Low viewing figures, copy-cat content and a passion for his own voice: DOLLY BUSBY reviews the podcast launch Amol Rajan's new venture

Amol Rajan has a passion… for the sound of his own voice.

Unfortunately, as the rather low viewing figures attracted by the launch of his first podcast episode on YouTube today suggest, he is rather alone in this sentiment.

After signing off from his £250,000-a-year job at Radio 4 last month, the former Today host, 43, with much teasing and fanfare, invited viewers to subscribe to his new website - The Amol Rajan Connection - and its accompanying YouTube channel.

And today, after months of tirelessly promoting his latest venture with a slew of under-performing, cringeworthy TikTok videos, he finally released his first interview: A far too long, two hours with Sir Gareth Southgate.

Despite pledging to take fans, who are paying up to £999 for a bizarre lifetime subscription, into the future and shake up the new digital creator economy, Rajan has hardly coloured outside the lines.

Firstly, his set is almost a carbon copy of Paul C Brunson’s highly successful We Need To Talk podcast - or pretty much any studio these days - with low seats, deliberately placed ‘homeware’ and standing microphones to give a sense of intimacy.

We find Rajan sitting opposite the former England manager, 43, in a 70s-style low-lit maroon podcasting studio, the shelves behind them littered with miscellaneous items.

Piles of books, a Rubik's cube and chess board unsubtly hint to viewers that ‘this is intellectual’ while an Amol Rajan Connection poster sits in the middle as a reminder; we are no longer at the BBC, and a stuffed toy dog because, well, he’s kooky.

The man himself is reclined in a crushed velvet chair and for his big moment he has chosen to wear a sultry black buttoned-down shirt, a pair of what can only be described as Hugh Hefner-style ruby red slippers and his trademark two watches glint in the orange lamplight.

Aside from being two hours, which is, by anyone’s standards, insanely long for a podcast episode and actually rather self-indulgent, everything else about Rajan’s structure is a blueprint of what’s come before.

I found myself audibly sighing with exhaustion when the same sensational intro was used - cutting the ‘biggest revelations’ of the upcoming episode into short, trailer-like cliff-hangers, making you want to watch more.

It’s a hook technique coined by the geniuses over at Steven Bartlett’s Diary of A CEO that has rather tiresomely been copied by every other podcaster in the industry.

I certainly didn’t want to watch more after that, but Rajan reminded me in the comment section: ‘Please do listen to the whole conversation for all the context too.’

And so we come on to his choice of guest which was, again, nothing new.

Introducing his show for the first time, he promised to interview: ‘Simply the smartest and most interesting people on the planet.

‘Our aim is to build the most useful platform for ideas anywhere in the world to slow our world down and explain the deep forces and trends shaping this crazy era.’

He continued: ‘In this very first episode of the Amol Rajan Connection, I want to explore the enigma of that very English everyman, Gareth Southgate.

‘An introvert who has spent decades in the public eye and a proud patriot who since stepping away from football has turned his attention to the crisis of meaning facing a generation of boys and young men.’

And in a tone as if we had never heard of him or from him before, ‘Who is Gareth Southgate?’

But a quick Google shows that Sir Gareth is a familiar face to the podcast circuit and has answered all these questions before. 

In the past year, he has not only been on Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s award-winning podcast, The Rest Is Politics: Leading, but also on The High Performance podcast and launched his own, The Football Boardroom.

The content of the interview, to cut to the chase, is nothing revelatory.

He covered the same topics: life lessons learned from missing the penalty kick in the Euro 96 semi-final game against Germany, leadership and resilience in men and how his childhood shaped his future.

But, given that it was two hours, there were some minor admissions squeezed out of him by Rajan, a veteran interviewer.

Perhaps the most notable was that it would be ‘unlikely’ the former Three Lions boss would return to Premier League management after resigning when they devastatingly lost out to Spain in the 2024 Euro finals.

I’m no football fan, but, is that a surprise?

What listeners did learn, however, was a lot of new information about Rajan - yipee!

As established, he loves the sound of his own voice, and he even admitted early on in the interview: ‘I’m trying to relate to my own story because, why wouldn’t you.’

He said: 'I have a kind of secret based on the research, the extensive research we've done for this I have a bit of a secret theory about Gareth Southgate.

‘I got dropped from the Surrey under-17 squad when I was 17 years old because I wasn't good enough.

‘I kind of pretended it was because I had an injury and I did a little bit, but um I got dropped, and I wanted to bowl for England, and I wasn't good enough.

‘But it was kind of the making of me because I had this letter at home from this guy. His name was Rick, the coach, and he wrote this letter saying, "I'm so sorry dear Mr. Rajan” to my parents, “But your son's going to have to be let go."

‘And I think that that fired me up and I've sort of wanted to prove him wrong.’

He then went on to say a letter that Sir Gareth received aged 13, dropping him from Southampton FC, had the same effect on the football star and led the former Crystal Palace captain to be manager of the England Football team.

But, crucially, where Rajan differs from his competitors is viewer numbers across the board.

After three hours, the episode had 750 views and the X post promoting it was ‘liked’ just two times.

These are stats that will perhaps not be particularly welcomed by Rajan’s new big dog brand partners - Amazon, NatWest, Google Cloud and Waitrose.

Rajan appears to take great joy in letting us know at the beginning of the episode that he has met Amazon’s global CEO, Andy Jassy, and their UK boss, John Bountry.

And don’t worry he has also ‘spent time’ with Kate Alessi and Sundar Pichai, the CEOs of Google Cloud and he has also managed to squeeze NatWest’s CEO, Paul Thwaite, and Waitrose’s managing director, Tom Denard, into his busy schedule.

When he took to Instagram two weeks ago to announce his partnership with Amazon, he was met with a slew of disappointed comments from eco-warriors claiming the delivery giant and retailer was detrimental to the environment.

But perhaps most concerningly for Rajan were the calls to boycott his show as a result.

Judging from his viewing figures, one has to wonder if it was a successful one!

It’s safe to say that this is perhaps not what we were sold by the promotional videos posted to Rajan’s TikTok page which is still at a less-than-impressive 21,000 followers.

It comes after his plans to appear on Celebrity Traitors - which has become one of the biggest events in the television year with an enviable audience of 14million - which was going to be the PR equivalent of being fired out of a cannon.

Instead of being able to ‘ride the show’s promotional wave ’, he was the first star to be murdered at Scotland’s Ardross Castle at the beginning of the second episode.

Let’s hope he lasts longer in the already over-saturated podcasting circuit - especially those who have shelled out that £999 for the lifetime subscription!