Our guest today is Maro Itoje, the England and Saracens rugby player and Frieze London committee member.

Maro has won four English Premiership titles with Saracens, three European Rugby Champions Cup titles, three Six Nations titles, and has played in a world cup final — that agonizing defeat, of course, to South Africa, which we talked about a bit during our conversation. On top of that, he’s been selected for two British & Irish Lions tours, and in the second of these was voted the Lions Player of the Series. Off the pitch, he’s a huge collector of African art and has curated an exhibition with Sotheby’s — and eventually, he tells us, he’d like to open up a London gallery of his very own.

In a highly enjoyable episode, we talk about the origins of his ‘Pearl’ nickname; the fragile state of Premiership Rugby; the psychological tricks of England Coach Eddie Jones; and the last days of Roger Federer.

“My phone was exploding, mainly with texts from my kids: ‘Donald Trump knows who you are — do we need to leave the country?!’”

Jon Sopel was the BBC's North America editor from 2014 to 2021 — perhaps the most eventful seven years in modern American history. Last year, he announced he was leaving the BBC after more than three decades to start The News Agents, a new podcast with former BBC colleagues Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall, which kicked off in the number one slot on the podcast charts this week. 

In a rather wonderful conversation, Jon discusses his high-profile scuffle with Donald Trump in the White House briefing room; the most devastating moments in his time as a foreign correspondent; and how his nerves almost got the better of him when interviewing Barack Obama. 

The News Agents is available on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.

"The older I get, the more I am interested in simplicity..."

To celebrate the launch of our Summer 2022 Issue of Gentleman's Journal, the wonderful celebrity photographer Tomo Brejc talks us through his shoot with cover star Tom Hiddleston — and tells us how we can all take better portraits, no matter who we're shooting. 

In this episode of 'Overheard at the Clubhouse', we sit down with writer and editor Dana Brown to discuss his new book, Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph and Disaster, which is excerpted in the Summer Issue of Gentleman's Journal.

The book is brilliant. Charting Dana's clamber up the formidable masthead at Vanity Fair across the 1990s and 2000s, it's a wonderfully revealing romp through Manhattan's power circles at their most powerful. 

"Men will always find a way to show off, no matter how uncool it makes them look..."

To celebrate the launch of our Summer 2022 issue of the magazine, we sat down with Ed Cumming (a regular contributor and Senior Feature Writer at the Telegraph) to discuss the unlikely return of the mullet and the nauseating rise of the LinkedIn Man — two recent developments that may well be intertwined...

George Ezra is a singer, songwriter, and perhaps the loveliest and most thoughtful man in pop music. He is about to release his third album — The Gold Rush Kid — a record he says is his most personal and honest yet. But it is also a huge amount of fun, of course — that sort of sun-baked perfection that George does so uniquely well.

In a highly enjoyable conversation, we spoke about the origins of his remarkable voice; the weirdness of social media; and how he almost lost a foot (sort of) while walking the length of the British Isles.

Munya Chawawa is the brilliant comedian and satirist whose viral videos have skewered the likes of Matt Hancock (in a memorable cover of Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’), Piers Morgan, Will Smith, Nigella Lawson, vacuous influencers, American YouTubers, and most of the current cabinet. He is also the host of Race around Britain, a documentary series for which he was nominated for a Bafta just last week, while in 2021 he was nominated for a MOBO award for best media personality. He is also the hardest working man in show business, I think, and quite possibly the nicest, too.

In a thoroughly entertaining episode, Munya tells us how he pretended to be Idris Elba’s son in order to get an agent; what having a million followers does to your brain chemistry; what the back of Olivia Colman’s head looks like; and how middle-aged Lithuanian women might just be central to his success.  

On the latest episode of Overheard at the Clubhouse, regular contributor Harry Shukman talks us through his piece about Oligart: a story of how the art market helped launder the reputations of the kleptocratic classes — and created a modern monster in the process.

Oliver Bullough is the author of Butler to the World: How Britain became the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals.

The book does exactly what it says on the tin, as they probably don’t say in Moscow: it tells the story of how, as the British empire declined, we found a new role for ourselves — as a Jeeves to a series of oligarchical Woosters: laundering their reputations, hiding their money offshore, providing them with legal counsel, schools and lordships; and only now realising that perhaps that wasn’t always such a good idea.

Released just last month, in March 2022, It’s hard to think of a more timely or poignant book — and in one of my favourite ever episodes of the podcast, Oliver tells us the story of the Ukrainian gas mogul who bought a defunct tube station; how gambling in this country has become our equivalent of the opioid epidemic; and the mantra that a school pupil taught him that might just sum up his entire career. Enjoy.