Thousands are listening to a ‘middle aged agony aunt’ Christchurch podcast

Sunday, 14 June 2026

A witty conversation featuring the health creaks of middle age, scandalous stories and heartfelt recollections is climbing the podcast charts, thanks to two friends who met as Christchurch school kids.

No Straight Answers, created and presented by Clayton Carrick-Leslie and Suran Dickson, operates on an agony aunt format, inviting subscribers to send in their troubles to an empathetic duo who will give them a wry but compassionate airing.

With thousands of downloads to its name and two seasons having been produced, the podcast — which is recorded in central Christchurch in the Boxed Quarter — has so far gained traction purely by word of mouth.

The pair’s connection stems from a 32-year friendship, having met as teenagers at school.

Dickson was the sophisticated one, Carrick-Leslie says, recalling how he, his co-host and group of school friends cemented their connection with a camping trip to Tōtaranui.

“I was a nerd and she was quite cool.”

Just before the Covid-19 outbreak, the pair again found themselves living in the same city, when they each returned with their families to live closer to older relatives.

The project began as a way for them to find a collaborative creative outlet, following Dickson’s high-flying career in London where she was instrumental in the founding of the charity Diversity Role Models, and Carrick-Leslie’s adventures as a stand-up comedian.

Dickson, a well known inclusion and diversity campaigner who was described in the UK Independent on Sunday’s Pink List as a “national treasure”, offers leadership coaching, facilitation and mediation to clients across New Zealand and further afield, through her Christchurch company Flipside Consulting. Carrick-Leslie is a senior corporate leader, comedian and trustee on the New Zealand Comedy Trust board, and has been integral to Christchurch’s increased visibility as a live comedy city.

“Once we sat down with the microphones, it just flowed effortlessly,” Carrick-Leslie says of early podcast recordings.

The show’s promotional tagline neatly sums up its ethos and the pair’s sense of humour: “Friends for 30 years, experts in … nothing.”

With episodes lasting between 40 and 50 minutes, the show covers a broad spectrum of life experiences. Audience demographics show it resonates most strongly with listeners aged between 35 and 50 in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Submissions from the public have ranged from the farcical — including a listener who accidentally broadcast pornography throughout their home through a Bluetooth speaker, and a husband using artificial intelligence to decode his wife's conversations — to the profoundly serious.

Recent episodes have touched on grief, with Dickson openly discussing her father Stuart’s journey with assisted dying and the precious years he got to spend with her son, Sonny, after they returned to New Zealand.

Carrick-Leslie said their shared lived experiences were crucial for addressing the diverse challenges faced by the “sandwich generation”.

“I couldn’t have done this even 10 years ago, certainly not in my 20s,” he says.

Anonymity is strictly maintained for those who submit questions to dilemma@nostraightanswers.org, allowing for what Carrick-Leslie described as the naturally reticent Kiwi nature and the small degree of separation in their home city and other locations.

“We have had feedback,” Clayton-Leslie says, “[such as] ‘I'm just so worried about what I’m about to say being recognised by the facts alone.”

However, the hosts are very careful to keep some details general, avoiding such gossip landmines as “I'm a CEO of a shopping mall, and I’m having an affair,” Leslie says, making up an example of dangerous identification territory.

He emphasised the show’s core mission is compassion rather than judgment.

“In this binary world where people are encouraged to take a side … we realised that everything’s nuanced. “Let's just have a chat about that … and try and make things just a bit happier, and a bit more OK to be different.”

The hosts aim to release two eight-episode seasons each year and are starting to think about a local live recording.

“We just love being part of a rebuilding city with a burgeoning cultural scene,” Carrick-Leslie says.

You can find No Straight Answers, with Suran Dickson and Clayton Carrick Leslie, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other platforms.