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PODCAST: MISSING RICHARD SIMMONS

On February 15, 2014, fitness guru Richard Simmons disappeared. He stopped teaching his regular exercise class at Slimmons, cut off his closest friends, and removed himself from the public eye after decades as one of the most accessible celebrities in the world. Nobody has heard from him - and no one knows why he left. Filmmaker Dan Taberski was a Slimmons regular and a friend of Richard’s. Missing Richard Simmons is Dan’s search for Richard - and the deeper he digs, the stranger it gets.

MY VERDICT: This podcast has been around for a long time and I put off listening to it for a while because I didn’t really know what to make of it. Part of me thought that Richard Simmons was a tacky has been and I wasn’t really interested in knowing much about him. I was wrong.

There’s so much to know about Simmons, he’s a fascinating character, like did you know he was in a Fellini film? No? Neither did I until this podcast. Being English, I didn’t have as much coverage as those in the States and so he wasn’t as much as a legend to us as to the people who are interviewed in this podcast, however I knew who he was and I knew he was a larger than life character but I didn’t even know he was missing.

This podcast seemed to set itself up to be a kind of investigation, more like a true crime podcast with a goal than an exploration of a personality but that’s what it turned out to be. The fact is that Richard Simmons was never missing but decided to withdraw from public, and the investigation started to focus on why.

The why wasn’t too complicated either, he seemed to have just had enough, and I don’t blame him, he seemed to be doing a lot. An amazing amount of Richard Simmons’ time seemed to be devoted to others, he’d call people he’d only met once every Sunday to check they were doing okay, he set up a chat room to talk to people about how their lives and weight loss were going. He’d jump out of his mansion to have photos taken with tourists on a celebrity house tour and he spent forty years teaching an aerobics class at his own gym, even driving some of his regular older clients there himself.

So the oddest thing was that he gave up the class, he stopped going out all together and he stopped the phone calls. And the saddest thing was that he said he didn’t have any friends. These people were very upset about the sudden withdrawal, upset that they considered him a friend and he didn’t see them the same way, and most upset that he didn’t give anyone an indication that this was going to happen or a reason.

The podcast doesn’t end up getting an interview with him, it doesn’t get any reasons, Richard Simmons himself released a statement to say he was fine. My thoughts were that after years of giving his all, he had nothing left to give, he couldn’t get in touch with everyone to give them all a personal farewell because he didn’t have the energy to be the old Richard anymore. I think he just wanted a proper rest, after all he gave to his public persona, I think he just wanted to be him, maybe a him that no one else knew, not the person that all his ‘friends’ loved so much.

The most profound thing about this podcast is that because it doesn’t give you any answers it lets you think about reasons for withdrawal yourself. It makes you think about emotions and personality like no other investigation podcast I’ve listened to before and it makes you emotional even if you had no interest in this person, a personal you never knew. It makes you wonder how you would feel if you seemed important to someone who you spoke to everyday and all of a sudden they just stopped and didn’t tell you why and that’s so sad to think about.

Maybe his dog died, his last dog and he just couldn’t be bothered any more, maybe he was ill, and maybe he wanted the freedom to grow a beard? Who knows, all I know is this podcast is uplifting, thought-provoking and desolate. I would recommend it for the stirring ride alone.