‘Gonna grab my bat, gonna grip it tight, gonna play some BYC tonight’
A guest post by Paul Ford, who lives by the principle that a ‘tennis ball is all you need, an-n-n-n-d a pitch made out of prickles and weeds’. ($) PLUS: Today's BYC.
The BYC Podcast has been through a few incarnations over the years. The current triumvirate is yours truly, Hercules TV star Jason Hoyte and co-founder of the Beige Brigade, Paul Ford. I asked Paul to share the origin story of what he reluctantly agrees may be New Zealand’s - and potentially the world’s - longest running specialty sports podcast. - Dylan Cleaver
LIKE MANY good ideas, The BYC podcast was dreamt up over a few beers - in this case specifically Belgian wheat beer - on Wellington’s Featherston Street, a mere three kilometres from the spiritual home and beating heart of New Zealand cricket, the Basin Reserve. Ponting and Dravid, Murali and Warne, Fleming and Bond were in their pomp and George W Bush was the leader of the Free World.
Podcasts are de rigueur these days but in 2006, the distribution of a 30-minute audio file of three blokes talking cricket nonsense in Kiwi twangs over the internet using syndication technology to allow people to download and listen on mobile devices and personal computers was a pretty futuristic idea.
The initial dreamer in our universe was former TV3 sports reporter Kevin Sinnott, who had been inspired by his flatmate.
“Jed ‘Jedi’ Thian had seen The Ricky Gervais Show blaze a podcasting trail in the UK so he started up his union-focused podcast The Rugby Roundtable. This took off pretty quickly and I thought cricket was an obvious angle to take here, so our BYC podcast follies followed on from there,” he reminds me over more beers at Golding’s Free Dive.
“It was an obvious move to have a chat with the Beige Brigade boys and see if we make something happen by the fans and for the fans.”
It was always going to be on brand for the Beige Brigade to get involved as we knew there was an audience - a niche one initially - that was gagging for some not-too-life-and-death chat about cricket.
And so it came to pass that on Sunday, June 25, 2006, the first episode of the BYC was recorded.
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