An Interview with Adrian Bliss

In our latest episode, we talk with comedian, author, and social media star Adrian Bliss about The Greatest Nobodies of History, his new book featuring humorous stories of overlooked historical figures. Adrian reflects on the shift from immediate online feedback to the publishing process and discusses creating an audiobook, collaborating with voice actors, and transitioning from short-form content to long-form storytelling.

Libro.fm: We’ve followed all of your content—you’ve done vlogs, short-form, comedy sketches, as you mentioned. I saw you had a stage show about an atom, which I’m very sad that I have not seen. Now, you’ve added author to your list of achievements. What can you tell us about the new book?

Adrian: So the book, it’s about the side characters from history. There’s so many books about the main characters, I figured, about Henry VIII and Leonardo da Vinci, and so I decided I wanted to do a book about the background characters in those stories. […]

It’s mostly true tales from history retold in hopefully a funny way. But it was so fun to write and I had so much fun researching it. It’s a heavily researched book, so I’m hoping it’s going to be entertaining and educational.

Libro.fm: We were pleased to see that you narrated your audiobook. I think everyone would’ve been disappointed if you didn’t. Can you tell us what that process was like?

Adrian: Yeah, I’d never done anything like that before, and I was a bit nervous about it, about going into the studio and recording it. I was worried, what if I get a line wrong and they’re going to be really annoyed, because I need to keep a certain pace to get it all done. But I really loved the process of doing it and worked with a really great producer at Penguin, who just made it so fun.

It took three days to record, and by the end of every day of recording, I think people might notice my voice get a bit raspy at the end of the recording days. […] It was a really, really enjoyable process, and it was important for me that I recorded the audiobook, mainly because I wanted to. I thought it’d be fun to do.

Libro.fm: There’s such immediacy to the online art that you create and a lot of immediate feedback. We imagine the writing process is a lot more solitary, like quiet time alone, putting words on a page and then waiting for the book to get out there, and waiting to hear what people think about it. How has that shift been between those two worlds?

Adrian: Yeah, it can be a little bit daunting, because like you say, you make something, put it up online, and you find out very quickly if it’s good or not, or if people like it. And yeah, you don’t have to, I feel like you can sort of find your groove easier, whereas writing, you’re writing the whole thing before any of the public see it.

I had a really good editor though, who really helped me work on it and redraft, and had a historical researcher help me as well with all the stories. So I had people to send the chapters to and I sent [it to] some of my friends, so it wasn’t entirely lonely, but a lot of it was just me [sitting] on my own, typing away, not knowing if this was going to work or not. […] I think it was also quite nice to be able to spend a long time on one thing and not be on this constant cycle. I think you get more satisfaction in the end with that.

Listen to the full episode: 

About our guest

Adrian Bliss is a creator, writer and performer from London best known for his comedy sketches which explore everything from history to natural science to religion. Adrian’s work has earned him nearly 20 million followers across social media and has been featured in CNN, The Times and Vogue. Adrian was named one of the New Faces of Comedy at Just For Laughs, and his one-man play “Inside Everyone” sold out its debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival prior to opening.

Audiobooks we discussed