Back stronger.
A football podcast, initially produced by The BBC, starring former England footballer Peter Crouch, sportswriter Tom Fordyce and DJ Chris Stark. The first series was broadcast in 2018. Inspired by Crouch's autobiography How to be a Footballer (which was ghostwritten by Fordyce), it's ostensibly a guide on how to be a professional footballer, with episodes including insights on everything from dressing rooms, transfers, managers, football confessions and other details of the modern game. It's won awards, notably the Spotlight Award a the 2019 British Podcast Awards; the judges said That Peter Crouch Podcast "found a totally new perspective on one of the nation's most discussed pastimes. Full of wit and personality, this is a podcast that has brought people together, regardless of which club they support."
Tropes:
- Ascended Fanboy: Arguably Prince William, who was known to be a fan of the pod before he was approached to be on it.
- The Big Guy: Or rather, really tall guy in the case of Peter, who's 6'7" (2.01m) tall.
- Book Dumb: Discussed, as many professional footballers tend not to have many or any educational qualifications due to their having turned professional (and as a result, turned their backs on full-time education) while in their teens. Peter himself has mentioned on more than one occasion that he has a GNVQ in leisure & tourism, thanks to Spurs having had a compulsory education programme when he was a youth player there.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The pod is, indeed, that Peter Crouch podcast. Each episode title follows suit — "That Cars Episode" is the one about cars, "That Samrat Episode" is the one in the Samrat curry-house in Ealing, etc.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Taking its cue from the title of the pod itself, every episode was entitled "That [topic of the week] Episode". So we had "That Tactics Episode", "That Goalies Episode", etc.
- My Local: More than one episode was recorded in a pub. For the final episode of the first series, they went one better and recorded it in the Samrat, Peter's favourite curry-house.
- The Nicknamer: The fact that footballers are prone to this is discussed several times. Things get taken to extremes with Peter's revelation that a former team-mate of his was known as "Parched" behind his back due to his habit of foresakeing a drinks break during training in order to ingratiate himself with the manager. Many episodes, and much speculation, followed before it was revealed that "Parched" was Charlie Adam, a Scotland international who was Peter's team-mate at Stoke City.Peter: This is bigger than 'Who shot Phil?' in EastEnders.
- Product Placement: Of a sort. The boys picked up on how other BBC podcasts were advertised at the end of theirs, which eventually resulted in Louis Theroux (whose podcast seemed to be particularly prevalent in these ads) being a guest on the pod.
- Played straight after the move from the BBC to Acast, following which the pod has been sponsored by BrewDog.
- Recurring Character: Peter's wife, model Abigail Clancy, often appeared — especially in the episodes recorded during lockdown when Peter, Tom and Chris could not meet up to record the pod and so had to do it from their own homes. Famously, Abi referred to Tom and Chris as her husband's "silly little mates".
- Selfie Fiend: Kind of. The Running Gag in the third series involved listeners sending in selfies taken with the legendary Manchester United defender Roy Keane. Who is well-known for hating it when people want to take selfies with him. Things then took a turn for the surreal when a Hampshire art gallery agreed to host an actual art exhibition of the sixteen best ones (that number being chosen in honour of Keane's squad number when he was at Man U), entitled "The Sixteenth Chapel". See it here.
- Special Guest: Plenty — some were former team-mates of Peter's, others were people connected with football in some way. By far the highest profile guest was none other than HRH Prince William (in his capacity of President of the Football Association), who invited them over to Kensington Palace for "That Prince William Episode".
- Toilet Humour: Lots. At one point, there was even a suggestion that the pod could be advertised in men's toilets in football grounds and pubs across England with the tag-line "piss the pod" (riffing on the usual "pass the pod" encouragement to spread the word about the pod).
- Troll: Karl, a listener who emailed in in the first episode to take the mickey out of Peter for being tall. Which quickly gave the pod its first catchphrase — "piss off, Karl". He was later ridiculed for apparently setting up his own podcast on the back of this.
