PODCASTS are not listened to outside London because people there have friends, research has discovered.

A research team looking into the inexplicable rise in popularity of some people talking in a room found it was inextricably linked with spending four hours on trains every day while hating everyone.

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies, said: “At first we assumed the popularity of podcasts lay in their content. An idiot’s mistake.

“After more than 11,200 hours logged listening to strangers discussing football and video games, we were still baffled.

“It was only when a junior researcher howled ‘You’d have to be out of your mind with loneliness and boredom to enjoy these fucking things!’ that we realised: London.

“Turns out when you’re doing 16 hours a week locked underground and live with people you hate, a podcast is the best friend you’ll ever have.”

Brubaker added: “They’re also big with prisoners in solitary confinement.”

Londoner Nikki Hollis said: “I love podcasts. They remind me of my youth in Leeds, when I used to speak to people.

“I do my own, about living and working in London, but it’s just an hour of me screaming.”