It will be a minor triumph for comedians Martijn Koning and Sander van Opzeeland that they have already lasted 89 podcast episodes together. They like to say that arguing is a recurring element in their friendship, which sometimes meant that previous joint projects had to be terminated early. In The Knorrepodcast they regularly give a small demonstration by starting with a small quarrel of the friendly kind: it is the fuel to fuel each other up to more and better jokes.
The Knorrepodcast van Koning en Van Opzeeland, sometimes accompanied by Daniël Arends or Raoul Heertje, is part of a series of comedy podcasts that saw the light of day during the pandemic. Fortunately, comedians don’t just let themselves be taken off the stage. Theo Maassen, Paul de Leeuw (sometimes with Richard Groenendijk), Rayen Panday and Stefan Pop, all started a podcast in the past two years. Unlike those podcasts, in The Knorrepodcast not interviewed. The starting point: trying jokes on each other.
Relatively fascinating nonsense
In the beginning, this is still quite explicit. A cynical Van Opzeeland, after he has tried a joke against Koning: “How are you going to make this joke better?” As the series progresses, this concept gets a little more foggy as the two friends become increasingly distracted by their interest in their own stories. This makes little difference, because the jokes remain, only now more spontaneous. Both are extremely funny, sharp and the subject matter discussed can be summarized well with three words from a song that Van Opzeeland sings in the first episode: ‘relatively fascinating nonsense’.
An example of an episode: a fact about ‘the gate to hell’ – the nickname of a fifty-year-burning crater in ‘North Korea with camels’, as King Turkmenistan calls it – provides enough ammunition for the men to last ten minutes. tar. “How do you ask for directions there? At the gate to hell turn left?” Or Koning has read about a CPR instructor who had a heart attack during his profession. “That really is the worst possible time to have a heart attack.”
Wine or no wine?
Nice for the comedy enthusiast are the glimpses behind the theater scenes. For example, it turns out that there is a ‘late-late night show’ in comedy club Toomler in which new members of the comedy collective are ‘hasdled’ by performing in the middle of the night for colleagues and bar staff. Koning: “Then you can no longer arrive with your standard set, then you have to create something live.” We also learn about an even later latenight show in which people puke on stage, while Henry van Loon may have been transformed into a ‘comedy ninja’ with toilet paper wrapped around his head. Frank Rijkaard once gave a twenty-minute performance when the audience had already left the house.
The friendly competition between Koning and Van Opzeeland keeps De Knorrepodcast exciting, as do the reflections on their own podcast performance. Whether or not to drink wine during the recordings remains a constant point of discussion. Sometimes too much wine results in dissatisfaction when listening back, after which a solemn promise to (temporary) abstinence follows in the next episode. With its stand-up comedy-like jokes and atmosphere, the Knorrepodcast is a great alternative to closed theaters and catering.