The Marvyn Harrison Podcast

He broke Kanye West in the UK before College Dropout dropped. He filmed Drake's first ever UK interview in Hyde Park — paid the cameraman £50 out of his own pocket because the station didn't care. He flew to New York to sign Fatman Scoop and got aired for a week until a 4am diner meeting sealed the deal. Ghostface Killah called his book the Bible of hip hop. Chuck D wrote the foreword in five minutes.And before any of that, he was an 8-year-old kid in North Manchester who discovered what the N-word meant because there was a game in the playground called "Catch The N****r." This is DJ Semtex. And this is the conversation I've been waiting to have.Semtex: Instagram · X · TikTok · YouTube · djsemtex.comMarvyn: Instagram · Podcast IG · X · TikTok · YouTube · marvynharrison.co.ukDope Black Dads: Instagram · dopeblackdads.com

View the images in order, here! https://canva.link/4eacwrp87m3qfxhI've known Dane Baptiste for 20 years. I watched him find five minutes at the beginning of my Sunday Show when nobody knew his name. I watched the crowds not get it. I watched him come back anyway. This conversation is the full story, from his first day at Haberdashers, to being the only deadpan Black British comic in a room full of animated performers, to writing a sitcom that got picked up by Fox and Apple, to walking into Paramount and HBO alone because his seven-months-pregnant manager couldn't walk any further.We talk about:Growing up as the first male in a generation of cousins — raised in a matriarchyThe Sunday show years: following Jay Pharoah, competing with Usain Bolt's world record, going on after a biscuit eating competitionWhy admitting you take the bus was a passion killer in Black British cultureFinding his deadpan voice when every Black comic was expected to be animatedSteph McGovern giving him a TV segment when nobody else in the industry wouldWriting Sunny D and pitching it to Lionsgate, Fox, Apple, HBO, Paramount — with no writers, no teamKeenan Ivory Wayans and Saladin Patterson joining the projectThe actress from Sunny D who passed away from bowel cancerBeing misrepresented and the crisis of confidence and depression that followedMeeting Dave Chappelle on Valentine's Day with David Haye — the full circle momentMo Gilligan: timing, craft, and why his crossover workedWhy he left his management and what independence looks like nowThis is 20 years of friendship in one sitting. If you care about Black British comedy, the entertainment industry, or what it actually takes to build something when nobody's behind you, this one's for you.LINKS:Dane Baptiste: @danebaptiste on InstagramMarvyn: @themarvynharrisonpodcast / @dopeblackdadsYouTube: https://youtu.be/gy3ZrUnG0RM

She trained as a social worker. Spent 15 years watching what happens when relationships destroy people. Built a community of 250,000 women on Instagram. Wrote a Sunday Times bestseller. And then sat across from me and said: "I don't know if this is working. Nothing's changing."This is Layla, Lalalaletmeexplain and this is not the conversation you're expecting.We go into:Her dad leaving her mum for the woman who lived opposite, and what it did to her at 7 years oldWhy she resented her mother for years and idolised the man who leftHow her self-worth was built entirely on whether men wanted her, and the expensive therapy it took to undo itDating apps losing 600,000 users and why in-person events aren't working eitherThe confidence gap: women buying out dating events in 10 minutes, men not showing upWhy men have stopped approaching women IRL — and why that's a misreading of what women actually asked forFamily courts: the myth that they favour mothers (she breaks this down with 15 years of evidence)The manosphere as a grooming pipeline — and who's actually vulnerable to itThe question we both carry: how do you keep telling the truth about harm when the people you're trying to reach are getting more defensive, not less?Why she thinks her audience radicalised her — and what she's doing about itI share my own experience of being in an abusive relationship at 19This is two people doing the same work from opposite sides of the room, meeting in the middle for the first time. If you care about men, women, relationships, fatherhood, or just trying to figure out how we fix the gap, this one matters.Layla Instagram: @lalalaletmeexplain TikTok: @lalalaletmeexplain X: @lalalaletmeexp2 Book: Block Delete Move On (Penguin)Marvyn Instagram: @discoverwithmarvyn / @dopeblackdads X: @Marvyn_Harrison YouTube: @MarvynHarrison TikTok: @marvyn_harrison Website: marvynharrison.co.uk

Poppy Jay arrives with no prep. What follows is one of the rawest conversations on this channel.Director, writer, comedian, and co-host of the cult podcast Brown Girls Do It Too, Poppy walks me through ten photos from her life, and each one opens a door she wasn't planning to open.We talk about the forced marriage she gave in to as the eldest of six daughters in a strict Bengali Muslim household. The father who once ruled the home and now sends her photos of the prawns he cooks. The nickname "Pitbull Poppy" she earned on set, and the uniform she wears so men stop scrutinising her. The year 2025, when she didn't work for twelve months despite being on billboards and buses, and ended up frying chips at her brother-in-law's Philly cheesesteak shop on the way to award ceremonies she'd been nominated for.She got her ADHD diagnosis 24 hours before we recorded. She tells me why the NHS questionnaire didn't account for immigrant kids who weren't allowed to be disruptive. We get into the Bangladeshi heroin epidemic of the 1990s nobody covered. The grooming gangs conversation she's been afraid to have on camera. The night in a Leicester Square pub where a friendly white stranger turned the moment she used the word "racist." And the operating theatre where she looked around at every single non-white staff member keeping the NHS alive — and realised she might never support England again.Honest, funny, sometimes uncomfortable.YouTube: https://youtube.com/@MarvynHarrisonInstagram (podcast): https://instagram.com/marvynharrisonpodcastTikTok: https://tiktok.com/@marvyn_harrisonLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/marvynharrison

Sadiq Khan just announced £30 million to put a youth club in every single London borough. They're called Youth Lates — open evenings, open weekends, with food, mentoring, music, mental health support, all under one roof. The biggest investment in youth clubs by any Mayor. Ever.Marvyn grew up in Hackney at a time when youth clubs still existed. His youth worker was Justin Pickett — the actor who played Sean Ambrose in Desmond's. In this episode, Marvyn tells that story for the first time in full: what it meant to have a Black man show up for him at 15, what was lost when those spaces disappeared, and what this announcement means for a generation of young Londoners who've never had what he had.This one is personal.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarvynHarrisonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/marvynharrisonpodcast/Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marvyn_harrisonLinkedin: linkedin.com/in/marvynharrison?originalSubdomain=uk

The UK government opened the biggest consultation on children's digital safety ever attempted. Social media age bans. Overnight app curfews. Restrictions on infinite scroll. Controls on AI chatbots. They want to hear from parents directly. So when the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology invited me to the Black Prince Community Trust in Lambeth to sit down with Kanishka Narayan MP, the Minister for AI and Online Safety, I brought a few questions. Not from a journalist. From a dad.We covered:What to say to a parent who feels they've already lost the screen time battleWhat powers the government actually has to force platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram to changeWhether parents should be worried about children using AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude unsupervisedWhat a safer internet for children realistically looks like in two yearsWhether this consultation will lead to real, enforceable changeThe consultation is live now and closes 26 May 2026. It takes minutes. Your response directly shapes what happens next.Have your say: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-the-online-world-a-national-consultationPractical support for parents right now: https://kidsonlinesafety.campaign.gov.uk/