Talk Show Host

the b-side

Radiohead recorded it around September 1995, and it came out in January 1996 as a B-side on the “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” single. Slow and slinky, with a trip-hop beat under it, it has more in common with Portishead than with anything on The Bends.

romeo + juliet

Nellee Hooper remixed it for Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, where it plays as Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo is first seen, brooding alone, and Hooper's version went onto the film's soundtrack album. The Black Dog remixed it too, as “Shush You”.

The pianist Christopher O'Riley recorded a solo version, built the way a remixer works, from fragments with the background parts brought to the front.

glastonbury

It was in the set when Radiohead headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on 28 June 1997, their first English date since OK Computer, in front of 40,000 people standing in mud. Thom Yorke's monitors went off early, and “Talk Show Host” fell apart and ground to a halt. Chris Hufford, who managed the band with Bryce Edge, thought Yorke was close to walking off. They played on to the end.

From Thom's perspective it was one of the worst gigs of his life. But then at the end, seeing the crowd's reaction, they'd obviously had it away.

chris hufford · mojo, september 1997

Colin Greenwood remembered it in 2024 as the night the monitors and the lights failed and Yorke did walk off, until Ed O'Brien brought him back. Colin was in tears afterwards; years later he heard the BBC's recording and thought it sounded amazing. In 2004 Q's readers voted it the greatest gig of all time.

seven years out

The band had first played it in Barcelona on 22 May 1997, well over a year after the single, and that year it was in the set 74 times. On the 2016 tour Jonny Greenwood played a riff in its breakdown that turned up five years later as The Smile's “Eyes & Mouth”.

After Philadelphia on 31 July 2018 it was away seven years. It came back on 17 November 2025, the third night of the band's run at the Unipol Arena outside Bologna.

the ivors

When Yorke took the Ivors Academy Fellowship in May 2026, Harry Styles was the surprise presenter. He called Radiohead his favourite band, remembered hearing them drift down from his sister's bedroom while he did his homework, and joked that he had lost his virginity to “Talk Show Host”, then corrected himself: to the intro of it.