Monstrosities Mon Amour
Monstrosities Mon Amour
Podcast Description
In Monstrosities Mon Amour we celebrate places and things that have been unfairly monstered in popular opinion. Host John Grindrod will be your excitable guide to a world beyond the lazy stereotypes of crap towns and guilty pleasures. He'll be meeting people who’ll share their enthusiasm for monsters major and minor, places that get a bad press and cultural artefacts that need to be rescued from the bin.
‘Warmly, welcomingly geeky.’ Jude Rogers, Observer
‘What a breath of fresh air … a genuine celebration of places and culture it’s all too easy to dismiss.’ Radio Times
Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando.
You can support the podcast by subscribing through Substack or https://ko-fi.com/grindrod.
Thank you for listening. johngrindrod.substack.com
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast delves into themes of cultural appreciation, urban spaces, and pop culture phenomena, with episodes focusing on towns that face stigma, quirky architectural features, and nostalgia for forgotten trends. For example, episodes celebrate the gothic architecture of Minster Court and the American-style relics of Swindon while discussing topics like class and excess in society.
Monstrosities Mon Amour celebrates places and things that have been unfairly dismissed. Host John Grindrod (author of Tales of the Suburbs and Concretopia) is your excitable guide to a world beyond the lazy stereotypes of crap towns and guilty pleasures. He meets people who share their enthusiasm for monsters major and minor, places that get a bad press and cultural artefacts that need to be rescued from the bin.
‘Warmly, welcomingly geeky.’ Observer
‘A genuine celebration of places and culture it’s all too easy to dismiss.’ Radio Times
Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando.
You can support the podcast by subscribing through Substack or https://ko-fi.com/grindrod.
Thank you for listening.
The Austin Maxi keeps taking me from Milton Keynes to other new towns. This time it’s Glenrothes in Fife, founded in 1948, and specifically the Kingdom Centre, the massive indoor shopping centre where in her youth journalist Gabriella Bennett could enjoy an ice blast and buy fashionable tracksuits.
Home of a vast array of brilliant public art, especially its famous hippos, the new town shows a postwar vision of optimism and community cuilding. The shopping centre brings garden centre chic to the town, selling consumerist dreams to generations of residents. It may be the heart of the city, but it’s generally derided as an eyesore. Gabriella tells a story of the dreams of the town, her experience of noughties teenage life in Silicon Glen, and the way it has reinventied itself decade after decade.
As well as that, Gabriella champions a niche interest – the autobiographical writings found in cookery books, especially Nigel Slater’s. Often baffling, these essays have captured her imagination, and brighten up a midweek microwaved baked spud.
Gabriella Bennett is a journalist and non-ficton writer. Her book, How to Build a City: Journeys into the Urban Future, is an exploration of future cities around the world. In her journalism she specialises in writing about housing and architecture, travel, place and cities with a focus on the possibilities of radical urban planning. You can find out more out of her work on her website www.gabriellabennett.com or on Instagram at @palebackwriter
Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod
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