Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains back for 2 more series on Comedy Central
- Comedy Central has commissioned two more series of Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains
- James Acaster, Paul Sinha, Joe Thomas, Russell Kane and Geoff Norcott are among the guests discussing teenage embarrassment
- Gilbert has also recorded his Book Of John live show as a special
Rhod Gilbert's Growing Pains is returning for two more series, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal, while the Welsh comic has recently recorded a new stand-up special.
The Comedy Central chat-cum-panel show in which Gilbert judges guest comedians and celebrities on their embarrassing teenage memories, returns for a fourth series in mid-May.
Forthcoming guest include James Acaster, Paul Sinha, Joe Thomas, Russell Kane, Geoff Norcott, Prue Leith, Robert Peston and Dr Zoe Williams, with the fifth series expected to air later this year.
Gilbert has revealed that researching for the new series made him "quite sad", because he struggles to retain enough focus for hobbies and has never had enough confidence to try different creative pastimes.
"Listening to people who are confident, my God!" he said on fellow stand-up Rich Wilson's Insane In The Men Brain podcast. "I won't name them because they're coming up on the next series. But two women I've been researching this week, both of them essentially said that when they were kids, they didn't know what they couldn't do.
"They just thought anything they wanted to do, we'll give it a go, there's no limitations. That's what their parents had given them. That they went, 'oh, when I'm 16, I want to leave school and go to France and open a business' ... Absolutely no sense of 'this is beyond me'.
"Whereas I grew up thinking I can't do anything, nothing at all. No confidence, no self-esteem, nothing ... Other people write songs, other people could write a book, other people could go to France and become a businessperson.
"If you'd said to me as a teenager that you could do stand-up comedy, or be in a band or you could write a book, even that you could open your own business, fucking anything, you might as well have said to me 'you'll walk to the moon, you'll go into space, you'll be an astronaut'. Being in a band was as mad as that."
Previous guests have included Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Vic Reeves, Johnny Vegas, Sara Pascoe, Jimmy Carr, David Baddiel, Jason Manford, Zoe Lyons, Robert Webb, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Tom Allen, Sally Phillips, Aisling Bea, Josh Widdicombe, Joel Dommett, Rosie Jones, Roisin Conaty and Kiell Smith-Bynoe.
Made by Rumpus Media (Joe Lycett's Got Your Back, The Misadventures Of Romesh Ranganathan), the three previous series of Growing Pains ran last year, with the most recent, airing in November and December, averaging around 130,000 viewers an episode.
Meanwhile, Gilbert recorded his Book Of John tour as a special for a currently unknown broadcaster at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff last week.