OT: The Podcast

In the world of watches, George Bamford — and his eponymous company — Bamford Watch Department, needs no introduction. Bamford has been extolling the virtues of customisation as a hallmark of luxury since 2006 and was well ahead of the curve. But back then, taking a perfectly good watch and giving it a black coat of paint and a new dial was less accepted than it is today. And While Bamford may hav...

Neil Ferrier is Discommon's chief conspirator. A Scottish mechanical engineer who ended up founding and running an agile industrial design agency with a fascinating client list and output. He's made straight razors for Deadpool, crazy tables for anonymous clients and everything in between. But one of the most interesting product development stories is the one behind Discommon's humble duffle bag,...

Guess who's back, back again. Jenni Elle's back, and she's got spend. In case you missed episode 32, Jenni Elle is a popular YouTuber who's cut a swathe with her down-to-earth style of watch reviewing. She's also got a little bit of a problem -- she's looking for a rectangular dress watch for around 4000 Euro, and we've decided to help her out. Andy comes up with a field of safe, respectable (and...

No guests this week. Instead, we've got a double helping of watch matchmaking. First cab off the rank is Big Ben, a giant of a man who's about to celebrate his 40th and wants to celebrate in style. His idea of style is pretty good – the Vacheron Constantin Overseas. His key requirement? It has to be a big watch, cos anything too small and it looks like he's robbed someone's nan. Felix and Andy chi...

Not only does James Thompson (AKA Black Badger) have a voice like smooth Canadian maple syrup, but he's also got an approach to industrial design that is far outside the norm. Most famous for his outrageous use of luminous materials, few makers have what it takes to work with difficult, unconventional materials like 80,000-year-old mammoth tooth, chunks of superconductor or even finely ground coff...

Not too long into our interview with iconic NYC jeweller Greg Yuna, he asks to speak freely. "I like fucking the watches up. I like ruining them." Of course, he's doing nothing of the sort — his stone setting of Patek, AP and Rolex is up there with the best (he's called The Cleanest for a reason). While some purists might argue that this sort of custom work is sacrilegious, Yuna has a long list of...

If you've ever watched a watch review on YouTube, today's guest needs no introduction. Jenni Elle is a German watch fan who started her own channel in January 2020 and quickly exploded in popularity, racking up 88.8k subscribers and 6.1 million views in a few short months. We chat to Jenni Elle about how she got into watches, her authentic and natural approach to watch reviewing, perfecting the ar...

If there's such a thing as a *normal* path to founding a fashion brand, Jack Carlson didn't follow it. Before he was a designer and best-selling author, Carlson was an archaeologist who rowed at a national level. But as we discover in this dive into the fascinating and occasionally weird and tradition-bound world of rowing, there's a rich history that blurs the lines of sports, fashion, and cultur...

We don't like to throw the words 'industry insider' around too much, but they're words that could well be applied to photographer and watch specialist Joy Corthésy. Joy, who works across GMT and WorldTempus was a key player in putting together The Millennium Watch Book, which is an overview of the last 20 years of watches (with some surprising insights on just how big a deal patents are in the wat...

Actor/Singer/Model/Entrepreneur/Podcast host Miles Fisher can do it all. Certainly, Andy and Miles talk about it all, from how his watch collection (which started with a Cartier Tank and a Rolex Explorer), suddenly exploded when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Miles found that watches helped him quiet his mind. And of course, we couldn't get Miles on and not talk about his epic take on Tom Cruise r...

This week we've got a big one, talking new Rolex releases, headphones with Jacobi Anstruther (Founder, Iris Listenwell), and launch OT: merch! By now you've seen the news - Rolex dropped their 2020 collection. We jumped on the mics the evening of the release, to share our initial thoughts, and recorded a quick take, which we've inserted into the regular program. Bigger Submariners, brighter Oyster...

Today's guest has amassed quite the resume. Roger Cruickshank is an Olympian, RAF Pilot, Distinguished Flying Cross recipient and author. In our conversation with Roger, we quickly discovered that his journey wasn't an easy one. A talented skier from an early age, Roger had to make tough decisions about choosing to pursue his dream of being a professional skier, or becoming a pilot, eventually cho...

Today's guest is the enthusiastic and passionate Alice Zaslavsky. Alice and her trademark oversized specs burst onto the scene way back in Masterchef season one, and she's been a staple of the food scene ever since, thanks to her trademark blend of accessible and expert. But before we talk brassicas, we get down to brass tacks and find out just how Alice got her big 'ol Panerai, and why it's not r...

Today on the show our guest of honour is full-time independent engraving royalty Johnny Dowell, also known by his Instagram/engraving/wrestling name of King Nerd. While listeners might be familiar with Johnny's work on watches, through stunning engraved Urwerks, Linde Werdelins and the like, we find out out how one starts on the unconventional career path to becoming a professional engraver. For J...

Double trouble, toil and lots of bubble. This week - instead of chatting to the great and the good of the watch world - Andy and Felix are catching up on their emails, and have two solid watch matchmakers to get off the books. But before that, they catch up on what they've seen - Andy gets a vintage Tudor Submariner back from service and sees some hot new IWC, like the new Porty 40 ! Felix goes ha...

Today's episode lets you have it with both barrels, first up we talk about the hottest (and in some corners of the internet, the most controversial) watch release of 2020, the Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue. Felix and Andy were both lucky enough to give it a test drive, and its an excellent bit of kit. The real drama though was about the release, and to shed some light on that we got a call...

This week Felix and Andy have some show and tell on hand, in the form of the stylish (and very wearable) Cartier Santos-Dumont, which were released this year in mechanical options. They also dive into a colourful Gucci collab, and a very fun, and open watch matchmaker from Marcus. Marcus has $6000 Aussie to spend on a not-overly-massive daily knock-around wearer, and he's not too fussed when it co...

In 2014 Flight Lieutenant Nathan Jones was co-pilot on a routine military transit flight from the UK to Afghanistan when the flight suddenly plummeted over 4000 feet in a matter of seconds. Listen to our interview with Nathan to find out what happened and how he managed to prevent the death of the near-200 passengers on board. Trust us; you'll want to hear this from the man himself. And while this...

It takes a particular sort of someone to found a brand at the age of 40, and, 11 years later sell for a reported £50 million to Chanel. It turns out the Orlebar brown founder Adam Brown is precisely that type of person. Orlebar Brown has been busy making chic swimwear - ' a short you can swim in ' - rather than your typical trunks. We chat to the swimwear supremo about his just-launched collaborat...

Full disclosure, there's quite a lot going on in this episode. We cover off treasure, Scorpions and why Andy was suddenly inundated with Breitlings. But the stars of the show are, without doubt, Kat and Katlen from Tenn & Two. We roped the Tennessee watch fans in to help us wrangle a particularly tricky watch matchmaker; finding a watch for a guy who needs to ditch his ugly digital habit and get s...

James Dowling — author, dealer, collector and connoisseur is considered by many to be one of the world's leading authorities on Geneva's green giant — they don't call him Mister Rolex for nothing. And in his decades of collecting and focusing on the watch industry, James has some firm opinions about — well — everything (he's also got some pretty wild stories). From vintage Rolex collecting going t...

Two years ago Dr Richard Harris dived into a cave in Thailand and came back a hero. That cave - of course - was part of the Tham Luang cave system, and 4 kilometres deep in it were trapped a football team of 12 young men and one of their coaches. The caves had flooded, and incoming monsoonal rain meant they had to get out of the submerged cave system quickly. As this crisis emerged the list of peo...

On the 26th of October, 2017, after 12 minutes of bidding, a Rolex Daytona reference 6239 that belonged to legendary actor Paul Newman was sold for $17,752,500 USD (including premiums). It's widely regarded as the most significant watch auction to date, not just for the hammer price achieved, but for the significance of the watch. In the room was James Cox, who, for decades, wore that watch on his...

This week we take a turn for the automotive with special guest Massimo Frascella. Massimo is the creative director for Land Rover and heavily involved in the delicate dance that is updating the iconic Defender. We get a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into car design, as well as the veteran car designers take on watch design, from the Zenith collaborations through to his take on vintage reissu...

Like many people in the watch media, Adrian fell into it following a passion. That passion led to Bark & Jack, one of the most popular watch channels on YouTube, with 93K subscribers who appreciate Adrian's laid-back, low-BS approach to watches. We chatted to Adrian about what it's *really* like to be a big-shot YouTuber, the reality of Rolex content and grind of traffic and the algorithm, and why...