News is everywhere and it’s all bad! So, John Robins has sealed himself in his panic room and he won’t come out until the world’s fixed. Did you know that we’re rapidly running out of Grave Space? Or that the increasing convenience of modern life is slowly infantilizing us? When is someone going to stop social media ripping society apart? And is it possible to eat anything at all without contributing to the destruction of the planet?

Each week John discovers something that makes him so anxious he can barely sit still, and his two trusted comedian advisors Olga Koch and Eshaan Akbar compete to find an ingenious solution by consulting with experts and road-testing their ideas.

Crammed full of fantastical flights of fancy – and also some actual facts - Panic Room might just be the series we need to save humanity from certain doom.

John Robins is one of the most critically acclaimed stand-up comedians of his generation. Having completed numerous sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe, and picking up the Chortle Awards for Best Compere, one for Best Radio, and A Three Weeks Editors Choice Award, in 2017 he scooped the big one, winning The Edinburgh Comedy Award for his show ‘The Darkness of Robins’. A 68 date UK tour followed, culminating in a sold out show at London’s Hammersmith Eventim Apollo.

John is a familiar face on TV having appeared on Live At The Apollo (BBC), Mock The Week (BBC), Drunk History (Comedy Central), Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (Dave), Live At The Comedy Store (Comedy Central) and Stand-Up Central (Comedy Central). He is best known for his radio and podcast partnership with Elis James. In 2014 they began presenting a show for XFM (latterly Radio X) in the slot which had previously hosted Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, Adam and Joe and Danny Wallace. The podcast of The Elis James and John Robins show was a runaway success, receiving in excess of half a million downloads a month. In 2019, after five years at the station, they announced a move to BBC Radio 5Live for a two-hour Friday afternoon slot which won the Gold Award for Funniest Show at the ARIAs 2020.

Elis and John’s humorous, candid and sensitive discussion of mental health in their radio shows has led to partnerships with charities such as Mind and CALM. The shows spawned two national tours and a book, The Holy Vible, published by Trapeze, (an imprint of Orion).

Eshaan Akbar has appeared on shows such as Mock the Week, QI (becoming the first person of Bangladeshi heritage to appear on these shows), The Now Show, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, The Big Asian Stand Up Night, Sunday Morning Live, A Pie and a Pint, and many more. 

He can also be heard as the host of the But Where Are You Really From podcast on BBC Sounds and the European award winning Nine Twenty Nine podcast from Fiverr. He is also an accomplished radio presenter, having hosted his own shows on the BBC Asian Network and LoveSport, with many guest appearances across other networks.

He has performed three sell out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe – ‘Not for Prophet’ (2017), ‘Prophet Like it’s Hot’ (2018), and ‘Infidel-ity’ (2019) as well as sell out London transfers at the Soho Theatre. Eshaan has opened for Micky Flangan, and has supported Dane Baptiste, Hal Cruttenden, Jan Ravens and Rory Bremner on tour.

Previously of Barclays Wealth and Merton Council, Eshaan holds a Masters in Global Governance and Public Policy and an undergraduate degree in Economics, Finance and Management. He has written articles for The Guardian, The Times, The Huffington Post, Happiful magazine and others. He is also a former Bollywood dance choreographer. Is there anything he can’t do? Yes. He can’t tie balloons once he’s blown them up. Which made his job as a children’s entertainer very short-lived.

Olga Koch does stand-up comedy onstage and creates cathartic performance art in the privacy of her own home. She has trained at the UCB Theatre in New York, as well as the Soho Theatre and the Free Association in London.

In 2018, she was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for her debut hour, Fight. Fight was directed by Charlie Dinkin, produced by Berk's Nest and originally performed at Pleasance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

In 2019, Olga performed her second solo Edinburgh Fringe show, If/Then, at Monkey Barrel. If/Then was also directed by Charlie Dinkin and also produced by Berk's Nest. In 2020, it was nominated for Best Show at the Leicester Comedy Festival.

Olga has appeared on QI, Mock The Week, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, Late Night Mash, The Now Show, Pls Like, The Blame Game, King Gary & your little brother's dreams.

Panic Room is produced by Ben Walker and is a DLT Entertainment production for Audible.