I’m typing this from backstage at the Ostermann-Arena in Leverkusen between sessions on the final day of European Darts Open. My friend Linus is eating his pasta bolognese next to me and I must say I’m very jealous of how skilfully and gracefully he’s managing to do it, in comparison to the absolute pig that’s creating this latest blog.
Things are picking up pace and yes, for everybody who has seen my latest Instagram post from the ‘topsandtales’ account, Series 2 of the podcast now has a start date…Monday 16th June, 6am GMT on YouTube, TikTok and everywhere you get your podcasts from! I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their support and their patience as we sort everything out and trust me there’s more announcements to come before we relaunch on the 16th….one of which is at the end of this blog!
I genuinely couldn’t be more happy with how Series One has been received, and have been even more pleasantly surprised by how many people have discovered the podcast since the series ended and have messaged me to say how much they enjoyed it. I’m thankful especially to Luke Littler, Chris Dobey, Nathan Aspinall and Peter Wright who gave up their time during the Masters in January in Milton Keynes. They had no idea what they were letting themselves in for, but they couldn’t have been more generous with giving up their time, or with the way they spoke during the episodes. They’re all fantastic talkers and great people. Chris even came down to Milton Keynes a day earlier to make sure he could record with me. That’s the mark of the man and he was actually the very first episode that was recorded.
Honestly, trying to juggle all the logistics was a challenge. Booking and juggling guests availability, swapping episode orders around accordingly, getting to grips with how to edit, trying to edit each episode as professionally as possible, uploading each episode, all within the space of seven days like it was a race to every Monday. On top of my job already! There were episodes that were recorded and lost, external hard-drives that were bought and broken. Out of the seven episodes I did, for five of them I was up until Monday 6am working on them to get them released. Yeah, it wasn’t healthy! A lot of sweat and literal TEARS were shed! However it was all worth it (I’m just breaking off this story at this point, because players marshall Scott Gibling has just come over to ask if he can be mentioned in this blogpost, so there you go mate….oh hang on a minute, he wants to ask me a few questions….fire away! “Other than darts, what is my favourite sport?” Well Scott, the answer is football. Next? “What was my favourite lesson at school?” English (says the Welshman!). And my third and final question….”What is my favourite holiday destination?” Queenstown, New Zealand. Scott’s now gone to take the first two players for the evening session….so where was I?!
However, all the hard work of Series One was all worth it as we have been so lucky to secure enough support to buy cameras and get the podcast uploaded to YouTube, all within seven episodes. Many podcasts have to work a lot longer and harder to be able to do that so I’m very lucky.
I would like to end this latest blog with an exclusive announcement for Series Two. Our first guest on Episode One, coming out Monday 16th June will be………..Bobby George! His latest book “The King of Bling” is out now. We’ll be talking about that as well as his life and career and times within darts and I hope everybody enjoys. A special thank you as ever to Winmau for continuing to allow me the opportunity to build this platform. Until the next time, take care and keep loving the darts!
