OUTCAST WORLD

Welsh-Iranian comedian, writer and rising theatre menace Leila Navabi joins Outcast World for one of the funniest and weirdly moving chats we’ve had in ages. You’ll probably know Leila already from writing on Bad Education, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, or from voicing Claire in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. She’s also become a major name on the UK live comedy circuit, supporting comics including Nish Kumar and Jessica Fostekew while quietly building a reputation as one of the sharpest queer comedy voices working right now. But this episode is really about the project that might push her into another league entirely: turning her real-life queer DIY conception story into a musical. After being told in her twenties that having children might not be possible, Leila and her wife ended up rejecting the expensive, sanitised “acceptable” version of queer parenthood and instead built a family the way queer people often build everything: through friendship, improvisation, emotional honesty and an alarming amount of admin involving sperm. This episode dives into the now-infamous DIY conception setup that inspired her show Relay: spare rooms, a sperm donor who was already one of their closest friends, syringes quietly bought from Boots under the pretence of “having a big dog”, and the deeply surreal ritual of everybody washing their hands and heading out for brunch afterwards while pretending this was a perfectly ordinary Sunday activity. At one point, Leila describes sitting in a café fully aware that her partner is technically “dripping with your best mate’s sperm” while everyone politely orders eggs and coffee. Which honestly tells you almost everything you need to know about the energy of this episode. Underneath all the chaos though, this is really a conversation about modern queer family life, chosen family, emotional honesty and why comedy so often becomes armour for people trying to survive complicated lives in public. There are also cats named after Joan Rivers, emotionally repressed gay people using humour to avoid vulnerability, and a genuinely fascinating discussion about why queer family stories are still treated as niche when they’re often far more emotionally intentional than traditional family structures.

The results are in — and they’re pretty damning. Across England in particular, a right wing populist surge is reshaping British politics in real time. Reform UK is rising fast, Labour looks increasingly fractured, and for the first time in decades, the idea of Nigel Farage entering Number 10 no longer feels impossible. It’s clear Reform is not the natural home of queer politics. So why are so many gay men getting pulled into its narrative online? On this episode, Graeme Smith is joined by two of the breakout stars of the BBC’s I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl — Gareth and Amy — for a chaotic, funny and surprisingly political conversation about identity, masculinity, cancellation, internet discourse, dating, queer infighting and what it means to be young, queer and online in 2026. The conversation moves seamlessly between reality TV gossip, Green vs Reform politics, TikTok radicalisation, social media algorithms and whether parts of LGBTQ+ culture are drifting towards a genuine ideological split. Outcast World — queer politics, sex & culture.