How to be a good podcast guest

By James Jones, founder of Granary Digital · 15 October 2026

Before the day

Listen to two episodes. One recent, one from early on. You'll learn the length, the pace, whether the host interrupts, and whether the show goes out as video. Assume it does. Edison Research's UK Podcast Consumer 2026, presented in July, found that 72% of UK weekly podcast consumers watch video podcasts, up from 58% in 2023. Plan for a camera.

Send the host three stories. The host can read your profile online. What they can't get anywhere else is the raw material for a good conversation: three short stories you could tell, each with a point, written in a line apiece. Add one thing you'd disagree with in your own field. Hosts plan questions around what they're given, so give them something worth asking about.

Check the format. Ask how long the recording runs, whether it's edited or goes out as recorded, whether it's you alone or a panel, and whether they cut clips from it. A long recording that gets edited down lets you relax into it. A show that goes out untouched needs you tighter from the first answer.

Know your first answer. The first question is often a version of "tell us about yourself". Have a thirty-second answer ready that ends on something the host can pick up, a problem you solve or a thing you've changed your mind about. It gets you past the nervous first minute on solid ground.

Decide what you're wearing. Plain colours, nothing with fine stripes, nothing that rustles when you move. The detail is in what to wear on camera.

On the day, in a studio

Arrive early and settle. At the barn, guests park outside the doors and are at the table a minute later, so arriving early here buys you ten quiet minutes with a drink rather than a walk from a car park.

Drink still water. Fizzy water means small burps, and a broadcast microphone hears every one.

Switch your phone off. A phone on silent can still vibrate against the table and still talks to the network, and both can end up in the recording. Switched off, it can do neither.

Stay where the microphone is. Sit about a hand's width from a broadcast microphone and speak into the front of it. The engineer sets it so it sits in front of your mouth while you face the host. The usual mistake is leaning back, or swinging round in the chair to make a point, and your voice goes thin and distant for exactly the sentence that mattered. Stay put and leave the arm where it was set.

Bring notes on a card. A few words on an index card will jog your memory. Sheets of A4 rustle, get shuffled near the microphone and pull your eyes down and away from the host. If you find yourself reading, the listener can hear it.

Hands off the table. Tables carry sound. A tapped pen or a hand brought down for emphasis reaches every microphone at once.

Look at the host. Our podcast studio is a 4.5m by 4.5m treated room with three 4K cameras: a wide and a tight on each side of the table. They're placed to catch a conversation, so talk to the person you're talking to. The tight camera is also on you while you listen, and a guest who looks interested in the host's question makes the host look good too. How the angles get used is in one camera or three.

Answer in complete thoughts. Start with the point, then tell the story. An answer that begins "So, yeah, like I was saying" can't be used on its own later. One that begins with the point can become the clip that sells the episode.

If you fluff it, stop and go again. On a produced recording the producer notes the moment and the edit takes it out. Ploughing on through a tangled sentence feels braver and sounds worse. An engineer runs the desk the whole time, so the technical side is never your problem.

If you're joining remotely

Wear headphones, always, so the host's voice doesn't come out of your speakers and back into your microphone. Find a quiet room with soft furnishings. Use a wired connection if you can. Ask whether your end is being recorded locally on your own machine: on a well-run show it will be, and that recording is what keeps a dropped line from ruining the episode. The full setup, including the ten-minute line check, is in recording a remote guest properly.

If you guest on other people's shows regularly, you can do it from our remote interview studio instead of a spare room, and keep a full-quality recording of your own end to clip for your own channels.

Afterwards

Ask the host when the episode goes out and which clips they plan to post. Share them from your own accounts on the day they appear, and tag the show. A host booking a guest is partly booking that guest's audience, and a guest who shares is an easy guest to ask back. What makes a good clip, from the host's side, is in one podcast episode, a month of clips.

If you've been booked onto a show and would rather record your end from a proper room, tell us the date and the platform and we'll have it set up before you arrive.

Sources

• Edison Research at SSRS, The UK Podcast Consumer 2026, 16 July 2026

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• YouTube is now the UK's most-used podcast app. What that changes for a business show
• How much does a video podcast cost to make in the UK?
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The picture at the top of this article is an illustration generated to show the set-up. It is not a photograph of a client or of a real job.