StoryCo

Telltale Industries
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Welcome to StoryCo presented by James Kirkham. Story is mankind’s oldest technology, and StoryCo explores how that tech is being supercharged by the world's best minds. In the new economy, story is our principal sales tool, our mental crutch and our map for our future. James Kirkham explores story holistically: as a business tool, self-help strategy, political map, and guide to humanity. Join us every Thursday with story thinkers who lead organisations from every imaginable sector : theorists, producers, writers and stars. If you like a good story, pass it on! Subscribe now!

  1. 4d ago

    One Photograph Unravels Ireland's Forgotten Story | Emma Dabiri

    Summary Emma Dabiri on hair, history, and why the Black/white binary is a design choice, not a fact of life. Episode Overview Emma Dabiri wrote a book about hair. Except it wasn't about hair. Don't Touch My Hair used braiding as a trapdoor into 6,000 years of African philosophy, pre-colonial constructions of time, and the question of who gets to name things, and what happens to the things that get named wrong. That argument has driven every book she has written since. The new one, Born to Be Blue, begins with a discovery in the Irish language: that people racialized as Black were traditionally called not Black but blue, after the iridescence of light on a dark surface. Chapters (00:00) Cold open: ADHD, Irish words for Black and white, planetary consciousness (01:00) Intro: Dublin in the '80s and taking the pen back (02:00) Tell me a story: Irish grandparents on a Tobago beach (04:00) The grandfather who never approved, the family she never met (05:00) Born in Dublin, Atlanta, the Deep South (06:00) Coming back to Ireland: "go back to where you come from" (07:30) Discovering how Irish she was by leaving (08:30) Irishness as an anchor: MBEs and why she could never go home (09:00) Atlanta wealth, then Dublin during the heroin epidemic (10:00) Always reading from a very young age (11:00) The Victorian arcade bookshop: radical literature by accident (13:00) Seven schools, hating school, a very ADHD profile (14:30) Instability and nothing feeling safe or certain (16:00) University in African studies: the first time learning worked (17:00) The ADHD diagnosis (18:30) The ADHD tax: life admin, spreadsheets, posting letters (19:00) Raptures of joy from music, feeling things overwhelmingly (20:00) Knowing things were true that other people couldn't hear yet (22:00) Finding her people in London (23:00) Alignment and attracting what you should have (24:00) Don't Touch My Hair: smuggling philosophy through hair (25:00) Cartesian binaries and the world organised into oppositions (26:00) Divisiveness, social media, and the same problem (27:30) Hair as a populist entry point for African philosophy (28:30) The chapter on time: what does "too time-consuming" actually mean? (29:00) Pre-colonial Yoruba time versus post-industrial capitalism (31:00) Braiding, intimacy, and a day organised around what needs doing (32:00) The connective tissue across all three books (33:00) Solutions suppressed as primitive that contain the answers (34:00) Irish language, Yoruba philosophy, rehabilitating Irishness (35:00) Blindboy and recognising neurodivergence (36:00) The new book: saying less, what stays with people (37:00) Substack: testing ideas before the printed page (38:30) Why social media killed good faith debate (39:30) Early Twitter: Spike Lee, bell hooks, when it felt like a club (41:00) When conversations get monetised: competition replaces collaboration (42:00) Born to Be Blue: the Irish language word for people racialized as Black (43:00) Blue and bright: both words describe a relationship to the cosmos (44:00) The memoir, the dissident thinkers, the blue concept (45:00) Blue and bright are not opposites. They share the moon and the sun. About the Guest Emma Dabiri is a writer, academic, and broadcaster of Irish-Nigerian heritage. She is currently completing her fourth book, Born to Be Blue, due October 2026. She writes on Substack and has contributed to the Guardian, the Times, and the BBC. Listen Elsewhere APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod Credits StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production. Host: James Kirkham. Guest: Emma Dabiri. Producer: Jago Lee. Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt. Editor: Nelly Batt. Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross. Theme: Doubt Point. Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

    46 min

  2. Jun 25

    Why Hollywood is broken | Leaving Las Vegas Director Mike Figgis

    SummaryMike Figgis on Leaving Las Vegas, Timecode, and why the best creative work comes from stripping everything back. Episode OverviewMike Figgis shot Leaving Las Vegas in three weeks on Super 16 with a skeleton crew and no permits on the Las Vegas Strip. Nicolas Cage won the Oscar. The film cost almost nothing. That was the point. Figgis has been making this argument for 50 years, from trumpet in Bryan Ferry's pre-Roxy band in Newcastle, to getting booed off stage in Hamburg by a diehard blues crowd, to Timecode, his real-time four-screen film written on music paper as a 95-bar string quartet. This is a wide conversation that earns every turn. The story of the first Roxy Music rehearsal, Figgis standing in the room thinking it would never work, sets up everything that follows about being wrong in interesting directions. The worst test screening in Hollywood history, which left him sitting next to Richard Gere feeling oddly happy, is one of the best anecdotes this show has had. And the Coppola story at the end, one small camera following $120 million of someone else's vision, lands the argument the episode has been building toward: the people who invent the system are sometimes the last ones to escape it. Chapters(00:00) Cold open: does the world need a Beatles biopic?(02:00) Get Back and the creative power of nothing happening(05:00) Meeting Lennon in a Notting Hill macrobiotic restaurant(07:00) Newcastle, Bryan Ferry, and The Gas Board(09:30) Trumpet to impress his dad, guitar for the girls(11:00) The Gas Board falls apart(12:00) The first Roxy rehearsal and why Figgis didn't rate it(13:30) Bridge to film: late '60s London explosion(14:00) The Arts Lab: all art is one thing(15:30) Free music and "just listen, man"(17:00) Experimental theater: booed off stage in Hamburg(19:00) Failure as second nature(20:00) The worst test screening ever(22:00) Theater into film: actors on stage and screen simultaneously(24:00) Hollywood, the social contract, and being "cocky, arrogant, naive"(25:00) Leaving Las Vegas: Super 16, three weeks, casting by personal contact(27:00) Camera as creative control(29:00) Boy porn camera tech vs. Bergman's locked-off face(30:00) The Figgis box: constraint as method(32:00) Timecode: four screens, no edit, real time(34:00) Writing the script as a string quartet on music paper(36:00) Salma Hayek doing other people's makeup in the toilet(37:00) Four earthquakes and actors watching their own film the same day(40:00) Marina Abramović: switch to your left hand(41:00) Live mixing Timecode at the NFT(43:00) "AI is as clever as Hollywood — not clever enough"(45:00) Advice to young filmmakers: don't wait for the Netflix lifeboat(47:00) Paul Auster on the attrition rate(48:00) Megalopolis documentary: one camera, no plan(52:00) "You invented this system — and now it's smothering you" "AI is as clever as Hollywood, but that's not clever enough." — Mike Figgis About the GuestMike Figgis is a British filmmaker, composer, and writer. His films include Stormy Monday, Internal Affairs, Leaving Las Vegas (two Academy Award nominations), Liebestrahl, One Night Stand, and Timecode. He has composed scores for his own films and others, worked in experimental theater with The People Show for ten years, and most recently directed a documentary following Francis Ford Coppola during the making of Megalopolis. He is currently developing a film shot in Korea and Japan. Listen ElsewhereAPPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcastLINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod CreditsStoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.Host: James Kirkham.Guest: Mike Figgis.Producer: Jago Lee.Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.Editor: Zak Klein.Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.Theme: Doubt Point.Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

    55 min

  3. Jun 18

    Have We Lost The Art of Desire? | Rowan Pelling, The Erotic Review

    Rowan Pelling on the Erotic Review, the death of the tease, and why desire needs saving from pornography. Episode OverviewRowan Pelling founded the Erotic Review on a single bet: that the sexiest organ is the brain. The young are having less sex than any previous generation on record. Pornography is free, instant, and infinite. The tease has disappeared. The accidental workplace romance, the fumbled first kiss, the slow build that nobody was filming, none of it exists in the same way anymore. And Pelling, who has been writing about desire, intimacy, and the culture of eroticism since she was 13 and writing her own problem pages, has a great deal to say about where it went and whether it can come back. This is a wide-ranging conversation that earns its runtime at every turn. What follows covers the Navy ship that subscribed, the '90s lads' mag world Pelling loved for its craft and its excess, the memoir she has been writing for 20 years, and the case for a ministry of sex, which she has offered to run. James Kirkham gets her to slow down on the things that matter: what was actually lost when the tease disappeared and why the inability to make mistakes is the thing that worries her most about young people right now. "If men and women are constantly at loggerheads and frightened, there's not gonna be another generation." — Rowan Pelling Chapters (00:00) Cold open: British hypocrisy about sex(01:00) Intro: the Erotic Review, desire, and pornography(02:00) Tell me a story: Hazel, Betty Boothroyd, and Gerald's subscription(04:30) What the Erotic Review was and what it looked like(06:00) The magazine as flirtation device: for couples, not hiding(08:00) HMS Something: the Navy ship that subscribed(09:30) Richard Desmond's fury and why tone was everything(10:00) Puritans vs Cavaliers: why this could only work in Britain(12:00) What readers were actually paying for(13:00) The decline: fewer sexual incidents, Gen Z, digital natives(15:00) The amateur fumble and why no one could record it(17:00) Erotic glamour: what "it" actually is(19:00) Growing up in a pub, older men, and saying yes(22:00) Dubrovnik, war zones, and the theory of the open yes(23:00) The barmaid at heart: listening, flirting, holding the room(24:30) Steering drunks and Tories: the pub as training ground(25:00) The Amorous: women first and the MeToo near-miss(27:00) Physical magazines and the gravitational pull of the real(29:00) Problem pages at 13 and a third-class degree(30:00) GQ, the lads' mag era, and Loaded as genius(32:00) Raising sons: porn, consent, and the word on the necklace(36:00) Dating apps and the disappearing workplace romance(38:00) Young men, the manosphere, and the ones she actually knows(41:00) The inability to make mistakes: fumbling as a feature(42:00) The memoir: 20 years percolating, Britain and sex(44:00) The tease as a lost art: erotica vs porn culture(45:00) Strictly Come Dancing and vertical desire(46:00) Living at home, no privacy, and the death of the house party(47:00) A summer of love and a ministry of sex About the GuestRowan Pelling was the founding editor of the Erotic Review, which she grew from a newsletter to a 30,000-reader magazine. She has judged the Booker Prize, won the Funny Woman Award, written for the Telegraph for many years, and later founded The Amorous. She is currently working on a memoir about Britain and sex, and writes regularly on desire, intimacy, and the culture of eroticism. Listen ElsewhereAPPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcastLINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod CreditsStoryCo is a TellTale Industries production.Host: James Kirkham.Guest: Rowan Pelling.Producer: Jago Lee.Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt.Editor: Emma Gifford.Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross.Theme: Doubt Point.Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

    50 min

  4. Jun 11

    She Can Make You Confess to Murder | Julia Shaw

    Summary Julia Shaw on false memory, green crime, and why AI is both the problem and the solution. Episode Overview Julia Shaw once implanted a false memory of a violent crime in a volunteer's mind using three conversations and a few leading questions. The volunteer described it in vivid detail three weeks later. That was her PhD. Now she says we have built the same machine and put it in everyone's pocket. Shaw is a criminal psychologist whose research is used by police forces, war crimes investigators, and the International Criminal Court. She founded an AI reporting tool now used by the Bar Council. She wrote a book applying true crime storytelling to environmental destruction. And she is about to spend a summer inside an AI governance residency asking how these systems get built safely. This conversation moves across a lot of ground and earns all of it. The false memory implantation study is the sharpest opening this show has had. The argument that AI hallucinates for the same reason humans confabulate is genuinely clarifying. The bit where Shaw explains why London's air is the cleanest it has been in centuries, and why no one knows, is the kind of thing that makes you want to look it up the moment the episode ends. And her case for optimism, that despondency is the one emotional response that achieves nothing and that she personally knows the people building these tools, is harder to argue with than you might expect. Chapters (00:00) Opening: the false memory machine in your pocket (00:55) Intro: criminal psychologist, memory scientist, green crime author (01:50) The implantation study (04:00) Why our brains prefer stories to accuracy (06:30) Memory, courtrooms, and the cognitive interview (08:15) AI hallucinations and human confabulation (09:35) AI as the ultimate false memory machine (11:30) Witness statements and AI smoothing (13:00) The allergic reaction to AI content (16:30) The positive case: AI as therapist at 3am (18:30) Talk to Spot: the chatbot that replaced the cognitive interview (23:15) Why Shaw stays optimistic (25:00) Meta, frat boys, and why AI founders are different (28:50) Aphantasia: Shaw can't picture anything (31:00) Memory, brands, and the aftermath economy (35:00) Green crime: true crime storytelling for the planet (38:00) The categorisation problem: "it's about the trees, though" (41:00) London's air and the victories we forget (43:30) Space satellites and environmental crime (47:55) What's next: AI governance and the residency "AI is the ultimate false memory machine, because what it can do is personalise everything to you." — Julia Shaw About the GuestJulia Shaw is a criminal psychologist, scientist, and author whose research on false memory has been used by police forces, the International Criminal Court, and war crimes investigators. Her books include The Memory Illusion, Evil: The Science Behind Humanity's Dark Side, and Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet and How to Stop Them. She is the founder of Spot, an AI-powered reporting tool used by the Bar Council of England and Wales, and is currently embedded in an AI governance residency in London. Listen Elsewhere APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/storycopod Credits StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production. Host: James Kirkham. Guest: Julia Shaw. Producer: Jago Lee. Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt. Editor: Emma Gifford. Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross. Theme: Doubt Point. Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson. #crime #psychology #ai #false #memory #storyco

    51 min

  5. Jun 4

    Who gets paid when a story travels? | Richard Welsh

    Summary Richard Welsh on COPA90, Decent Partners, and why AI is a translation tool, not a threat. Episode Overview Richard Welsh beat David Beckham's team to a YouTube channel with no rights and no leverage, just a deep understanding of how networks actually work. What followed was 20 years of arriving early to every platform shift: Bebo, MySpace, YouTube Originals, Web3, and now AI. Welsh has called the current AI moment the largest creative value extraction in human history: every model trained on human intelligence, packaged by a corporation, rented back to the people who generated it. His company, Decent Partners, is the attempt to build something structurally different: a network that routes value back through the people who made the work, rather than the companies that own the infrastructure. This is a long conversation that moves fast. Welsh is someone who thinks in systems, rivers, sediment, network effects, and James Kirkham gets him to slow down and show the working. The Advent calendar story at the start is one of the best career origin stories this show has aired. The AI framing at the end reframes the debate without dismissing the risk. The bit in the middle, Welsh nearly advising KSI to dial it back, is the most instructive 90 seconds on the difference between platform experience and platform understanding. Chapters  (00:00) The gut bacteria story (01:45) Intro: COPA90 and creative value extraction (04:30) The Advent calendar: getting into Hat Trick at 19 (08:15) Development, TV, and how ideas actually happened (11:00) Bebo: the platform the adults didn't understand (15:30) COPA90: pitching against Beckham with no rights (20:30) KSI and the advice Welsh is glad he didn't land (23:00) Bitcoin, digital scarcity, and Web3 (29:00) Tether, TrumpCoin, and the pattern behind the noise (33:30) Everything is a story, and Bitcoin proved it (36:00) Decent Partners: currency, credit, context (42:00) AI as aggregated human intelligence (47:00) Resilience over towers "The intelligence is ours. There's nothing artificial or alien about it : it's just our intelligence that in aggregate creates this incredible translation tool." — Richard Welsh About the Guest Richard Welsh co-founded COPA90, the YouTube-native football channel that beat established rights-holders to one of the platform's earliest funded slots. He has worked in development at Hat Trick, RDF, Endemol, and Studio Lambert, and has won awards for Who Killed Summer and You, Me & the Apocalypse. He is the founder of Decent Partners, a network-native company building tools that distribute credit, payment, and knowledge through the communities that generate them. Listen Elsewhere  APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast LINKTREE: ⁠https://linktr.ee/storycopod⁠ Credits  StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production. Host: James Kirkham. Guest: Richard Welsh. Producer: Jago Lee. Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt. Editor: Emma Gifford. Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross. Theme: Doubt Point. Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

    49 min

  6. May 28

    Community is the Whole Business Model | Wez Saunders, Defected Records

    Summary A cold email, a chest-infection phone call, a buyout, and 951 sold-out shows since 2021. The CEO of Defected Records on what holds the centre. Episode Overview Wez Saunders cold-emailed Simon Dunmore in 2013. Two days after a meeting in which Dunmore said he could sell a pen, Wez was home with a chest infection when Dunmore called. He took the club promotions job. Four years later he ran Defected. In an hour with James Kirkham, Wez traces the line from a dropped Sony Walkman tuned to Kiss FM, through twelve years on the fast track at Deutsche Bank, to the summer of 2008 when his brother was diagnosed with leukemia and died in 23 days. He explains the £265 first quarterly paycheck from his first label that forced him to build an ecosystem rather than one imprint. He walks through the management buyout that made him chairman as well as CEO, the ninety-page manifesto he wrote for staff, and the pendulum metaphor he uses to keep house music's centre still while its edges swing. Then come the numbers: since 2021, Defected has put on 1,033 events outside Ibiza and 951 of them have sold out, against a live scene squeezed by inflation, war in Ukraine, and venue closures. He covers the fifty-plus-show virtual festival run during COVID that reached tens of millions, why a market that has gone from 100,000 songs a day to 140,000 makes brand and provenance matter more not less, and why bands like Jamie Webster and The Lathums may be the early signal of an AI-era backlash. The through-line he keeps coming back to is one word: community. Chapters (00:00) Cold open and intro (01:30) Tell me a story: Kiss FM, decks at fourteen, blagging gigs (05:30) Married at 22, Deutsche Bank, brother dies in 23 days (07:00) Endemic Digital, £265 and an ecosystem of labels\ (09:30) Cold email to Simon Dunmore: sell me this pen (11:30) The phone call in bed: club promotions to MD (14:30) COVID and the virtual festival born on a Sunday WhatsApp (17:30) The management buyout: from licensee to CEO and chairman (22:30) Cola, streaming and why Defected stopped licensing out (27:30) 1,033 events, 951 sold out, the squeezed live scene (35:00) The ninety-page manifesto and the pendulum (38:30) AI, 140,000 songs a day and a bands renaissance "Since 2021 we've put on 1,033 events that are not Ibiza. 951 of them have sold out." — Wes Saunders About the guest Wez Saunders is the CEO and chairman of Defected Records, the independent dance label founded by Simon Dunmore in 1999. He spent twelve years in finance, joining Bankers Trust in 1999 and rising on a fast track at Deutsche Bank, before leaving on his thirtieth birthday to acquire Endemic Digital and re-enter music. He joined Defected in 2014 as club promotions manager after cold-emailing Simon Dunmore, became managing director within four years, led the company through COVID with a fifty-plus-show virtual festival run that reached tens of millions, and led the management buyout that made him chairman as well as CEO. Defected and its sister brand Glitterbox have put on 1,033 events outside Ibiza since 2021, of which 951 sold out, and now move roughly a million tickets a year. Listen elsewhereApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcastWebsite: https://www.storyco.siteFollow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guest: Wez Saunders Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

    44 min

  7. May 21

    Ted Talk From The Toilet | Ryan Hopkins

    Ryan Hopkins filmed his first TEDx talk from a toilet cubicle, ran a hundred episodes of Toilet Break Wellbeing on LinkedIn and turned the script into an Amazon No. 1 business book. Three years before any of that he was a former rugby player with a broken leg, an eating disorder, and a Halifax bank clerk who found himself unable to speak across the counter. In an hour with James Kirkham, Ryan draws the line the wellness industry refuses to draw: wellness is a $9.2 trillion industry trying to sell you a hot stone massage; wellbeing is your subjective satisfaction with your life, and the two are not the same thing. He explains why an Oxford Wellbeing Research review found that eleven of thirteen workplace wellbeing interventions worsened wellbeing in the short term, and why a stress-management webinar inside a 49-hour week shines a light on the problem and does nothing to fix it. He covers his rugby injury and the bulimia that followed, the one-way flight to Argentina with £600 from a sold Vauxhall Tigra, the Ecuadorian hostel he helped build on the side of a mountain, the wildcard slot onto the Deloitte grad scheme, the LinkedIn show Toilet Break Wellbeing that ran a hundred episodes and became 52 Weeks of Wellbeing, the Wetherspoons table in Putney (212, by the water) where the book got written, the fintech where he cut five hours a week off the average work week and saved 2.4 million hours, the NatWest project with JAAQ that correlates with a 6.9% drop in mental health absence, why bricklayers are the best meditators in the world, what 'orthosomnia' is doing to your sleep, and Rory Sutherland's argument that an office needs a library space and a pub space and nothing else. He ends on the call he used to make to his nan every day at 12:15. Chapters (00:00) Cold open and intro (02:00) Tell me a story: the book that started on a toilet (06:30) Rugby, debt and a one-way ticket to Argentina (09:30) Bulimia, a Halifax bank counter and the call to mum (12:30) Oxford Brookes, the Deloitte wildcard and the work (16:00) Wellbeing is the output of good work, not an event (19:00) Wellness vs wellbeing: the $9.2 trillion confusion (23:00) Why bricklayers are the best meditators in the world (24:30) Sleep apps, orthosomnia and the wellness paradox (27:30) Healthi: putting a number on the value of looking after people (36:00) Calling Nan at 12:15 (38:00) Library space and pub space: what work looks like after the laptop "Everything I do is to help people not end up where I did, and if they do, to know they're not alone." — Ryan Hopkins About the guest Ryan Hopkins is a workplace wellbeing specialist, a TEDx Shoreditch speaker, and the Amazon No. 1 bestselling author of 52 Weeks of Wellbeing (Kogan Page). He started his working life as a trainee electrician, came back through Oxford Brookes after a year travelling through South America, joined Deloitte as a wildcard grad, led wellbeing at Sainsbury's Tech, and returned to Deloitte to build out its wellbeing consultancy with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. He is now the founder of Healthi, a corporate health platform that quantifies the impact of an organisation's healthcare spend, with pilots launching in the UK, UAE and US. Listen elsewhere Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast Website: https://www.storyco.site Follow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guest: Ryan Hopkins Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

    47 min

  8. May 14

    The Bald Yorkshireman in the Bath | Joe Fattorini & Mel Jappy | StoryCo

    Joe Fattorini sat in a bath of red wine in the Atacama Desert, filmed himself talking to camera and uploaded the clip to YouTube. Years later the producer Mel Jappy found it, four-by-three and badly cropped, and built The Wine Show around him. In an hour with James Kirkham, Joe and Mel walk through how a show ostensibly about wine ended up in 110 countries and in front of hundreds of millions of viewers by refusing to be about wine. The first rule Mel set Joe: never talk about anything you cannot taste in the glass. The second, when pitching: three sentences only — a question, two numbers, a visual image. They cover the Argentina episode about Malbec they were filming the day the Trump administration announced its Muslim ban, and the producer who burst into tears on a vineyard wall; the Georgian supra, a dinner whose name means tablecloth because the food is meant to hide the cloth; the Moldova shoot where a Red Army parade gatecrashed a piece to camera and a bear of a man told the crew, on the lens, to be quiet; Hermann Göring's wine collection in a Chișinău cellar; Howard Gossage's 1962 Paul Masson ad copy ("cheaper than cars, quieter than hi-fis, tastier than stamps") that Joe still considers the best wine ad ever written; The Picnic Society's 1801 rule of six bottles a head; and the 1791 Vin de Constance, dropped in Constantia and sieved before it reached the glass, that Napoleon drank on Saint Helena in the year Mozart died. Chapters(00:00) Cold open and intro (01:30) Tell me a story: a bath of red wine in the Atacama (05:00) Pitching a show that should not work( 08:00) Finding Joe at the bottom of a YouTube recommendation column (14:00) Cheese, not snobbery: why most people think they don't know wine (19:00) Ego in a box and the wrong-size trousers (24:00) The drunken monkey, the pheasant slippers and the show's real fans (30:00) Evergreen by design: would you make it the same today (32:00) Argentina, Georgia, Moldova — the day the show wasn't the show (44:00) Three sentences to pitch: the producer's rules that travel (53:00) The 1791 Vin de Constance: Napoleon's wine, Mozart's year "The wine show is not about wine. It's about great stories." — Mel Jappy About the guests Mel Jappy is a BAFTA-nominated executive producer with nine years at the BBC and credits including Who Do You Think You Are? and Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection. She trained as a solicitor, came into television as a MasterChef contestant, and created and produced The Wine Show. Joe Fattorini is a philosophy graduate, was wine correspondent for The Herald for fourteen years, an International Wine Challenge Personality of the Year, and the presenter The Guardian once called "the Attenborough of Oddbins." Listen elsewhere Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast Website: https://www.storyco.siteFollow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guests: Joe Fattorini and Mel Jappy Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

    55 min
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About

Welcome to StoryCo presented by James Kirkham. Story is mankind’s oldest technology, and StoryCo explores how that tech is being supercharged by the world's best minds. In the new economy, story is our principal sales tool, our mental crutch and our map for our future. James Kirkham explores story holistically: as a business tool, self-help strategy, political map, and guide to humanity. Join us every Thursday with story thinkers who lead organisations from every imaginable sector : theorists, producers, writers and stars. If you like a good story, pass it on! Subscribe now!

Information

  • Creator
    Telltale Industries
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Telltale Industries
  • Show Website
    StoryCo

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