How much control does The Times have over the content of your show?
I would like to pretend it's a terrible battle between my artistic integrity and the man over at The Times, but it's not like that at all in this particular case, and it'll vary from institution to institution. They wanted the podcast to reflect a bit of spark, a bit of fun, a bit of controversy about the game, the game itself, the section in the Monday section of football in The Times. It's a lot of straight reporting, but it's a lot of interesting stuff in there as well, and they wanted me to stir things up. They've never really had any control over it at all, except in a good way. If you ring up and say, We're from The Times of London, people will want to talk to you, so that's a good control they have over it. They asked us to keep the f-ing and blinding to an absolute minimum because it's not their brand value, and I accept that entirely. The only problem you ever get is not from the newspaper itself, but from the interviewees. They don't want to talk about a certain thing when they come on. For example, when the bung allegations were going around we talked to Harry Redknapp. He was happy to speak about those in general terms, but there were one or two questions about other people that he said, I'll just put the phone down if you start up about that. He's entitled to do that. The control The Times has brought has been very positive. They hired a good studio, got a good producer and proper commissioners everywhere got talented people, in this case me, and said, "Right, let it rip", and they've been repaid by people saying very nice things about it.
