Monday, 30 June 2025

Wembley Words


In my previous blog entry, about the series I produced for BBC Sounds called The Man Who Made Wembley, I mentioned the pleasing news that on its first weekend of availability, the series had been given a nice little notice in The Observer. Just a brief mention at the end of a round-up of other sporting-related programmes, but nice to have - even if, as I mentioned before, they did get the title slightly wrong!


However, it turns out that The Observer wasn't the only national publication of which The Man Who Made Wembley caught the attention. Because the following weekend, it got another little write-up in the Sunday press. This time in one of the supplements in the Sunday Times, their Culture magazine, in a piece written by their regular radio and podcast reviewed Clair Woodward - who also, back in 2022, gave my Nexus documentary a nice review, too.


With due acknowledgement, and of course thanks, to those two newspapers, however, best of all came the other week when the podcast page of the Radio Times highlighted the series. Not only that, but reviewer David Hepworth actually made it his 'Pick of the Week'. I think "breezy series" is a compliment - it must be, given the context, and I'll take it as one anyway!


Oh yes, and the BBC Sport Online piece I wrote to tie-in with the series also made it into the round-up of their "most engaging football content" for the season just gone. Which is pretty good going, given that neither the piece nor the series really features football all that much at all! I'm not sure whether they judged that in terms of readability or raw figures, but I'm pleased with how the piece did on both counts - it got over 300,000 views and the stats seemed to show that people who clicked on it were reading through most or all of it.