Author Archives: Sam Stow

• Proper Football Wins Silver At The British Podcast Awards

  Kammy & Ben’s Proper Football Podcast has been honoured at the 2023 British Podcasts Awards. At last night’s awards ceremony, the Folding Pocket production won a Silver Award in the Sport category.
  
  The podcast – produced in partnership with the BBC – combines the humour and light touch of presenters Chris Kamara and Ben Shephard with hard-hitting and entertaining conversations about the modern game to take listeners inside the dressing room and into footballer’s lives like no other podcast.
  
  The award was Folding Pocket’s second gong of the year for Proper Football having won Best Video Strategy at the Publisher Podcast Awards in April.

  Two other Folding Pocket podcasts were also finalists at the British Podcast Awards: The Rabbit Hole Detectives, starring Richard Coles, Charles Spencer and Cat Jarman, was nominated in the New Podcast category, while Three Little Words with John Bishop and Tony Pitts made the shortlist in the Entertainment category.
  
  Click here to find out more about our award-winning, chart-topping podcasts

• Pocket People: Shira Kilgallon

  It’s no surprise that Shira Kilgallon has ended up as an executive producer for the world’s biggest rugby podcast, The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, and its sister podcast The Good, The Scaz & The Rugby: “Rugby is a massive part of my identity and my life, and I’ve always loved putting on a show – so my job suits me down to the ground.”
  
  Before joining Folding Pocket in June 2021, Shira gained valuable experience in live radio production and reporting at the BBC following the completion of a masters in Broadcast Journalism from City, University of London, but since joining Folding Pocket her personal passion for rugby has been just as important as her professional expertise.

  In the last two-and-a-bit years, Shira has been a central part of all output at GB&R and GS&R, which includes a diverse range of audio and video, social-first content and live shows.
  
  In a long list of memorable moments the achievement that Shira is most proud of since joining Folding Pocket is the growth of GS&R, and she describes working with hosts Elma Smit, Emily Scarratt and Natasha Hunt as her favourite part of the job: “I’m so proud of this podcast. It’s rare that a producer and their ‘talent’ find such a friendship, as we have. But when you’re bound by a higher purpose, it’s not really a surprise”.

  

  The ‘higher purpose’ that Shira refers to is the desire – which sits at the heart of GS&R – to champion and grow rugby as a game for women and girls: “We’re creating more than a podcast, it’s a platform to spotlight high-performing women across our game.”

  Shira’s highlights in what are an ever-evolving job have included working with incredible guests such as Richie McCaw, Eddie Jones and Johnny Sexton;  bringing more talent into GB&R including Ben Kayser, Shane Horgan, Jonathan Davies and Ellis Genge; and producing the recent Royal special podcast (turning the whole thing round in less than 72 hours), the GB&R live theatre show tour, and a branded Top Gear-esque series of challenges between the GB&R boys and the GS&R girls as part of a branded content campaign for Honda.
  
  And, if you’re wondering about the koalas, you’ve obviously not watched the video yet!
  
  Interested in working at Folding Pocket? Get in touch here – we’d love to hear from you.

• Royal Family Star In The Good, The Bad & The Rugby Special

  Photo Credit: Chris Jackson

  The Good, The Bad & The Rugby laid down an early World Cup marker on 9 September with the release of a remarkable podcast, filmed at Windsor Castle.

  Featuring Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales, and Princess Anne, the podcast sees Mike Tindall (husband of Zara Phillips and son-in-law to Princess Anne) and co-hosts James Haskell and Alex Payne sit down with the royal trio for a candid chat.
  
  In the first three days since launch on 9 September, the podcast – which was produced by The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, Folding Pocket and our sister company Platform Media – has been viewed more than 1.8 millions times on GB&R’s YouTube channel.
  
  As patrons of the Welsh Rugby Union (William), Rugby Football Union (Catherine) and Scottish Rugby Union (Anne), respectively, the royal trio unsurprisingly have some fond rugby-related memories, but the 50-minute special unearthed some new revelations about the Royals’ experiences of playing and watching sport.

  While she jokingly tried to deny it, the Princess of Wales was outed as “uber competitive” by Tindall, who added “I’ve seen her play beer pong!”. The Princess herself suggested that she and William probably would disagree as to which of the two of them were better at any given sport, and also described her particular love of cold water swimming.
  
  Prince William reflected on the privilege and excitement of being able to watch so many sporting events, before revealing that the only time he’s ever cried when watching sport was when he saw Zara Phillips win the 2005 European Eventing Championship: “I was down in Exmoor at the time camping. We were all huddling around the phone watching it. She was there, she was blubbing away, the flag was going up. I was in pieces.”
  
  Speaking about her patronage of the SRU, Princess Anne explained that it was, in fact, a happy accident: “They asked me to go and open the East Stand [at Murrayfield] when it was built, at about two weeks’ notice because they’d been let down. As it happened [my] horse was lame, so I wasn’t competing at the weekend [so I accepted]… About a month later they wrote and asked if I’d like to become patron.”
  
  Click here to find out more about Folding Pocket’s podcasts

• Folding Pocket and BBC Team Up For New Football Podcast

  The latest football collaboration between Folding Pocket and the BBC went live last week with the launch of Defoe and Deeney’s Football Firsts.

  Ex-Premier League strikers Jermain Defoe and Troy Deeney have teamed up to re-live the formative moments from their journey to the top of the domestic game – including debuts, first goals and first red cards. Over the course of the series they’ll reflect on the key experiences that have shaped their careers on and off the pitch.

  In episode 1, Troy and Jermain discuss their first strike partners. Troy remembers a super awkward meeting with one of his and JD reveals why you should never give Paolo di Canio the wrong size shirt. Troy remembers being enraged with one at Old Trafford and JD recalls how he felt when David Nugent nicked a certain goal off him for England. Troy also tells us about the time he took on a defender known as ‘The Fridge’.

  Football Firsts is the latest in a series of football collaborations between the BBC and Folding Pocket, following Kammy & Ben’s Proper Football Podcast, Jermain Defoe: Outside the Box, If Blackburn Signed Zidane and Moment of Truth.