All this late night talkin’… Moon + Mellow loves a good podcast, although, sometimes they’re just too damn engaging to send us to the land of nod.

Here are five bingeable shows worthy of luxurious pyjamas, pillows for propping and a midnight snack.

Now You’re Asking with Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn

We all love an agony aunt and we all love Marian Keyes. So could there be better bedfellows than Now You’re Asking with author Keyes and writer/actress/bestie Tara Flynn? 

“Come on in, let us be nice to you, tell us your stuff,” they say, inviting listeners to email their real-life trials and tribulations while offering advice and sharing their own howlers. This conversational, conspiratorial and confessional tit for tat approach is a true balm – our hosts are like the aunties you wish you had, as they treat the wide spectrum of agonies (and ecstasies) with pragmatic and frequently hilarious aplomb.

My Therapist Ghosted Me

For more solicited advice lols, it has to be Joanne McNally and Vogue Williams’ chart-busting series that also unpicks the dramas of domestic life, such as misguided post-hangover binges on Turkish Delight, sun-lounger skirmishes with Germans, whether it’s weird to look at dogs when they’re having sex, and schadenfreude on flights home from Ibiza when everyone is hanging and you’re not.

So natural and informal is the pair’s banter you feel more like a close pal than the actual stranger that you are, listening in while absent-mindedly stroking your Moon + Mellow pyjamas in bed because, oh, they’re just so, so soft…

You Must Remember This

Sex, drugs, murder, casting couches, racism, McCarthyism… LA film critic Karina Longworth slips behind the red curtains to share the sordid, ie riveting, histories of Hollywood, whose leading men and ladies include Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford, Sammy Davies Jr, Elizabeth Taylor, and many more who lived in gilded, grubby cages.

Sometimes, different series explore different themes, such as ‘Dead Blondes’ deep-diving into the biographies of Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe, and ‘Erotic ‘80s’ which gives a lowdown on fruity flicks American Gigolo, 9 1/2 Weeks and Fatal Attraction, which wouldn’t really bat an eyelid in the 21st century.

Desert Island Discs

Lastly, a fine vintage: Desert Island Discs, which was first broadcast on BBC Radio on January 29, 1942, and, five hosts later, its concept remains intact: notable guests select eight musical recordings, one book and one luxury item to be hypothetically cast away with on a desert island, and to explain each their personal significance. Simple but effective, and eminently revealing. 

Late greats include Lauren Bacall, Helen McCrory and Ian Fleming; living legends include Tom Hanks, Keith Richards, and Yoko Ono; of Irish interest are Sharon Horgan, Bono, Sinéad Burke, Mary Robinson. Meanwhile, Kate Moss’s recent entry is a must-listen. Not unlike the late Queen Elizabeth II, her image is so well-known and yet we know so very little about her character. And this episode speaks volumes.

Comfort Eating with Grace Dent

“What does Neneh Cherry eat when she’s in her jim-jams when she’s on the sofa…” contemplates Grace Dent on Comfort Eating, the breath-of-fresh-air food critic who wants to know about those guilty pleasures that happen behind closed doors. 

Each episode she invites household names to lift the lid on what comfort foods they’re drawn back to time and time again, many stemming back to childhood, such as matriarchal Sunday dinners, and the fast-food joys of youth. But she really wants to know the cobbled-together snacks beloved of touring musicians, travelling actors and on-deadline authors. 

Find out how Marian Keyes has never, ever eaten a boiled egg (“what have eggs done to you?” asks Grace, astonished), Laura Whitmore’s penchant for raw mushrooms, Aisling Bea cooking potato waffles in a toaster, and the dubious dishes beloved of Derry Girls’ Saoirse Monica-Jackson and Sinéad McSweeney.