Olly Mann explains how a beheaded kids' toy became his fidget and stress reliever while doing podcast interviews
ARE YOU ACQUAINTED with Stretch Armstrong? He’s a gel-filled doll made by Hasbro, whose extremities can be squeezed and pulled in any direction, only to reliably return to their starting position. He wears black underpants, and nowt else. This is considered reasonable, as he has a turbocharged set of abs, and he probably lives somewhere in California.
Despite decades of sales, Stretch’s brand recognition is not quite at the interstellar level of Action Man or Mr Potato Head. Unlike Barbie, there is no billion-dollar film adaptation; presumably because his sexy but slapstick "Mr Universe meets Mr Tickle" schtick is a near-impossible casting brief (though Dwayne Johnson could have pulled it off in the Noughties).
Anyway, I wanted to ensure you and I were on the same page when it came to visualising Stretch Armstrong—because now I need you to imagine what our Stretch Armstrong looks like. Namely: the same, but with no head. Because our dog ate his head.
Our Stretch has a white plastic stub where a steely-eyed blonde bonce should be. Slowly leaking from this area, in glistening, sticky globules, are lumps of corn syrup, congealing around the slit in his back where the dog initially sunk his teeth, before delivering the killer blow.
Given this, it will not surprise you to learn that my children no longer wish to play with Stretch Armstrong. Lest this was merely due to their initial shock at the mauling, for a few weeks I stored his mutilated body in a box, occasionally producing him with a flourish to see if my boys would be delighted to see him again. Each time, they screamed and screamed.
So, Stretch has come to live in my "studio". I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my studio before—I certainly never mention it in my podcasts, because I don’t want my listening audience to know the sordid reality of where I’m broadcasting from. But the truth is, I make my shows in a rented room in a decommissioned veterinary surgery.
That’s right: while my contemporaries interview celebs from their trendy loft apartments, or film TikTok videos from artfully decorated West End "break out spaces", my episodes are all recorded in a former canine X-ray suite in rural Hertfordshire.
I kitted it out during lockdown—after my wife ejected me and my microphones from her dressing room. It has thick, absorb
