On the final day of the 2026 Crossed Wires Festival, Alice Levine and Matt Forde took to the stage to perform a live version of their popular podcast British Scandal. In the podcast, true stories are told that explore the murky and power-hungry lives of the British elite.
The special live edition of British Scandal for the Crossed Wires audience told the story of The Blenheim Palace Toilet Heist. A group of working class blokes break into Blenheim Palace to steal a golden toilet. It may sound like a farce but the story is completely true. Throughout the show, audience members are playing British Scandal Bingo, each provided with a bingo card on arrival. Whilst your reviewer hadn’t listened to British Scandal before, it is clear that this story was the quintessential type of story explored on the podcast.
The story is primarily told by Matt Forde in audiobook style, putting your reviewer in mind of Stephen Fry’s readings of the Harry Potter books. Forde does a great job at creating a multitude of characters, injected with an ample amount of comedy. Alice Levine is almost the audience surrogate. She voices what we’re all really thinking, highlighting how absurd the story is. Levine’s wit and dry humour works excellently against Forde’s over the top performances.
The technical aspects of this live show showed some great creativity. The sound design was particularly impressive, adding in sound effects to bring the story to life, whilst never drowning out Forde’s narration. The use of projections, featuring everything from newspaper clippings, photographs and CCTV footage, were also a great addition. They reminded us that despite how ludicrous this story was, it was all entirely true.
The biggest issue with this live show was it was too long. The story was dragged out to fill two acts when a pacier one act show, or two stories in two acts, could have made things more enjoyable, especially when the tone of the show and its storytelling doesn’t change much at all.
Regardless, this was clearly an enjoyable evening for British Scandal fans and your reviewer may well seek out the podcast to have a listen to some of the other ridiculous stories Forde and Levine have told before.
Reviewed on 5th July 2026.
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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6
