Successful podcasters are filming their shows, putting traditional platforms under pressure. Does it add value or reflect YouTube’s increasing might?

It is four in the afternoon at Pellicci’s, a family-run cafe on Bethnal Green Road in London that has been an East End institution for 125 years. Its famously loudmouthed owners, British-Italian siblings Nevio and Anna, have been serving fry-ups, soups, pasta and jam roly-polies since eight this morning. The cafe is now closed, but Anna and Nevio are just getting started on their second job as hosts of the podcast series Down the Caff, in which they interview people about food and life over a meal of the guest’s choosing. The conversations are sweary, chaotic and an absolute hoot.

Their guests so far include actor and Pellicci’s regular Ray Winstone, Dexys’ Kevin Rowland, rapper Hak Baker and 86-year-old YouTuber Marge Keefe, AKA Grime Gran. Today’s interviewees are TikTok star John Fisher, AKA Big John, and his son, the boxer Johnny Fisher. When I tell Anna she must be due a lie down, she says: “Tell me about it. In fact, tell him!” pointing at their longsuffering producer George Sexton-Kerr, who is busy moving Formica tables around to make way for the film crew.