The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

1. 1
   Number 1: Patricia White MBE

   Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Patricia White MBE, a Hodge Hill-born Brummie who set up Birmingham's first Trussell Trust food bank in Ladywood and went on to found Suited for Success, a charity helping people into work. Patricia talks about growing up with her mom and two sisters in a family with roots in St Kitts and Nevis, ten years at BBC WM, a secondment with the BBC World Service in Nigeria, the faith that drives her, and why dignity sits at the heart of everything she does. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

   September 25, 2026·51min
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2. 2
   Number 2: Lauren Broxton

   Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Lauren Broxton, a bespoke leather designer and maker from Walsall who has been drawing, sketching, and making things out of whatever she could find since she was a girl. She has also been one of the key campaigners that saved Walsall Leather Museum from moving to a new building. Lauren grew up in Rushall, a borough that had watched its industry slip away. She talks to Carl about the misfit teenager who found herself through clothes, the tutors who saw something in her long before she could see it herself, the influence her family and especially her nan's have had, and the heavy reclaimed saddlery leather that the trade had dismissed, which has become the material she is known for. Lauren Broxton - https://laurenbroxton.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lauren_broxton Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

   September 18, 2026·59min
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3. 3
   Number 3: Paul Smith

   Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Paul Smith, a retired Birmingham firefighter and one of the people who helped turn the city's St Patrick's Parade into one of the largest in the world. Born to a Dublin mom and dad and raised in a council flat in Longbridge. On 9/11, Paul and his watch stood in a fire station in Northfield and watched 343 New York firefighters lost in a single day. Feeling helpless three and a half thousand miles away, they started with car washes and bucket collections, and the people of the West Midlands turned that into a quarter of a million pounds for the widows and children of the fallen. Then Paul set out to bring the New York Fire Department to Birmingham, so they could see that love for themselves and march in the parade. He also tells Carl about the family history he has only recently uncovered, a grandmother from Kerry whose story was never spoken of at home. This is a conversation about brotherhood, grief and hope, about the deep roots of the Irish community in Birmingham, and about how one act of kindness can build a bridge across an ocean that lasts a lifetime. Content warning: This episode contains discussion of the September 11th attacks and the loss of life, bereavement, references to Ireland's mother and baby institutions, the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings and some strong language. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

   September 11, 2026·58min
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4. 4
   Number 4: Paul Masefield

   Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Paul Masefield, a former professional English footballer and TV pundit, who grew up a few doors from Carl in Birmingham and has spent more than twenty years building a life in Asia. Paul's football started with his dad Stuart, a fine semi professional centre forward whose career was cut short by injury, and with his grandad Frank, who drove him to games, brought a flask of hot coffee for the cold mornings and cleaned everybody's boots afterwards with his penknife. Paul played for the school, for the Cubs, for Dunlop Rovers, refused to sign schoolboy forms with anybody so that he could keep his options open, and eventually signed a two year apprenticeship at Birmingham City. What follows is a story about reinvention. There are spells at Exeter, Stockport, Doncaster and Preston, a coaching badge earned at twenty-one, and then a phone call out of the blue that Paul was convinced was a wind up, which took him to Hong Kong and eventually to Singapore. Underneath all of it is a Brummie who still goes into the city centre every time he is home, because as he puts it, the love here is like nowhere else on earth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

   September 04, 2026·56min
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5. 5
   Number 5: Jayne Murray

   Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Jayne Murray, artist and director of Place Prospectors, who went to Druids Heath in 2017 to run a small arts project and ended up holding the missing history of an entire Birmingham estate. A resident had kept carrier bags full of pamphlets, newsletters and posters from decades of community activity. It took Jayne months just to put it in chronological order. What emerged was a credit union set up to beat the loan sharks, a green space saved by residents, a neighbourhood action group that fought a housing transfer, and a resident's essay from the late 1970s. Jayne grew up in Lincoln and Sleaford, the daughter of a Glaswegian father and a Lincoln mother, and she was making little exhibitions out of museum postcards before she was eight. She talks about the GCSE batik practical that told her what she wanted to do with her life, the theory teacher at Derby who taught her how to look at an image, the 1995 weekend she spent teaching people the internet in a launderette with borrowed computers and a washing powder sponsor, and her conviction that art is not something you have to be good enough for. Jayne is passionate about making art accessible and social justice. Jayne Murray (artist) - https://www.instagram.com/jaynemurrayartist Place Prospectors - https://prospectors.org.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

   August 28, 2026·54min
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