Right. Let's get into it. And get the conversation started. Welcome to Inspired Men Talk. Podcast where we sit down with real people and talk about their journey.
The stuff they've been through. The bits that shape them.
And the moments where things started to change. We talk about men's mental health. But
in
a way that actually sounds like real life. Some of it's serious. And some of
it is a little lighter.
But it's always honest and brave. Because most of this stuff doesn't get talked about enough. And if there's one thing we've seen time and time again. It's that there's always a way back. So I'm Gary. And I'm Peter. And this is Inspired Men Talk.
We all fail, and and sometimes we fail because things are out of our control. I I think mostly in my life, and this is not me being big headed, mostly my failures have come from things that are within without my circle of control. You know? Everything that's within my circle of control, I think I've made a success of. Yeah. I hope I have anyway. Well Yeah.
We're talking about that then. So we move on to those things you didn't control. So you could control, hopefully, that you've met and met with a a lovely lady who took you by the scruffy neck and made you behave by the sounds of it.
Eventually.
Eventually. And you support her business massively.
Yeah. She had a little hairdressers down Mare's Walk called the Strand, and she had this amazing little idea to use the room upstairs as an evening gown shop. And it absolutely took off. It took off. And she ended up running with her mother and they decided to go and open a river gate across from across from Fratelli's.
Yeah. And they did prom prom dresses. And we used to get people from all over the country, and I built them a little website, you know, the very early days of the Internet, sort of 2005. And it wasn't transactional, but people would ring up, and I put all the pictures of the dress on there. And people would ring up and say, I really like that dress.
You know, can give us your measurements, tell her, and we'd order it from them, and we'd send it. So we're sending dresses out all over, you know, packed out in the shop. And and at that moment, that's that's when I had left TV. So they paid me a little bit of money to leave TV because I thought I was gonna do TV forever until I had a little daughter. And then I realized I didn't really want to be living in and out of hotels and suitcases and missing her grow ups.
So that so I left TV and I I put everything into the shop. And then of course, 2008, the banking crash. And we just opened a second shop in Stamford, used all our cash all our cash flow because we didn't know it was coming. Yeah. Yeah.
We got two very profitable businesses, but we stupidly maybe this is my fault. We'd we'd run them under one umbrella. If we'd run them under different umbrellas, we probably could've kept one. But a lot of people we paid money to just bankrupted themselves and repackaged themselves and took money out of our pocket. And we were about $40 down, and we went to the bank who were a year ago walking overdraft papers down to Rivergate from HSBC.
Walked them down. Yeah. They wanted us they wanted to give us money. I rang them up and said, we're gonna be about $40 short. I said, you know, we just need a bit of help. If you can lend us 20, you know, business is still quite good. We'll make it up. You know? Look. We're taking this. We're taking that. And they just went, nah. Sorry about that. And by the way, we're converting your overdraft into a loan, 12% above base rate. I said, well, we're gonna go bankrupt then.
And we did. And we we nearly lost every single thing I and my wife had ever worked for. We kept our house, which is just about the only thing we kept, and not one person was prosecuted for that banking crash.
No. That's terrible.
And how many more how many more people were in my and my wife's position? Perfectly good businesses ruined by Greg.
Yeah. And that's got to be a little bit soul destroying, I guess. What how did you get through that that part of life? What what what was it that got you through?
I think it's probably the most difficult part of my life ever because you you look back, you think, oh, I shouldn't have left TV. Oh, I shouldn't have done that. You know, I could have still been traveling the world because I've still been earning because I was earning big books in 2000, 2001, 2002, more than I'm earning now. You have recriminations and you and your missus fall out. It's your fault.
It's your fault. You know, much as you love each other, it's really difficult to go through that when you were absolute rock bottom. And I it was even worse for me, I think, because I go back to what I've talked about earlier. I'd look back and think, I know what it's like to be skinned. I don't wanna be skinned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But eventually, I just gave myself a big shake. You know, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, well, you know how to do this.
Yeah. You've got to start again, but you've done it once. You do it again. And it was tough. It was hard, but I just started ringing people. And I I started ringing BBC local radio stations like Northampton. Who else did I ring? I I rang three counties in in Hertfordshire, and I I rang loads of them. So if you got any cover shifts, this is my background. Former TV sports correspondent, five live, local radio, blah blah.
So I ended up just going around doing cover shifts for quite a while. And then Northampton gave me a Sunday morning show, which was which was great fun, actually, because I was really irreverent on it. You know? Because everybody else everybody else had got really for quite religious Sunday morning shows. And I was doing stuff like grabbing a handful of vinyl at the library and tell me when to put the needle on.
And I was prop it's proper record player, and I and I purposely scratch it and say, oh, there you go. It's on. And it did be the middle of my cuckoo by Alvin Stardust. So it was great, and we got record figures for that. We're doing doing really well.
But it was hard work. So I went to travel quite a bit, and and my wife my wife took losing the business really, really hard. It took her probably two or three years to get over it. And in the meantime, I thought I've just gotta earn enough to pay the rep pay the mortgage, and keep our house. And it gradually built up and built up and built up, and then I remember Northampton offering me a drive time show, and I said, I can't take it.
I said, I've just been offered the editor's job at Radio Camisher in Peterborough. And I came to Peterborough just to run that office and teach young journos how to make good radio. And within three months, the breakfast show geezer left. I filled in. And then about a month later, they said, can you run the office and do the breakfast show?
And I went, if you make it worth my while, and they did. So I I just kept doing it and loved it and created a really, really powerful piece of a breakfast show, actually.
Was that on Westgate near the Bull Hotel?
No. It was Was it what Crossgate. So you know where Mind is now on the corner across from what used to be Ask, the the building down there. It was on that corner there, it walked past it the other day and thought, yeah, god. That was our studio.
Now you don't see the BBC and Peterborough anymore, so it's a real shame because we created a really popular show there that held people to account, that entertained people, that everybody knew about within the space of six to twelve months, I think. You know? We had a really good audience for it, so it was good.
And I think it shows again that you gave that action. You just constantly kept trying, constantly kept pestering people, and it pays off. So I think that's really lovely. That's a that's a really nice
example I'm for sure people that don't know me, but know of me, will look at my life and think, he's had it easy. It's all come to me. Look at him. Look. I bet he's minted. I bet he's a millionaire.
Yeah. But he They don't they don't know we lost
it all. When I whenever I've seen you, I thought, yeah, he's loaded. He is. That's why I
I never buy a pint though, Gary. Never buy
a That's why I thought I owed it. He's gotta be rich because he never spends.
Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. It's £7 now down in London. It's ridiculous. Jesus.
It's £7 in Stamford, mate.
Yeah. Blimey. It's so much better.
So where are you now, and what's been the the journey to there?
So going from that Peterborough breakfast show, then there were cutbacks at the BBC, so they made it a county wide breakfast show.
Yeah.
So we were broadcasting to Cambridge and Peterborough, and I insisted that we still broadcast two days a week from Peterborough. So I thought it was important to do that. Normally, when you broadcast countywide, certainly, was taught at Harrowood, you don't tell people where you are. You broadcast down. Yeah?
And and that's spot on. You know? That's what you should do. But I wanted to make a a figure a of it that we're broadcasting from Peterborough today. And then Wednesday, I would say, we're broadcasting from Cambridge today because it sounds massive. You're here. You're there. We're in your patch. So I made a point of doing that. The bosses hated it, but I said, no.
No. And we had record listening figures. I think we had 85,000 people listening to our breakfast show, which when you consider now, they've only got 68,000 listens to the whole of radio games all week. So we have more listening, and we had 75,000 listening to midmorning when I moved to midmorning and did that. It it was without naming names, it was a turbulent time at came as your there were there was some bullying going on in management.
The management were awful. I complained about it, and it wasn't really bullying towards me, but I saw this person bullying others. And I won't stand for that. I won't have it. And I at the time, I'd I'd gone freelance in 2014 to allow me to earn extra money because BBC doesn't pay much.
No.
You know? So not local radio. On TV. And and I was probably earning 15 or $20 doing other things. And they turned around to me in 2017 despite telling me in 2013 I had to have a private limited company to be freelance.
So I set one up, did that, and then did loads of other stuff. Stainton, loads of bullying going on. They'd not listen to me. The geezer in it, nothing had happened to him. And then they turned around and said, oh, by the way, from now on, you need to sort out your tax affairs with IRS because, you know, you need to do all that. And and they dropped all freelancers in it, really, the BBC. And you can't do any other work if you're working for the BBC. And I went
We can't be freelance then.
Well, exactly. So they were trying to say that I forget what the thing was, but the tax man was trying to say you were employed.
Yes.
And I was saying, I'm not. I'm freelance. I've got problems in company. I do all this other work. And I did quite a lot. So I was teaching at university, the media degree and journalism degree, a kid with no a level teaching a journalism degree. But but I loved it. I loved doing that. So in 2017, I made the really, really, really and I mean, broke my heart, a sad decision to leave, and I've not presented a radio program since. And I set my own communications and marketing company.
Right.
And did really well. I got lots of contracts from local government, huge fostering campaigns that were really, really successful. We found lots and lots of extra foster carers with loads of kids close to home, and then COVID hit.
Yep. I lost
I lost every con I lost every contract because the local government just went, oh, no. We haven't got any money. I said, but look what we've done with the fostering campaign. You're saving £4,000,000 a year because it it's double. It costs double to send kids out to foster places outside of the county.
We were keeping the majority of in and getting loads of foster carers. Anyway, we'd love to do it, but we can't. We ain't got any money. And I thought, and I kept going. I kept going with other stuff for about a year, year and a half, and then it got really quite perilous. So I thought I need to look for a job. And I got a job at the cathedral, which was lovely.
But that's a really massive movement. So, you know, going from DJing at Shanghai Sam's on previous other iterations of DJing and right through all that lovely entertainment world to promoting a cathedral. And the cathedral's been needing to, you know, generate income forever, but more now than ever. And that's a big thing, but it's very different from anything you've ever done.
Well, it is, and it it's not. Because instead of selling myself, I'm selling the cathedral, and that's the way I look at it. I think it's an amazing building, and I've always promoted it when I was on the radio. I always went out of my way to to help Stuart Orm and the reverend Richard Cattlin, all these people, great personalities. I also am outmoyed because I love the building.
I'm not in any way, shape, or form religious. Not a bone in my body. In fact, me and the dean often have conversations about, show me the proof, show me two independent sources, and I'll believe you, god, you know, and all that sort of stuff. And he said, we've got a faith. I said, yeah.
My brain don't worry about that. So, you know, but for me, it's about keeping that building for the people of Peterborough, the wider area, and keeping it open. And and it was a bit of a learning curve. You know, there are many things I had to learn about the way the cathedral works, but no more of a learning curve than anything else I've ever done. I mean, I when I first, worked into the radio camera show when I left Harrowood in '94, I wasn't a journalist.
Somebody said to me, can you just write me a VP? And I went, what's a VP? It's a voice piece. Right. So I write it, and then I voice it up. Oh, okay. Didn't know how to edit. None of this stuff. And I've gotta say big thank you to a guy called Mick Meadows who used to be on Herald as well, Mick and Sarah Jane on an evening. And he was at Cambridge at the time, and he he sat with me for two months.
And I was drowning a bit, and he he showed me the way to do stuff. He showed me how to do it. I'd never used a computer at that point because Herald was I think we got our first advert computer, but everything was analog. So to go somewhere with computers, you know, it's a big learning curve. But like I said, you know, everything I've ever done, there's been some sort of learning curve, but you have to back yourself, you know, and go into the cathedral.
Think, well, I'll learn about cathedral where I live. I'll I'll sort that. I know how to sell stuff. I'll be I'll be great. You know? I'll be fine. And I'm three years later, I'm still there. They're not showing me.
So I've got one question about that. Then Ping has got a question about cars, and then we both got a question about music. And then I got a question of how you did it. So one of the things about Peterborough, I've always seen it as a village or a city with a village mentality. And I think what you've said about you wanted to there's a lot in Peterborough people don't know about, and the cathedral is one of those.
Why are you still doing it? What what's driving you to big up Peterborough, let alone the cathedral?
As I said, I came here in 1989, and I've never really left. I I'd live outside of Peterborough now, but I've either worked and or lived in Peterborough since 1989. Even when I worked for, you know, 06:00 news, 10:00 news in White City, I commute back to Peterborough on the 09:00 train. There's something about this city that once you're in it, it draws you in. And I think it's it's the most underdeveloped, unsung, jaded city there is.
There's so much potential. We're the only city with a a riverbank that's not developed. You know, it's bonkers. The city center has been crying out for regeneration since John Peach decided to concrete it over and put some fountains in. I said to him at the time on the radio, what's your vision, John? He went, we've got some fountains. I said, no. No. That's not that's not a vision, John. I said, is it gonna be a mini Covent Garden? Is it gonna be this? Is it gonna be that? You know?
So I've got they won't switch on.
Well, exactly. I think I think being on the radio every day fighting for Peterborough and fighting for people that live in Peterborough. And I I think one of the reasons the radio show was successful as well goes back to what I said earlier is I know what it's like to be skinned, and I've always got that in my head. And I can always empathize with people that live on the Welland or live in Ravensthorpe or or wherever they are, and they're struggling. And and then they are struggling at the moment.
People are struggling, and I can empathize with it, and I can understand it, and I can appreciate what it's like. And I think that that helps. And that informs a lot of my decisions at the cathedral now. You know, when we talk about ticket prices and everything else, we made to come and see the titanosaur, we made it six pounds, which is nothing in terms of seeing, you know, large scale events. But we made it up purposely so as many people as possible could come see it, and, you know, it was affordable.
But going back to what you said about, I've just got a passion for the city, and I want to see it develop. Before I retire in eight, nine years time, I want this city I want to look back on the city and think, well, I've had a hand in that. I help make that better. I help keep the cathedral open. I work with others, and we are working behind the scenes right across the city center with the council, with Queensgate, the bid.
Everybody else is wanting to make Peterborough City Centre better, and it is gonna be better. There are things going on that are gonna develop it and make it better. And I can't wait to see the day when, you know, people in Peterborough are apathetic, and they're apathetic for a reason because they've been overpromised and under delivered for forty years. You know, after you got the new town, and then it stopped.
Yep. The Peterborough effect.
Yeah. And I can understand it. And I keep saying to politicians, I've been you know, I know them all, obviously, because I've interviewed them all. And I'm constantly on it, Sabine, and I was saying, yeah, we've delivery is key. Delivery you were at that conference when I said delivery is key.
If people can see it, feel it, and touch it, and it it's changing for the better, you will change people's perceptions. And you watch this space. In the next two years, things are gonna look and feel much, much better.
It's amazing. So Peter Burr is on the up, so that's cool. But I wanna go back in history, and Peter Burr's got Peter. I'm gonna gonna call you Peter Burr from now on, Peter. Peter is going to ask you a really serious question.
Right. Before we get to that question, right, so before I get to that question, I was just gonna say, have you thought about advertising the cathedral in Russia? Because apparently a lot of Russians come over here to look at cathedral spires. Anyway, right, the question. The quest.
Yeah.
So the question. What has been your favorite car to either own or drive?
Well, when I was making really good money, DJing, and bearing in mind, my first car was a mark two Ford Escort with cracked sills that I bought for £500. And my first proper flashy car was a white XR three I.
Oh.
And that was probably 1990. And it went like off a shovel. And and not that I drive over the speed limit, of course, but, you know, I thought back then that was the dogs. I I still I've had other things since that, you know, I've had Evokes and this and that and then you know? But that was a raw piece of tin that, you know, looked the dogs, and I really enjoyed driving it. I really do.
Yeah. No. They're great cars. I I had an XR two. I I didn't quite get to the XR three.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah. And everyone knows their first car. Everyone remembers their first car. I had a Datsun Cherry.
I had a I had a Ford Escort Park too. Yeah.
There you go. Everyone remembers the
first car. Sails. Yeah.
I I got some filler from British air. I remember getting some filler from British aerospace and filling the sails, and then I got and the engine used to leak a bit. So I got we used to have this rubber that used to coat stuff in British airspace. So I got a load of that rubber and just coated the engine in it. So it didn't leak didn't leak anymore. Amazing. Smell. I mean, it's Yeah. It's quite it's quite a nice smell, to be honest.
Incredible. Going back to everything, because we're getting near the end of this podcast. So a bit of wisdom, really. You've been through coming from a really poor, necessarily challenging upbringing, brought some fortitude into it and decided where you wanted to go, got some luck, but actually had some really bad luck, which was out of your control. But you've kept going, and you've progressed continually in some format.
How did you do that? Because there's somebody out there now because times are tough for some people. I live on Newelland. I've lived there for thirty odd years. I got moved there when I first moved into Peterborough. Look. And it's like, well, I'll stay there, and it's fine. But there's people who are struggling, and they might end up where you are or who you were.
Yeah. And and I and I, as I said earlier, I've always been mindful of that. I've always been I've always tried to be kind to others, and I won't accept anybody being unkind. If I see it online or I see it anywhere else, I'll call it out. And sometimes to my own detriment, I I'll call people out on social media, and it'll create a thread of people going, oh, boy. It's alright for you. And I'll say, no. No. Please don't talk like that. Please don't treat me like that.
And and I genuinely mean this. I try to be kind and think of others at all times. But I also think that, you know, we've all had our down days, and I I, you know, have a times when we went, you know, bust in 2008. I generally thought I've worked all that all my life for nothing. And that was the you know, I was proper down.
I mean, you know, it's dark thoughts. Mhmm. But if you keep yourself open to possibility and to change and you can drive yourself forward, you'll make look. You'll make some good look as well. Bad luck happens to you when you're not looking.
You know, it comes along and it smacks you, and it's always gonna come along. You're always gonna get life is always gonna be like that. It's never gonna be like that. I mean, it appears to be like that for some people, but you never know what's going on behind closed doors. So I would say to people, if you're feeling down right now, if you're feeling skin right now, if you think there's no way out and there's nothing you can do, there is.
There is. And there's people you can talk to these days. I'm lucky I've always had good friends and friends that will kick me up the bum, friends that would push me, friends that would tell me, you can. You can. And I've always had that, as you said, that thing inside me, that that self confidence, even when it's knocked to its extreme.
And when you've been up there as well, it's I think I had an added layer of embarrassment as well. I mean, you know, I I couldn't reach out to everybody because I I couldn't I couldn't ring people I'd work with in TV and say, a bit broke at the minute. I'd like to come back. Because once you've got out, you're out and it's embarrassing. You can't so I had a bit of that as well.
So but I would say, don't be embarrassed. Don't be embarrassed to talk to people. And, you know, it's dark. If it's a dark day today, the sun will come up tomorrow. It will. And there is there is opportunity out there to do things and just be open to change because the one thing I've learned in my life, change is flipping inevitable.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yep. It's how you adapt.
It's how you
Okay. Thank you for that.
Amazing.
So we've got a lot we was talking just before you came on about your you know, the bios you sent me, and Peter mentioned well, he mentioned a phrase, and I said, there's a song about that. So what song do you think we were talking about? Being a DJ, I was gonna tell you about you you know everything about music. Apparently, all DJs do.
Things can only get better by Doreen. Nice. That's a good one.
See, you're too good for us. Peter, give a fuck about these.
Well, I looked at it, and I went, oh, I said, he's got knocked down, but he gets back up again.
So we went number one. Tubthumping. I used to play that because I used to I do the announcement at Peterborough Pirates Yes. For Mickey Vincent. The tub by Mickey Vincent. I used to do the announcing. I did it for a season, and I I made some little tapes. Every time they scored, it'd either be, woo hoo, by Blur, or it'd be, get knocked down. Get up again. So so, yeah, I mean, that that's that's a good tune, thump thumping.
Yeah. Yeah. Chumbawumba. Not my favorite album or my favorite ever album is Kings of Wild Frontier by only the ants, but so I'll take Chumbawumba.
I used to love them. Yeah.
I love I still do. I still I still sometimes get in the car and just flick on my ants.
But that's a guilty secret. Should you be saying that on a podcast?
Is it funny? I'll have to cut everyone's way.
But everyone's got their guilty secret of music, right, for all of them.
I'm not guilty about it. I love it. Anybody talks to, you know, music force people. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. A new role family of wild nobility. Yeah. I don't mind that.
Well, but, I mean, we're gonna finish the podcast now, but I've gotta say, I love ACDC, Queen, people like that. I also love Leo Stainton. So you know?
You know? Do you know? I'll I'll end on this if if you you gotta finish. But my favorite ever radio show that I used to do so every bank holiday at Radio Cambridge show, I I instigated, and the bosses again hated it, but it was the most popular thing. All request bank holiday Monday shows.
So nine till twelve, ring in, give me a reason to play a song, and I'll play you Freddie and the Dreamers, Leo Sayer, ACDC, or whatever. And I used to do it all live. So I used to drag all the music into a room order, and I'd just be, as I was talking, sorting them out so you're not playing too much of one thing at once. You know? So I'd play some L'Ellseye, and I'd play ACDC.
Then I'd play Adam and the Ants. Then I'd play Motorhead. Then I'd play, you know, hot chocolate, and it was fantastic. I love doing it. Most fun I've ever had on the radio.
That's cool. So, Paul, we're just gonna finish, but tell us exactly how people if they wanna get ahold of you, they wanna have a go at you online or whatever you want, you know, or they wanna visit the lovely cathedral. How do people find out more?
So if you if you wanna have a conversation with me, I'm readily available on Facebook. Just search up Paul Stainton. Same on Twitter, although I don't go on Twitter so much these days, but I'm always happy to have a conversation. I think the most beautiful thing we've ever done from the radio, by the way, is we built an online family on Facebook who still communicate with each other now. There's probably about, you know, a 100 people who are still talking to each other and only met through our radio shows on Facebook.
And, you know, the best thing about them is there's tourists, there's liberals, there's left wingers, there's right wing. And I love having conversations because unlike America, we can't be polarized. You've got to agree to disagree with people. Yeah. And I leave it like that sometimes. Said, well, that's your opinion, man, but we can have a chat about it. I don't agree with you. But, yeah, see you soon. You know? Because a converse you should always be able to have a conversation.
So Yeah. You can find me on social media. I'm all over it. As for the cathedral, we've got so many things on at cathedral these days, and we've I think we've completely transformed the cathedral in the last couple of years. And it's great that so many partners are working with us to drive footfall into the city center.
So we've got titanosaur at the moment, half turn next week. Kids are gonna be coming. We've sold lots of tickets. It's gonna be packed. We've got the longest yarn two coming, which is a huge series of knitted second World War scenes.
The first one was mega, and this will be busy. Older people come to it, but, yeah, it's lovely. That starts in June. And then in July and August, we've got traveling bricks, which is a million Lego bricks models and that you can come and look at. We've got a seven meter long Titanic, and then we've got a massive play area with Lego.
And then we've got a huge brick pit in the middle of the cathedral where adults and and kids can play together, turn their phones off Yeah. Turn the screens off, detox, and just play. Have fun. So that's all happening this summer. Traveling bricks can be brilliant.
Traveling bricks. A couple of people who are gonna be coming to that now.
Yeah. No. Yeah. It's, you know, it's amazing how many adults and and children have commented on it, and it's it's almost equal, really.