Clara’s Verdict
I put Should Know By Now on during a long afternoon of admin on the basis that it was short enough to be a reward rather than a commitment, and immediately found myself sending a voice note to a friend at episode three because the parallel parking demonstration had made me laugh so hard I had to stop what I was doing. Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins have been performing their friendship publicly for three decades and it has never, in all that time, felt performed. That is an unusual quality, and it is the thing that makes this Audible Original, released in March 2025 and rated five stars from two Audible UK listeners, feel less like branded content and more like eavesdropping on a conversation that happens to also be informative.
The premise is ostensibly educational. The execution is pure comedy. And somehow, between the two, something genuinely illuminating keeps breaking through.
About the Audiobook
Six episodes, each built around a pair of questions that Mel and Sue are genuinely embarrassed to ask anyone other than each other. Mel does not fully understand how bread rises, despite seven years presenting The Great British Bake Off. Sue cannot parallel park in front of a crowd, despite being by her own confident account an otherwise excellent driver. These are the entry points. The destinations are considerably more interesting.
Over the course of the series they cover bread and dogs, lentils and pants, parking and floor food, the meaning of kink, the science of laughter, and the question of how to age gracefully when your children want you to lean into being old and you disagree. Each episode proceeds by the same structure: one question from each host, answered by the other with whatever combination of genuine knowledge, wild speculation, and anecdotal evidence they can muster. The knowledge is real but lightly worn; the speculation is clearly labelled; and the anecdotal evidence frequently derails the conversation entirely, which is precisely when it becomes funniest.
The Bake Off wrap party stories, Sue’s account of her dog’s domestic arrangements, the Great Kink Quiz that Mel did not see coming and clearly wished she had, the revelation that lentils and the gut microbiome lead directly to a contested celebrity anecdote: none of this is what the episode titles promise, and all of it is better than what the titles promise. The series is structured as a comedy rather than a podcast, and that distinction matters: the editing is tighter, the audio quality is professional, and the pace is brisk in a way that reflects genuine production intention rather than happy accident.
What makes this more than a celebrity podcast is the specific quality of the friendship on display. Mel and Sue are not performing for each other. The genuine surprise, the actual embarrassment, the real laughter that sometimes overwhelms the content entirely and renders both of them temporarily useless as broadcasters: these are the moments that make the series feel like genuine access rather than produced intimacy. They have been best friends for over thirty years and it shows in every exchange.
The Narration
Mel Giedroyc provides the connective tissue between and around episodes, and both voices are present throughout as the series is presented as a recording of the live conversations between the two hosts. This is genuinely a two-hander rather than a solo narration with a guest, which is unusual for the Audible Originals format and entirely appropriate to the material. The recording quality is warm and professional, the sound design is unobtrusive, and the editing, where it is detectable at all, preserves the conversational rhythm that is the whole point of the enterprise.
What Readers Say
Both Audible UK reviewers gave five stars, and both described an experience of involuntary public laughter. One had to close an office door to avoid disturbing a reception area. The other described the series as everything I have ever wanted in audio form, the funniest podcast she had ever listened to, and reported sharing snippets with anyone who happened across her life after discovering it. Given the audio-native format and the warmth of the response, the review count will almost certainly grow as word spreads through the audience for this kind of warm, intelligent comedy.
Who Should Listen?
Anyone who already has a fondness for Mel and Sue will find this an entirely gratifying three and a half hours. But it works beyond that audience too: it is a genuinely funny piece of audio that also happens to touch, lightly and without pretension, on the science of laughter, the neuroscience of skill acquisition, the gut microbiome, and the psychology of ageing without embarrassment. At three and a half hours it is an ideal companion for a long train journey, an afternoon of housework, or any occasion when you want to feel that your own embarrassing knowledge gaps are entirely normal and very funny.
