I hope you don’t think that just because talking to Chris Waddle was a feeling like winning the Champions League final for me and BackPage that we’ve got a bit carried away with ourselves!
No danger.
We’ve been quiet these last couple of weeks without a ‘Big Interview’ for quite a different reason.
Making this podcast has not only been hugely enjoyable for us it has surprised us the degree to which you’ve become fanatically keen on it – none of the three of us has ever had so much positive, enthusiastic feedback in our careers before.
So, thanks.
However the fact remains that we have funded all of them ourselves.
All the travel, in three different countries, all the accommodation, some nice red wine for the guests, the editing, the equipment – and the career time it takes us to make the Big Interview happen.
We’ve been low profile since meeting Chris (how good was he at talking about his career, this game of football that we all adore and at letting his idiosyncratic personality shine through?) because we’ve recorded three new podcasts.
Pretty soon we’ll share with you who spoke to us – but I can assure you that each of them was colourful, fascinating, open, honest and fun. If you’ve lapped up the previous interviews, these will be really satisfying to listen to. And funny.
But unless we can generate some funding for what we do then these will be the last three.
We are dead-set against putting up a paywall and charging for these podcasts. None of us enjoy that approach to content as customers, so why inflict it on our loyal audience?
We want The Big Interview and its approach to telling big, broad, interesting, sometimes challenging football stories to be available to the widest audience – age, geography, experience, budget.
So we will ask for financial support via crowdfunding. All that means is that, via Kickstarter.com we’ll give you the chance to ‘own’ the Big Interview by paying what you feel you can afford, or want to pay.
In concept it’s like the famous idea of fans owning the clubs they support.
If you like it, if you want it to live and thrive then a relatively small investment will make you a co-owner.
More details and the first new podcast from October 19. We’ll announce a whole series of what we think are exciting, valuable and fun rewards which correlate to how much you want to shell out – starting at about a tenner.
Then we’ll release one podcast per week for a month.
Meantime we thought: ‘Let’s put out a fun, short compilation which nicks little phrases and answers from our interviews so far.’
It’s been fun so far – let’s keep The Big Interview alive. Between us.
Cheers y gracias a todos.
Graham and BackPage
