My first podcast * (*almost)
22nd April 2024
I’ve finally recorded my first podcast! I was the host and it was about books and cycling - two things I very much enjoy. However there is, as ‘*almost’ suggests, a but. I was the guest host, for one edition only, of the excellent Cycling Europe podcast created by another Yorkshire Andrew: https://cyclingeurope.org/
Meet, in his own description, “Secondary school teacher and inveterate would-be adventurer Andrew P. Sykes”. He’s from Elland in the West Riding, whereas I’m an East Riding lad (albeit one who’s now lived much longer in West than East Yorkshire). He also has that mysterious middle initial, whereas I’m plain Andrew. Our Dad believed that middle names were a bourgeois excess.
The other Andrew and I met ten years ago when a mutual friend, my great book club pal Ian Street, organised an event called ‘Night of the Long Rides’ in Leeds. I was on the mic chatting to two long distance cyclists, Tom Bruce and Andrew P., who’d just written his first book ‘Crossing Europe … on a Bike Called Reggie’. After two further books ‘Along the Med …’ and ‘Spain to Norway …’, Reggie has been retired and replaced by a bike called Wanda. Someone else has also retired, well semi-retired - me.
I last sat behind a radio microphone nearly six months ago when I left BBC Radio Leeds in November 2023 after 30 years on air. Since then I’ve lost count of the number of times folk have asked: “When are you going to start a podcast?”. This was a gentle and generous way to start. The other Andrew has just written his fourth book, ‘Le Grand Tour … on a Bike Called Wanda’: https://cyclingeurope.org/legrandtour/
For the previous 77 editions of the Cycling Europe podcast Andrew P. has been asking the questions. But he thought it might be a bit odd to talk to himself for an hour in edition 78, given that the subject is his own eight week European trip in the summer of 2022. Mr Sykes is excellent company in print and in person so I was delighted to accept the invitation, which arrived on April Fool’s Day: “If this is something that you think you’d be interested in helping me with, I suggest we meet in a park in Leeds one Saturday or Sunday morning later in the month”.
So it was that we arranged an 11am rendezvous at Woodhouse Moor, the park between the University of Leeds and my home at the top end of Headingley. It was a sunny spring morning and unusually aromatic, even for Leeds 6. There were also more police around than usual. It turned out that we’d inadvertantly chosen 4.20 day, what Wikipedia describes as “an international counterculture holiday based on the celebration and consumption of cannabis”.
It felt, for a moment or two, odd introducing myself ‘on air’ again, but we were off and - just over an hour later - I said goodbye. Runners had run past, smokers had wafted past and a small boy had stood watching us intently, disconcertingly close up, for about five minutes before his Dad called him away. I loved the whole experience.
Andrew P. was an engaging, modest guest on his own podcast. As temporary host, no middle name Andrew had, for the first time, a few pangs about missing broadcasting, pondering what it might feel like to get behind the microphone again. This has, after all, been the longest gap in my 35 year working life that I haven’t broadcast. I started at Kingstown Hospital Radio and the now sadly disappeared Viking Radio in Hull in 1988, joined the BBC a year later, spent three years at BBC Hereford and Worcester from 1990 and arrived at Broadcasting House, just down the road on Woodhouse Lane, in 1993. And now I was back, if only for one edition.
Good luck with book number four, Andrew P., and thank you for the invitation. May you have many happy years wandering the highways and byways with a bike called Wanda: https://cyclingeurope.org/2024/04/21/the-cycling-europe-podcast-episode-078-le-grand-tour-on-a-bike-called-wanda-andrew-p-sykes/
