Everything a booker needs, so you don't have to email me first.

Why councils lose their own records — Not a general complaint about bureaucracy — one specific story about a filing system, a flood, and eleven years of missing minutes. Works best as a narrative hour
What a freedom-of-information request really does — Practical, immediately useful to listeners, and genuinely funny in two places. This is the episode that gets the most replies afterwards
Being wrong in public — The story I got badly wrong in 2021 and what happened next. Only worth doing on a show where nobody is trying to win
What I'm not good at — Broad subjects. "The future of local news" gets a much worse hour out of me than any of the three above, and you are welcome to hold me to that
A show I fit — Long form, one guest, no panel. Under thirty minutes and none of these has room to land properly
A show I don't — Debate formats and anything with a devil's advocate. Not a criticism — I am simply bad at them and your listeners would hear it

"What did you assume was true that turned out not to be?" — The best opening question anybody has asked me. It gets a story rather than a position
"Walk me through the day it went wrong." — Narrative rather than argument. Ten minutes of good tape and no preparation needed from either of us
"What would you tell someone about to do this?" — Practical, and it is the bit listeners screenshot
"What do people get wrong about you?" — Risky in a bad interview and excellent in a good one. Ask it if the conversation has warmed up, not at minute two
"What are you still not sure about?" — The most under-used question in podcasting. Almost every guest has a real answer and almost nobody is asked
What not to ask — Anything answerable from my bio, and "so tell us about your journey". Both waste the first ten minutes, which is the part most people listen to

BIO — 40 WORDS

[Name] is a reporter who spends most of their time reading documents nobody else has asked for. They have written about missing council records, flooded archives and the paperwork behind three public inquiries, and they live in [town].


EPISODE BLURB — 60 WORDS

What happens when a council loses eleven years of its own minutes? [Name] spent two years finding out, and the answer involves a flood, a filing cabinet and a filing system nobody had checked since 1994. A conversation about how public records actually survive — and how easily they don't.


THREE TITLE OPTIONS

1. The eleven missing years
2. What happens when a council loses its own minutes
3. Nobody checked the filing cabinet

Paste it straight in — No permission needed and no need to tell me. That is what it is for and rewriting it is time you do not have
Change anything — Cut the bio to twenty words, retitle it, rewrite the blurb in your show's voice. None of this is precious
The photo is in the same place — Linked below, at print and web size, with the credit line inside the filename so it can't get separated from the file
Pronunciation — Written out here phonetically. Ask for a recording if that is easier — it takes ten seconds to make and it saves a wince on air
What to check with me — Only a factual claim about somebody else. Everything else on this page is mine to be wrong about

Spend forty minutes on the book — There is a book. It gets one sentence at the end if you want it there, and nothing else. A guest who plugs is a guest nobody finishes
Be the controversial take — If the booking is really "say the unpopular thing about X", say so now and you'll get a polite no rather than a disappointing hour
Pay to appear — There are networks selling guest placements. I don't buy them, and a show that sells them isn't a fit — that is a mismatch rather than a judgement
Ask for the questions in advance — Beyond the themes. A read-out prepared answer is the difference between a conversation and a press release, and listeners hear it instantly
Ask for edits afterwards — With two exceptions, both absolute: a factual error, or anything that would identify a source. Those get flagged immediately and gratefully
Cancel late — Barring a real emergency. If it happens you get as much notice as exists, an apology, and the name of somebody better on the subject

A real microphone in a treated corner — Not a headset and not a laptop. Say what yours is honestly — a host can hear the difference in four seconds and being caught overstating it is worse than admitting it
Wired connection, always — And a phone on the desk as a backup. Two of the four recordings that have gone wrong for me were somebody's wifi rather than mine
I record my side locally — And send you the file afterwards, unprompted. It costs nothing and it has rescued one episode in about twenty
Timezone and a buffer — Booked in your timezone, confirmed in writing, with fifteen minutes either side. I will be there ten minutes early and I will not be rushing off
What I'll actually do to promote it — One post on the day using whichever clip you pick, one mention to my list, and I'll answer comments for the first week. That is the entire list, and it is short because it is what I will genuinely do
What I won't promise — "Sharing it with my whole network." Everybody says it, almost nobody does it, and a booker who has heard it fifty times has stopped believing it