What hosting my own podcast has taught me…

What hosting my own podcast has taught me, despite decades spent discreetly puppeteering other people’s publicity, I am now required to pop up like a caffeinated meerkat and say please watch and listen.

There is, it turns out, I have to grovel shamelessly for attention. Only varying degrees of enthusiastic self-endorsement, all reminiscent of a man reviewing his own restaurant and awarding it a Michelin star “for effort.”
Still, The Fame Formula my troublesome relic I produced nearly twenty years ago refuses to pass. Fame has since evolved from the mystical into something more like a high-speed contagion. So the podcast exists as my commentary on that mutation: part anthropology, part autopsy.

This week’s subject is none other than the legend that is Rob Dickins CBE.
A man who didn’t just witness the music industry but helped choreograph its excesses with the calm authority of someone who’s seen it all before—and probably signed it.

As former Chairman of Warner Music UK and Warner Chappell Music, his career involves an almost indecent proximity to greatness: Madonna, Rod Stewart, Enya, Seal, Sex Pistols—plus stewardship of the sacred legacies of Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles.
He also grew up backstage with The Rolling Stones, which feels less like a childhood and more like a cultural unfair advantage.
In the episode, Dickins offers something refreshingly rare: opinions. Rod Stewart compares stardom to a drug (which would certainly explain the comedowns), while Madonna continues to operate on a plane of self-belief that would alarm most air traffic controllers. We revisit Oasis at peak pandemonium, with Liam Gallagher behaving like fame’s most committed stunt double, alongside Patsy Kensit in full tabloid orbit.
And because nothing can ever just be fun anymore, we also get into the grimmer material: the curated tragedy of the 27 Club, the slow corrosion of burnout, and the creeping suspicion that “gut instinct” is being quietly replaced by whatever an algorithm had for breakfast.
Do listen. Or don’t.

Apple: https://lnkd.in/eqWyYeWA

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eQz4An6J

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/e5ZaDBcm