Great British Bosses at 50

Great British Bosses is back for 2023.

This latest run of extended interviews will take us over 50

episodes. The 50th episode is going to very special as we have a brilliant guest lined up.

We started Great British Bosses as a spin off from our regular Anything but Footy podcast. We

wanted to hear, at length, from the men and women who run sport in the UK. The first episode was

released in October 2019 and featured Adrian Christy, who was then CEO at Badminton England. Our

first run also featured table tennis, swimming, gymnastics and triathlon.

Each of those episodes was recorded in-person and face to face and we kicked off the second run

with more visits to some of the organisations tasked with managing the sport and leisure sector. Our

first guest in this run was Tim Hollingsworth at Sport England (pictured above). This organisation has been criticised in

recent weeks for not having the impact it had been hoped for in terms of increasing participation in

sport following the London Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. It might be worth re-visiting this

conversation to see what Tim said when we put that to him back in early 2020.

Of course, our interviews were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but as sport adjusted, so did

we and our first virtual recording was with Hugh Brasher from the company which stages the London M

arathon. He joined us to explain why the event had to be postponed. We also heard from Mark

England at Team GB about the delayed Olympic Games and from Craig Spence at The International

Paralympic Committee about the impact the postponement was having on the Paralympic Games.

The pandemic also demonstrated to us how important sport was to our wellbeing – both physical

and mental – and many of the conversations recorded in 2020 focused on how the sector was

making its case to Government. On the first day of the second lockdown in the UK, UK Active CEO

Huw Edwards used the platform of Great British Bosses to plead with the authorities to keep sports

and leisure facilities open as he told us how their closure was having a detrimental effect on the

nation’s health and wellbeing. It was a very important message and one that is still relevant with the

energy costs now having a significant impact on operators too.

So, as we approach 50 episodes, we’ll keep asking the questions and keep inviting the CEOs, MDs,

PDs and Head Coaches to take part.

By Michael Weadock January 2023