Local Heroes Podcast

In this episode of the Local Heroes Podcast, we sit down with Nic Greenan, custodian of one of the North East’s most loved cultural venues to talk cinema, community, leadership and what it means to be the leading a place approaching 90 years old.

We talk about opening cultural spaces up to everyone, bringing younger audiences through the doors, the magic of the big screen and ambitious plans for the building’s next chap...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan are joined by farmer and trained shepherdess Helen Stewart for a conversation about farming, food, family heritage and what it really takes to get something from farm to fork.

Helen’s family have been farming on Lizard Lane since 1965, on land that once housed hundreds of soldiers during the Second World War. From her grandfather delivering milk around South Shields by hors...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan are joined by Sunderland-born designer, photographer and entrepreneur Ian Wright for a conversation about creativity, confidence and what can happen when you’re prepared to back yourself.

From spending his early childhood in South Africa and returning to Sunderland in the 1970s, to getting bullied at school and being told by a careers adviser to think about getting “a...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan welcome Richard and Dominic Colman back to the studio to talk about an extraordinary year for one of South Shields’ best-known hospitality families.

A century after the Colman family first entered the food business, the brothers reflect on reaching their 100-year milestone, creating an exhibition at South Shields Museum, opening new venues and continuing a family story buil...

This week, Chris and Dan are joined by South Shields-born producer, filmmaker and content creator John Nejjy for a conversation about creativity, curiosity and using social media to tell better stories about the North East.

From joining the Merchant Navy at 17 and travelling the world, to training as a stonemason, working in bars and eventually building a successful career in the video games industry, John’s journey has never...

This week on the Local Heroes podcast, Chris and Dan met Luke Smith - a distiller who survived an explosion that blew his hat off, built his first still at fifteen, and once sent Chris home from a rum-making night so happy he nearly ate a slug outside a Newcastle church.

Luke is head distiller and co-founder of a Newcastle distillery, ten minutes from Central Station, where he makes white and dark rum from molasses, a bourbon-style...

Jo Milne and Steve White join us for a conversation about empathy, connection and what it means to truly understand the world from someone else’s perspective. Jo lives with Usher syndrome, a condition that causes both hearing and sight loss.

After being profoundly deaf from birth, her experience of hearing for the first time through cochlear implants was captured in a video that went viral around the world. But behind that mo...

Paul Mort is known for his energy, honesty and no-nonsense approach to business and life, but behind the success is a story very few people know.

In this episode, Paul opens up about building a business from nothing, surviving depression and suicidal thoughts, rebuilding his life, and the mindset shifts that changed everything.

He talks about learning to sell, embracing discomfort, becoming alcohol-free, and why personal responsibi...

What happens when you lose everything, and have to rebuild your life from the ground up?

In one of our most powerful conversations yet, Claire Liddle shares her extraordinary journey from childhood trauma and alcohol addiction to prison, recovery, and building a thriving bakery business that’s changing lives.

Claire speaks with remarkable honesty about growing up with abuse, the spiral into addiction, serving 22 months in pri...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Carley Armstrong of Sunderland - producer, filmmaker, and one of the hardest-grafting people in North East film right now.

She's gone from runner to script supervisor to producer the hard way, building her own company while refusing to leave the region that made her. Hendon born, Hendon loyal - the kind of place she can still knock on any door for a cup of sugar.

There's...

<span;>This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with Andy Haddon - beekeeper, baker, accidental troublemaker, and the man Charlotte Crosby once crowned "the David Attenborough of the Stottie."

<span;>Andy's the founder of Big River Bakery in Shieldfield, but that's only where the story lands.

<span;>We start with bees - the waggle dance, the venom that ki...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Bobzilla - artist, muralist, DJ, photographer, and a man whose own mum still refuses to call him anything but Robert.

The name itself is a tale. Born Robert Page (yes, both off Led Zeppelin), he became Rob, then Bob courtesy of a big lad called Robbie, and finally Bobzilla on a drunken night when a mate needed a DJ name and turned himself into Optimus Prime.

Sheffield-ra...

This week, Chris and Dan set out to talk about what’s been happening in their lives and somehow end up covering everything from decorating disasters and DIY injuries to family diaries, old letters, horror films and the stories that shape who we are.

Dan shares his ongoing battle with decorating, including drilling through his own foot, near misses with electrics, and why he may never become the DIY hero he hopes his family th...

This week on the Local Heroes podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Cal Byerley of Restaurant Pine - and Gordons (plural) steal the show.

Gordon, the podcast mascot, is named after a rock star, carved from a sculpture celebrating Mary Ann McCann's escape from slavery and destined for a bag stool at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Not bad for a bench.

There's also a dog called Gordon - named after Ramsay himself, Scottish and yappy - who n...

This week on the Local Heroes podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Rob Sampson, the man behind "Gan for bait, like?"

One of the North East's most-followed food voices, the conversation that wanders from Capri Sun smuggling tactics and a wonky table nicknamed Gordon, all the way to foie gras at the old Cafe 21.

Rob talks us through how a lockdown creative itch, fed by Anthony Bourdain, years of writing band reviews for Narc magazine, and...

This week on Chris and Dan sit down with Jo Feeley, co-founder of TrendBible, the Newcastle based trend forecasting agency helping some of the world’s biggest brands understand what people will want next.

From growing up in rural Northumberland to building an internationally respected futures and trend forecasting business, Jo shares how curiosity became a career, spotting patterns in human behaviour, culture, fashion, interi...

This week Chris and Dan are joined by comedian Lauren Pattison, one of the sharpest stand-up voices to come out of the North East in the last decade.

From doing her first gigs at 18 in Newcastle to becoming an Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee and touring internationally, Lauren talks honestly about the strange reality of growing up through comedy, while everyone else was off travelling, she was doing gigs in Derby and trying to survi...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, we’re joined by Toby Davison, the man behind North Shore Coffee, one of the North East’s fastest-growing specialty coffee brands.

From selling coffee on the Quayside with a small setup to building a multi-site business with cafés, vans, and a roastery, this is a story of graft, instinct, and backing yourself when there’s no clear plan.

We get into how it all started, from New...

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, we’re joined by Teesside’s very own Matt Ord, a straight-talking grafter turned business leader helping shape the future of the region.

From growing up in Middlesbrough to carving out a career without a clear path, this is a conversation about instinct, resilience, and making things happen when there’s no blueprint. Matt shares his journey through early graft, sales, and the ...