psychology, and personal history in ways that feel both practical and emotionally honest.

Why it’s worth your time: The production quality is excellent, but it’s the depth of preparation that sets it apart. Bartlett does his homework, and his guests respond with uncommon candor.

2. How to Fail with Elizabeth Day

Author and journalist Elizabeth Day asks every guest the same question: what have you failed at, and what did it teach you? The format sounds gimmicky but it isn’t. The structure creates room for stories that never get told in standard profile interviews.

Why it’s worth your time: It reframes the idea of success entirely, and the guests (artists, athletes, academics, comedians) bring genuinely different answers.

3. Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4)

Running since 1942, Desert Island Discs is arguably the original long-form interview podcast, before the format had a name. Each guest chooses eight records they’d take to a desert island. The music becomes a doorway into a life story.

Why it’s worth your time: The archive alone makes it worth exploring. You’ll find interviews with figures from every era of the 20th and 21st century, each shaped by the same deceptively simple premise.

4. The Adam Buxton Podcast

Comedian and filmmaker Adam Buxton describes his show as “rambling chats.” That undersells it. His interviews with friends, musicians, and comedians are funny, strange, and surprisingly moving.

Why it’s worth your time: Buxton has a gift for making his guests feel genuinely comfortable, which is when the best stuff usually happens.

5. Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster

Comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster invite guests into their “dream restaurant” and ask them to choose their perfect meal. It’s a comedy podcast dressed as a food interview, and it’s one of the funniest shows on any platform.

Why it’s worth your time: The format is silly, but the conversations it produces are surprisingly intimate. Talking about food turns out to be a great way to talk about everything else.

6. Table Manners with Jessie Ware

Singer Jessie Ware hosts this show with her mother Lennie. They cook a meal for a guest, eat together, and talk. The family dynamic makes conversations feel different from standard podcast interviews.

Why it’s worth your time: Warmth and food. The combination produces conversations that feel genuinely human.

7. Happy Place with Fearne Cotton

TV presenter Fearne Cotton focuses her conversations on mental health, wellbeing, and what it means to be happy. She’s been public about her own struggles, and that honesty creates permission for guests to be open in return.

Why it’s worth your time: A thoughtful, compassionate show that treats emotional intelligence as the most interesting topic there is.

8. The Louis Theroux Podcast

Documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux brings his famously curious, quietly persistent interview style to the podcast format. His guests include people he’s made documentaries about as well as new conversations with subjects he’s long found fascinating.

Why it’s worth your time: Theroux is one of the best interviewers working in any medium. The podcast format gives him room to follow threads he couldn’t in documentary.

9. Grounded with Louis Theroux

A separate series from the one above, Grounded features Theroux in extended conversations with high-profile guests. The format strips away everything except the conversation itself.

Why it’s worth your time: If you enjoy long, unhurried conversations that reward patience, this is the show.

10. Everything I Know About Love Podcast with Dolly Alderton

Author Dolly Alderton has extended her work on love, friendship, and growing up into audio. Her conversations are honest, often funny, and rooted in questions that matter to people in their twenties and thirties.

Why it’s worth your time: Alderton’s writing made her a voice of a generation. Her interviews carry the same quality.

11. Miss Me? with Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver

Friends Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver interview guests and each other about life, nostalgia, fame, and everything in between. It’s funny, frank, and occasionally surprisingly deep.

Why it’s worth your time: The friendship between hosts creates a tone that’s impossible to manufacture. You feel like you’ve known them for years within a few episodes.

12. The Receipts Podcast

Millie, Tolly, and Audrey talk frankly about relationships, sex, race, and culture, often with guests who add to the conversation. The honesty is refreshing and the laughs are real.

Why it’s worth your time: One of the most popular Black British podcasts running, and for good reason. The conversation is always alive.

13. HARDtalk (BBC World Service)

A harder-edged political and current affairs interview show from the BBC, where host Stephen Sackur holds politicians, diplomats, and world figures to account. Not casual listening, but excellent when you want something with teeth.

Why it’s worth your time: One of the few interview formats that genuinely challenges its subjects rather than platforming them.

14. The High Low with Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes

Now archived but still worth discovering, The High Low was a cultural conversation between two journalists navigating media, feminism, and pop culture. It built one of the most loyal audiences in UK podcasting.

Why it’s worth your time: The archive holds up. It’s a record of intelligent, honest cultural commentary across several years.

15. So Many Questions…

So Many Questions… is a US show, but it belongs on any list of interview podcasts worth seeking out. Host Kendall Guillemette goes deep on identity, meaning, and what makes people who they are. The tone is warm and curious, the conversations go places most interviews don’t.

If you love UK podcasts because they take their time and don’t tie things up too neatly, So Many Questions… operates from the same instinct.

What these shows have in common

Every podcast on this list takes the guest seriously. Not as a subject, but as a person. The best UK interview podcasts tend to resist the celebrity format, where the interview exists mainly to promote something. They’re after something more specific: a real answer to a real question.

That’s what makes them worth your time. Not the names, but the conversations those names make possible.