Longtime Ago People

Emma  One of the things I love about my Longtime Ago People is hearing how people's lives evolve in ways they never expected. In this episode, I sit down with Emma, who describes herself as a quiet child growing up "in the middle of nowhere" in a close-knit, horsey family. School felt intimidating, and confidence didn't arrive overnight. Instead, she built it slowly, step by st...

Season 3 Epilogue - Longtime Ago People As I reach the end of Season Three , I look back on ten conversations, ten lives, and countless memories that might otherwise have slipped away. We’ve travelled from punk-rock school days and village childhoods to grief, migration, family businesses, Harlem streets, Australian road trips, and quiet suburban lives. The stories are wonderfully different, yet t...

Wendy  What fascinates me about recording Longtime Ago People is how an ordinary street can hold an extraordinary amount of history. In this episode, I sit down with my next-door neighbour, Wendy, who has lived on our street since 1968. Listening to her stories, I was struck by how quickly everyday life can fade from memory. Yet it can return in seconds when you start thinking about it. Houses cos...

Jim, Gran, Brothers, Cath, Children, Mentors & Faith - George 1954   family & mentors/grandson, husband, father & mentor When I sit outdoors with George, my second cousin visiting from Australia, a simple summer pint turns into a time machine. Within minutes we are back in 1950/60s Sussex, talking about front‑yard games, a steam train ride to see our grandparents, wartime stories from...

So many magicians, from Ali Bongo to Paul Daniels - Jim 1959  magicians & mentorships/student.    When I sit down with Jim, I hear how a random walk into a London magic shop becomes the start of a whole new life. Jim, based in Potters Bar near Barnet in North London, tells me how he goes from "I don't want to entertain the kids" to performing magic for families, care homes, stra...

Nadia - Miguel 1968   wife/husband    When I sit down with Miguel, I hear a love story that begins in Abu Dhabi, where he meets Nadia, marries her within six months, and builds two decades of the kind of partnership that makes ordinary days feel electric. Then metastatic breast cancer arrives, and being “the strong one” stops sounding like a compliment and starts feeling like a job with no days of...

All Mumu's People - Mustafa 1983    father, mother, grandmother/son & grandson   When I sit down with Mumu, I realise Harlem isn’t just where he is from. It is the place that raised him with rules you only learn by living them, from knowing which streets truly count as Harlem to understanding why being outside in the 90s felt like the whole world. We talk block parties, rap battles, water...

Ottelo Mola Benedetti - Mari 1968   grandfather/granddaughter   When I sit down with Mari, I begin with the bronze “Indian” head that lived in her family home. It was always described as Native American, and for years she and her cousins believed the story that came with it: their grandfather had once been an Indian, a fighter, a man whose adventures were too vivid to question. That single object...

Bill Sharman - Howard 1955  father/son   When I sat down with Howard , I quickly realised that a burger can be a time machine. What starts as a chat about Wimpy on one of the hottest days of the year becomes a walk straight back into post‑war Britain, when “hamburgers” were still a novelty and Wimpy was quietly inventing what we now think of as British fast food. Howard’s dad, Bill Sharman, isn’t...

Po, Kan, Lambert, Dai-Sensei & Zhong Ming Fashi - Simon 1960   mentors/student  When I sat down with Simon , he told me that everything began with one evening in childhood, three TV channels, and a single kung fu programme. That moment set him on a 52‑year martial arts journey that carried him from the Isle of Wight to Asia, and now to a quieter life in the Philippines, where he still trains e...

John 1958  father/son  “The Longtime-Ago-Person is Probably Me” When I sit down with John, I’m taken straight into a childhood that feels almost impossible now. He grew up in a vicarage on the edge of Dartmoor, the kind of place where a boy could walk out after breakfast, vanish for the entire day, and nobody thought to worry — partly because there wasn’t a phone to reach for. As we talk through h...

Rhys 1963  son/father/count/dj/islander   When I catch up with Rhys — or “The Count”, as he’s known on air — I’m taken straight back to 1976, when two twelve‑year‑olds (we are the two twelve-year-olds) walked into a school classroom and realised they were the entire class. From that moment, a friendship was built on shared trouble, fast laughs, and the kind of music discovery that rewires your bra...

Season 2 Epilogue — Longtime Ago People  Season Two brings me back to what I’ve always believed about memory — how it hides in music, in family stories, and in the everyday influence of people who shaped us long before we realised it. Looking back over these ten conversations, across places, eras and lives, I’m reminded again that who we are is never just about us. This season has taken me from th...

Loz 1964   son/father/grandfather  A noisy pub outside Petworth becomes a time machine the moment Loz starts talking, carrying us straight back to Southampton in the late sixties and seventies. We get into street football with one car a day, climbing trees, roaming until hunger called you home, and the wild logic of exploring half‑built housing estates with absolutely no health and safety in sight...

Lee 1951   grandson/sailor/traveller/DJ/adviser/musician  A quiet corner of Sussex opens the door to one of the most wide‑ranging life stories I’ve ever recorded. Sitting with Lee, we begin in 1950s Great Yarmouth, where summers meant guest houses, seaside theatres, and helping his nan run a busy holiday season. His dad worked the beachfront with a camera, and Lee’s first taste of performing came...

All Steve's People - Steve 1963   family/son, husband & father  A rough sea, a low sky, and the bridge to Hayling Island set the tone for my conversation with Steve — a story about what truly holds a life together. As we talk, he takes me back to a Portsmouth childhood framed by open doors, tight streets, and the hard memory of standing between warring parents. His mum’s grit — three jobs...

Sheila & Alan - Sarah 1973   parents/daughter  A quiet house is not the same as a silent life. In this episode, I sit down with Sarah, who invites me into a world where her deaf father dances by feeling the vibrations through the floor, her car‑loving mum measures affection in late‑night lifts, and a Welsh childhood filled with open doors and louder music becomes the blueprint for building cho...

Reg Rogers - Matt 1963   great‑great uncle/great‑great nephew  It’s a striking truth about the First World War: a huge proportion of British and Commonwealth soldiers who died have no known grave. Many were buried where they fell, lost to artillery, or laid to rest in makeshift cemeteries that vanished as the front moved. Today, hundreds of thousands are either commemorated on memorials to the mis...

David Bowie - Rupert 1957   ziggy stardust/fan Starman on the radio. Ziggy on the screen. A youth rewired in real time. In this episode, I dive in with Rupert to explore the moments where Bowie didn’t just soundtrack life — he edited it. We trace that rush from Space Oddity to Starman, the glam years that made risk feel normal, and the Berlin experiments that taught us how silence, texture and pul...

Jim & George - Ian 1947 grandfather/father/son  A family line can stretch across continents and still feel like one village street. In this episode, I sit down with my second cousin Ian, and we unspool a life that begins in Windhoek, runs through Cape Town and “East London”, South Africa , and eventually finds its footing back in Sussex after his father’s illness forces a return none of them e...

Wiggy, Doris, Mick, Peter & more - Sean 1965   grans & uncles/grandson & nephew  In this episode, I sit down with Sean to share vivid snapshots of Wiggy, A grandmother named for her hair, the Londoner who never quite forgave leaving the city, and Ron, the quiet man who gave up inheritance for marriage and then left for war. What starts as a conversation about a beloved gran becomes a r...

David 1967  Well scout, wildcatter, mentor & mate  A £99 suit, a borrowed tie, and a last-minute interview kicked off David’s career—a journey that leapt from the North Sea to Wall Street, and eventually to long Napa weekends after 4 a.m. starts. In this episode, I trace that unlikely arc with him: a teenager who didn’t know oil from Brent crude becomes a well scout by asking sharper questions...

Russell 1961 husband, father, son & supporter   A red jumper at a community centre disco. A chapel aisle, some said, he shouldn’t walk. A bus to the wrong end of a cup final and a long, cold trek home from the station after a night in a cell. When I sat down with Russell, I found a life textured by central Scotland in the sixties and seventies—steelworks grit, Friday pay packets, and the tidal...

Season 1 Epilogue — Longtime Ago People What happens when we pause to truly listen to the stories that shaped us? As Season One draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on ten conversations that revealed how seemingly small decisions can dramatically alter the course of family destinies across generations. When I began this podcast a few months ago, I had no clear destination—only a quiet curios...

Llewelyn Williams - David 1955 father/son  What remains when a father disappears from a child’s life at the age of seven? When I sat down with David Williams, I found the answer lay not in grand gestures, but in fragments—sausages sizzling on Stanley Beach in Hong Kong, bowling club outings, and the fading images of a man he barely knew, yet whose extraordinary life continues to echo through the d...