My Day at the Podcast Show

Some names have been changed and identities obscured in order to protect the privacy of participants in this story. The rest is told with a total commitment to journalistic accuracy.

Readers of my blogs and newsletter will know that I am but a humble servant of pod. I make my shows in the quiet, unassuming manner in which the monks at Buckfast Abbey produce fortified wine for the consumption of Scottish alcoholics. So it is a very rare thing for me to get caught up in the glitz and glamour of the industry.

But this week the aforementioned glitz and glamour came to town, in the form of Podcast Show 2022. Spread over three (or more, counting’s not my strong suit) floors of the Business Design Centre in Islington, this was British podcasting like you’ve never seen it before. When I first started as a ‘professional’ podcaster, some 6 or 7 years ago probably, there were about a half dozen people in my wedge of the industry who could stake that claim. At Podcast Show, significantly more than 5,000 people showed up to celebrate how far the sector has come. Full of besuited yuppies, swigging oat milk lattes and free prosecco, it was everything that the Tories have taught me to fear about Islington.

This was, I confess, my first proper industrial conference (though I’ve been to a few for the medicinal cannabis industry, bizarrely) and you always remember…