Page 18 - 360633 LP236168 A Love Supreme 48pp A5 (April 2022)

THE ALS INTERVIEW WITH:
ANDY DAWSON
Being a full-time podcaster, by his own admission, sounds like a stupid thing to have as a job title. But it’s also Andy Dawson’s dream job. His con- nection with Bob Mortimer, of Vic and Bob fame, has made the podcast Ath- letico Mince a huge success, garnering around a million listeners a month.
His other big podcast, Top Flight Time Machine, which he hosts with Sam Delaney also boasts a loyal following. Known as ‘The Iron Filing Society’, they number over 150,000 a month. These are serious numbers.
that’s how I met Bob Mortimer. Everything I do now is a result from that.”
There is a market for long form audio journalism, but it seems there is an even bigger appetite for listening to two mates talk shit together for 45 minutes. Andy was a freelance writer from 1994 and wrote for magazines, newspapers as well as doing social media for companies. He began life as a podcaster in 2016.
Andy’s first interaction with Bob came from an unlikely place. Andy had bought a plastic greenhouse from Lidl. He was proud of it, until Bob replied under his tweet, calling it a piece of shit that would blow away in the slightest breeze. They have been close friends ever since. Andy is more reticent online today, perhaps now he doesn’t have to show off. Scandal has hit him before online and now he is decidedly more sedate in his posts.
“Basically, for 25 years I’ve just kind of jumped from job to job and tried to keep a career going doing different things. What I’m doing now is my dream job.”
“I don’t use it as much now because it’s
not a very nice place to be to be honest. I think when I was first on there 12/ 13 years ago it was full of early adopters. Almost ‘tech curious’ people, people who wanted to explore the platform if you like. Now with more and more people joining it’s become more of a sewer of poison and hate.
You’re just opening a door to noise and aggression every day. I’ll go on to promote the work that I do and now and again I’ll tweet something funny if something funny comes to mind. I try to keep it light now and stay out of politics and all that sort of thing.”
Across these freelance jobs, he has managed to build a big presence online. “I got on Twitter early when it was first a thing in about 2008. That was really good for work. I would be on there trying to post funny stuff and just generally be a bit of a show-off but also use It as a tool to hopefully get work.
It was also a good way of connecting with people who could give me work. Twitter has been almost life changing in a way, because
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