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What happens when a pathologist, medical researcher, and science communicator turns his lens toward human lives, history, and the power of narrative?

In this episode of The Third Half, I sat down with Dr. Allan Gaw to explore what it means to transition across careers, rethink our personal narratives, and apply a lifelong curiosity to new horizons. Allan’s work spans medicine, academia, and rich historical storytelling. That makes him a natural partner for a deep conversation on continuous contribution, identity, and growth.

Watch the full recording or prefer audio on the go? Listen to the full conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite player:

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/1f0bc93e-2989-4b46-87a8-a8702b36e22c/

What We Cover in This Episode

In this conversation, Allan and I dive into:

• The Intersection of Science & Narrative: How the discipline of clinical research meets the craft of telling human stories.

• Redefining Identity Beyond a Single Profession: Navigating major career transitions, stepping away from familiar roles, and finding fresh purpose.

• What The Third Half Really Means: Why reinvention is not about fading away or repeating the past. It is about applying everything you have learned to something entirely new.

Links & Resources

Connect with Dr. Allan Gaw:

• Allan Gaw’s WordPress Blog -

  https://researchet.wordpress.com/

• Allan Gaw on Facebook

• Allan Gaw on Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/allangaw8/

Featured Music:

Our Musician of the Month is Rachael Wood. This episode features her track “The Narcissist.”

Over to You

Allan’s perspective on narrative and transition brings up a fundamental question: If you were to write the next chapter of your career or life today, what would the central theme be?

Leave a comment, or reply directly to this email. I would love to hear how these ideas land with you.

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After years playing other people’s music, it’s Rachael’s turn.

When Rachael Wood agreed to join us, she ended her email with a confession:

“My other passions in life are cooking and trying all the cheeses of the world.”

So naturally, before we got anywhere near guitar riffs, songwriting or her debut solo album, we had to establish her cheese credentials.

For the record: hard over soft, British over French, Cheddar over Stilton. Mascarpone? A bit “nothingy”.

Serious journalism.

But there’s a really interesting story underneath all that.

Rachael has spent much of her musical life playing other people’s music. She started playing guitar at eight, spent around seven years with Cirque du Soleil, has worked with the likes of Sinéad O’Connor and Skunk Anansie, and is now part of The Wedding Present.

But all that time, her own riffs, fragments and ideas were accumulating.

Now, finally, she’s finished them.

Her debut solo album, It’s Not The End Of The World, puts Rachael somewhere she admits still feels slightly unfamiliar: front and centre.

We laughed a lot recording this one, but we also got into some lovely territory:

- Starting out at eight with an enormous guitar, learning by ear in the days before YouTube.

- ⁠Going from the self-described “side woman” to writing, singing and discovering what happens when everybody in the room is suddenly looking at you.

- ⁠Why Surfy #10 put John Travolta and Uma Thurman into my head, and why somebody else had already told Rachael the album sounded as if “Tarantino started writing music”.

- ⁠Why she finds lyrics so much harder than guitar parts, and describes them as exposing your “ultimate vulnerability”.

- ⁠Why she deliberately avoided using AI to help write those lyrics.

- ⁠What happens when you’re playing guitar for Cirque du Soleil and somebody’s backflip depends on you playing exactly what you’re supposed to play.

And naturally we get back to cheese, somehow devise a film about it, discuss David Bowie, guitar solos, sweaty little venues and the one guitar Rachael would save if she could only keep one.

It wanders about a bit, and we didn’t try to stop it.

Rachael Wood’s debut album It’s Not The End Of The World is out now.

▶️ listen to the full conversation below.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/d41b9063-553d-438d-9646-5d23c1537ec6/

The Third Half. Interesting people, interesting ideas, and apparently quite a lot of cheese.

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I played Through the Windowpane to death 20 years ago. So much so that when I told my now twenty-something kids I was talking to Fyfe Dangerfield, they immediately remembered it from being driven around in the car when they were younger.

When I told them I was actually chatting with him, their response was immediate. “How cool is that!”

And I still love the gloriously chaotic Guillemots performance of Made-Up Love Song #43 on Top of the Pops. Romantic, chaotic and completely frenetic, an older friend of Fyfe’s summed it up brilliantly at the time as “punk schmaltz.” For me, it remains one of my favourite Top of the Pops performances ever.

But this isn’t really a conversation about looking backwards.

I found Fyfe incredibly interesting company. He was thoughtful, funny, curious, remarkably open and, as I tell him at one point, incredibly chilled. He seems slightly surprised by that last description. But spending two and a half hours chatting with him was very chilled indeed.

Looking back, our conversation naturally mirrored the way Fyfe approaches his music right now. In the past, within the standard rules of the music industry, there wasn’t really the option for an artist to be formless. Now, with projects like The Stream, there is.

Our chat took on that exact same freedom. We wandered off in different directions, doubled back, disappeared down the odd rabbit hole and kept finding connections that neither of us could have planned at the beginning. And it’s all here, unedited.

That felt completely appropriate, because what happens when you create so much that you stop letting any of it go?

For years, much of Fyfe’s accumulated work simply sat on his computer. Eventually, he became creatively “waterlogged” by all this material he wasn’t sharing.

That realisation helped give birth to The Stream, part of his Channels May Change world. It created another option, giving music a home that might otherwise never be heard. It is an ever-changing broadcast of sketches, voice notes, characters, improvisations and recordings at various stages of completion. What if music didn’t always have to know what it was going to become? Tune in and you don’t know what you’re going to get. Neither does Fyfe, and he likes that.

There is an important distinction here though. He is still making records, of course. The philosophy is simply that there is a place for everything.

One of the things I enjoyed most about talking to him is his refusal to turn everything into an either/or. The Stream can be formless while an album has form, and Spotify can introduce someone to his music while Channels May Change takes them somewhere much deeper. Fyfe still very much believes in albums, songs and the pleasure of putting them together.

In fact, towards the end of our conversation he talks about working on music with his son’s group and rediscovering the joy of choosing tracks and sequencing an album. It has started to reawaken something in him about doing the same with his own music.

So maybe this isn’t really about finished versus unfinished. It’s about allowing both to exist.

That takes us into a much wider conversation about creativity, perfectionism and the pressure we put on ourselves to get things right. Fyfe talks about reaching a point where he could convince himself a piece of music wasn’t ready until he’d heard 200 different drummers playing on it.

We talk about fear, success, algorithms and listener numbers. We explore making money from art without allowing money to become the reason for making it, and why one person hearing something and being moved by it can actually matter.

Increasingly, we talk about play. That might be what sits underneath the entire conversation. It’s the freedom to make something without knowing exactly where it is going, to share something without proving everything you’re capable of, to follow an idea because it interests you, and to stop worrying quite so much about whether something is right or wrong.

As Fyfe puts it, “Play is life.”

There are plenty of diversions along the way, from Gilbert and Sullivan to X Factor, Bob Dylan going electric, punk versus prog, almond croissants, a woman unexpectedly singing in a restaurant, learning to use a chisel, Interstellar, the wisdom of children, and whether Fyfe Dangerfield should ever be trusted to become an astronaut.

We also go somewhere more personal. Fyfe talks very openly about a dark period in his life, what came afterwards and his aspiration to “live life more lightly.”

Maybe that’s why I came away from our conversation feeling so upbeat, and maybe that is why I was drawn to chat with him in the first place. Fyfe’s willingness to unlearn perfectionism, embrace play and keep evolving feels like the very essence of what The Third Half is all about. Make things, share things, finish some, leave others open, put an album together or throw an idea into The Stream. Life and art don’t move in neat, final quarters, and reinvention doesn’t stop.

Two and a half hours with Fyfe Dangerfield went by remarkably fast. Maybe that’s because neither of us was particularly worried about where we were going.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/d3b94e3c-9ad1-49fa-9529-ca4083afbba7/

Very Fyfe, really. And very Third Half.

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A few simple questions at the end of a conversation. Don’t think too hard. Say the first thing that comes into your head. Move on.

That was the theory.

We’ve now done it with enough guests to discover that some people are naturals. Some need a moment. And some appear determined to challenge the entire concept of the word quick.

So we put a few of our favourites together.

Ken Deeks, Alex Montgomery, Julie Cheyney, Heather Manson, Fal Thompson, Mark Davyd, Sir Anthony Seldon and Fyfe Dangerfield.

Eight people from very different worlds. Eighty seconds.

And a fairly decent demonstration of what happens around here.

Quickfire. Mostly.

Great people. Great stories.
We think so.

You can pick and choose.

There’s a very simple thing you can do to support grassroots music.

Go to a gig..

Not necessarily the band you already love. Go to your local venue, have a look at the listings and take a chance on someone you’ve never heard of.

I recently chatted with Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust, and someone who has spent most of his life in and around live music.

Mark’s own story explains a lot about why this matters to him. His relationship with education was, to put it mildly, complicated. Music gave him somewhere to belong, and eventually a direction in life that could easily have gone the other way.

From there came promoting gigs, running a venue, and eventually Music Venue Trust, though what we end up talking about is less about the organisation and more about the strange, fragile ecosystem that lets live music happen at all.

We talk about what Britain stands to lose as grassroots venues close, the frankly bonkers economics of keeping them open, why they still matter for developing new artists, and the people who keep opening the doors despite all of that. We also get into something harder to pin down. Why being in the room when live music happens is different.

That matters to The Third Half. Music has become a bigger part of what we do, from conversations with musicians who’ve been at this for decades to the new and grassroots artists we’re finding through Musician of the Month.

Those artists need somewhere to play.

Those places need us to turn up.

So this conversation comes with a challenge from Mark.

Go to the gig you weren’t going to go to.

You never know what you’ll find.

Listen to the full episode below

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/0f290567-5e09-4d66-87a3-d51f3bad072a/

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There’s a slightly odd theme developing on The Third Half..

A few conversations ago, Rebecca Ghim at The Ferm got me thinking about fermentation and what happens to food we might otherwise throw away. Then Matt Knight at Freely Fruity got me thinking about growing food in our communities, getting people involved, and why we don’t simply plant more fruit trees. And now Alex Montgomery has got me thinking about what happens at the other end of all this. The soil.

I’ll admit, before this conversation I hadn’t given soil a great deal of thought. I garden (a little). I grow things (hmmm. Not many). I do buy compost. I complain like others - especially this year! - when the lawn goes brown. But at one point in this conversation I realised I didn’t actually know what soil was. Alex does, quite a lot as it happens.

He’s a researcher in UK food systems and the founder of Bristol-based Generation Soil, which collects food waste from homes and businesses, ferments it using bokashi and turns it into living compost that can go back into the ground. How cool is that.

But this conversation ended up being about much more than compost. Alex talks about the sheer amount of life beneath our feet, what happens to unhealthy soil during drought and heavy rain, the industrialisation of our food system, and a thought I keep coming back to: reciprocity. As he puts it, our current relationship with soil is largely one-way. We take from it. We grow food in it. We eat that food. Very little finds its way back. In fact it’s worse than that.

There’s also the discovery that Alex’s journey towards soil may have started with Minecraft; he’s a founder actively telling people not to pay for his service if they can compost themselves; and a quickfire answer about electric cars I wasn’t expecting.

Oh, and this - there can be around 10 billion microorganisms in a teaspoon of healthy soil. More microbes in your hand than there are people on the planet. Which is quite a thought when you’ve spent most of your life regarding the stuff as something you wipe off your shoes.

This is a conversation about soil. But really it’s about food, community, nature, and whether we might benefit from reconnecting a few things we’ve allowed to become disconnected. And appropriately enough for The Third Half, Alex never really planned any of it.

Listen and Watch the full conversation.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/58aa1e26-4149-43a8-a79f-ad7c4be058de/

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There’s something contradictory about discovering a punk band because Facebook’s algorithm decided I should. But that’s how I found The Indestructibles.

We did the introductions on Fal-day last week, so I won’t repeat all of that here. A few seconds of noise in my feed turned into a much longer conversation with Fal about what it means to start a punk band now, 50 years after punk was supposedly going to tear everything down. And it turns out there’s more going on here than Mohawks, shades and loud guitars.

A note on language: this conversation, and the band’s lyrics, don’t hold back. Fair warning before you hit play..

Punk in 2026

Fal has a pretty clear idea of what punk is, and what it isn’t. It isn’t the uniform, and it isn’t knowing the right bands, wearing the right T-shirt or being able to name three obscure tracks to prove your credentials. For him it’s still anti-establishment, anti-racist, questioning authority and, importantly, something that should be inclusive rather than guarded by people deciding who is punk enough to be allowed in.

Which inevitably took us to Johnny Rotten. I’d seen John Lydon doing a spoken-word show and came away disappointed by some of what I heard. Fal is considerably less diplomatic: his suggestion that Lydon should stick to selling Country Life butter and leave punk to the people still getting on stage may divide opinion. Good. It would be a fairly disappointing punk interview if everyone agreed with it.

Anger is more interesting when there’s a story behind it

Then we got into the songs. Woman in Black initially sounds like a fairly vicious punk song about a bailiff. Because it is. But ask Fal where it came from and suddenly we’re talking about being 18, getting into debt, having no real financial education, ignoring the problem and watching a relatively small debt become something much bigger through fees and penalties. From there we wandered into vulnerable people, addiction, homelessness and a system that can make life considerably more expensive precisely when you have the least money.

What rhymes with Farage?

Not everything became quite so serious. Fal writes constantly, hundreds of unfinished lyrics sitting on his phone, usually sparked by something that has annoyed, amused or fired him up. At the moment he’s trying to write about Reform, and there’s a significant artistic obstacle: nothing rhymes with Reform. Farage isn’t much easier, unless you’re prepared to get into a lengthy debate about how to pronounce garage. Punk rock has always had its struggles.

The new Top of the Pops

Perhaps my favourite part of the conversation brought us right back to how I discovered them in the first place: algorithms. The Indestructibles have built a sizeable and rapidly growing online audience, helped by Chris understanding how to make short-form video work. And apparently that isn’t punk.

Fal’s comparison is a good one. Punk bands in the 1970s and 80s might not have particularly wanted to appear on Top of the Pops, local radio, the BBC or ITV, but if you wanted people to discover your music, those were some of the tools available. Today one of those tools is a 16-second video appearing repeatedly in somebody’s Facebook or Instagram feed. The band don’t necessarily want to spend their lives making those either, but people see them. Some listen to a song. Some buy a ticket. Some turn up at a gig. Some buy a record or a T-shirt.

As Fal explains it, the music is the product. The videos are the fishing rod, and I was one of the fish.

And what does success look like?

This might be the bit I liked most. The Indestructibles are growing quickly, and Fal talks about riding that wave and seeing where it takes them. Of course he’d like bigger audiences, more gigs and the opportunity to take the band further. But underneath it all is a remarkably grounded ambition: he’d quite like making music to pay his rent and bills. Not fame for the sake of fame, not becoming a celebrity, just reaching the point where playing and writing music can replace working in a pallet yard.

Watch and listen to the full conversation

Fal and I get into Rancid, The Clash, The Ruts, Sex Pistols, stadium gigs versus tiny venues, covers of covers, songwriting, debt collectors, police, politics, Facebook algorithms, why his drummer sometimes causes an hour-long set to finish 15 minutes early, and why Fal really wears those shades. There’s also Seal. Obviously.

Watch Fal and The Indestructibles: The Third Half Musician of the Month Here’s a link to the official video for Don’t Stop.

The Indestructibles are The Third Half’s Musician of the Month.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/dc7c9388-90b3-4c18-be11-49ab21e11986/

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A few weeks ago, Facebook’s algorithms decided to introduce me to The Indestructibles. They said I might like them.

Damn them. They were right.

So I got in touch with Fal Thompson to see what it was all about….

Next week, they are ‘on-the-turntable’ as our Musician of the Month. So, for no particularly sensible reason, Thursday has temporarily been renamed Fal-day.

Three clips. Three rather different sides of Fal.

1. Punk Isn’t a Uniform

What does punk actually mean in 2026?

Forget the Mohawk, the ripped T-shirts and proving you know three obscure tracks from an album.

As Fal puts it:

“It’s not a uniform. It’s a culture.”

2. The Truth Behind the Shades

Mohawk. Beard. Punk frontman. Shades.

All looking suitably rock ’n’ roll.

Except there’s a rather less rock ’n’ roll reason Fal started wearing the sunglasses in those videos...

Made me laugh…..

3. What Does Success Look Like?

The Indestructibles have been building a rapidly growing audience, but Fal’s ambition isn’t particularly complicated.

He wants to make music.

Why? For a very simple reason.

I liked that. And I really like Fal and his refreshing honesty.

The full conversation goes further - the songs, punk and politics, some colourful lyrics (be warned), debt collectors, algorithms, the state of live music, Johnny Rotten, Rancid, Seal – yes, Seal – and a few places I really wasn’t expecting the conversation to go.

The Indestructibles.

The Third Half Musician of the Month. Next week. Get a little punk back in your life…..

If you’ve followed The Third Half for any length of time, you’ll know I like cheese. Quite a lot.

So getting an actual cheesemaker on was probably overdue.

This one came the way the best things always do. Rebecca at The Ferm pointed me to Dani at Hamish Johnston, and Dani pointed me to Julie Cheyney. That’s how The Third Half keeps going, one good conversation leading to the next.

Julie, founder of St Jude’s Cheese, is great company, and knows an extraordinary amount about milk and cheese. We start with cheese, obviously, but soon wander into farming, soil, climate, the changing way we think about food, and a really lovely conversation about what being ‘rich’ actually means.

What I wasn’t expecting was how quickly the conversation moved beyond the cheese. Her passion for what she does, her life, her view of nature and community, and how all of that sits right alongside the cheese itself. We laughed a lot, which is becoming the norm on this show, but there’s a real poignancy in this one too.

There are stories from the very beginning of St Jude’s, some realities of cheesemaking I certainly didn’t know, and more than one unscheduled appearance from our dogs.

Then we finish with possibly my favourite quick fire yet. Julie is put on the spot over some fairly contentious cheese choices before we discover a guilty pleasure I definitely wasn’t expecting.

Although, yep, I inevitably manage to make that slightly weird too.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/5e6fb690-64a9-4d92-a528-e42eef25dd2c/

Scott

People. Planet. Progress. And cheese. Obviously.

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I shared a little of Heather Manson’s story the other week. Now here’s the whole conversation..

The bit I hadn’t really understood before we spoke was just how much sits behind the words Street Soccer Scotland. Yes, there’s football, but Heather describes it as the engagement tool: a reason to turn up, a bit of structure, somewhere to belong. From there can come help with housing, education, mental health, employment, finances, or simply having someone there who understands.

Heather describes their Change Centre in Dundee as “Dundee’s biggest living room.” A place where someone can have a game of football, a cup of tea, and, when they’re ready, get some help without being sent off to another appointment in another building.

And then there’s Sarah. She first came to Street Soccer facing addiction and everything that came with it, became a player, progressed through the organisation, and eventually became its women’s lead. After more than a decade, Sarah recently left Street Soccer, and they celebrated, because she didn’t need them anymore. That probably tells you more about this organisation than any set of impact statistics could.

We also talk about the realities of fundraising, why people support people, the extraordinary story of founder David Duke, the importance of lived experience, Scotland’s diaspora, and what might happen when Heather takes all that energy across the Atlantic. And because this is The Third Half, we eventually get onto Barrowland gigs, jive dancing, Scottish cheese, bourbon, and whether America can ever compete with Loch Lomond.

This was supposed to be work. After 40-odd years, it felt much more like a catch-up.

Listen The full conversation with Heather Manson is here.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/87b62c2a-4295-45db-85a2-3c0d47de5466/

Scott

People. Planet. Progress.

#ThirdHalf #HeatherManson #StreetSoccerScotland #Community

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Ken Deeks had an idea. Twenty-eight years later, he’s still sleeping on the floor.

I should say upfront: there’s no impartiality here. I sit on the Glasgow committee for Boycott Your Bed, and I want more people to get involved. So rather than making the case myself, I asked the man who started the whole thing to make it instead..

Ken Deeks.

He’s funny, self-effacing, one of the best storytellers I’ve had on this show, and in a few unexpected moments, quite moving. We talked about what nearly three decades of doing this has taught him about people, about the assumptions we make when someone finds themselves in trouble, and about the extraordinary people who show up every day to help.

There’s football, snoring, a surprising acting career, and an on-camera promise from Ken that I fully intend to hold him to.

But running underneath all of it is one simple question: could you give up your bed for one night?

Boycott Your Bed takes place on 2 October, with events in Glasgow, London, Manchester and Leeds.

Listen the conversation with Ken.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/3f97bfdb-238c-4af3-867f-b47536a6ab00/

Then, perhaps, we’ll see you there. We need your help,. Homeless kids need your help.

People. Planet. Progress.

#ThirdHalf #BoycottYourBed #ActionForChildren #PPP

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Ian McNabb has a theory about why nobody’s ever known what to do with him, and why that’s exactly what’s kept him going for forty years. Record companies, marketing people, even his own fans, none of them have ever quite landed on a box that fits, not since the Icicle Works days.

Most people expect an hour of Love Is A Wonderful Colour. We got some of that of course, but mostly we talked about his new album, 65, which is brilliant, and which took up most of our hour for good reason. About making records the way people used to make mixtapes, and why he thinks that art’s been lost. About a Dylan story he tells against himself that changed how I think about lyric writing. About Stanley Kubrick, working men’s clubs, and a joke about prog rock that got more serious the longer we sat with it. It’s an exclusive (ish).

And about his mum, Sinatra, and the hoovering. That one I wasn’t expecting, and it’s a real life, real people moment. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

None of it went where I thought it would really.

Which I bloody love.

Full conversation up now on The Third Half.

Watch on YouTube | Listen on your favourite audio streaming platform:

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/0acece10-29d2-4f06-b9d8-1f239a69a4d4/

Scott

People. Planet. Progress.

#TheThirdHalf #IanMcNabb #OnTheTurntable #Reinvention

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There are moments that instantly change the tone of a conversation.

We recorded this in the middle of the World Cup, with Britain glued to football and politics changing almost by the hour. Sir Anthony Seldon had a new book out, The Brexit Effect, and Andy Burnham looked set to become Britain’s next Prime Minister.

You might imagine we’d dive straight into all of that.

Instead, within seconds, Anthony was making jokes about Jimmy Greaves and Thomas Tuchel. Yes. And I didn’t start the jokes (for once).

It was a reminder that behind the historian, biographer and educator is someone with a wonderfully playful sense of humour and a genuine curiosity about people, and that warmth runs through the whole conversation.

Of course we talk about leadership, education, AI and Britain. You’d expect nothing less. But we also wander into music, theatre, nature, community, happiness, Shakespeare (and Burns), cheese and the people who have shaped Anthony’s life. It’s thoughtful, occasionally provocative, frequently funny and, for me, revealed a side of him that doesn’t always come across in television interviews or newspaper columns.

When we hung up the call, I wasn’t reflecting on politics so much as humanity. Anthony’s enthusiasm for life is infectious, and whether he’s talking about beauty, belonging or the future of young people, there is a quiet optimism that feels both refreshing and badly needed.

And don’t skip the quick-fire at the end! Some of Anthony’s answers came instantly, others took me completely by surprise, and one in particular prompted the only moment in the interview where I felt I had to challenge him (having been warned a number of times not to! Oh well….)

If you would rather listen to the full conversation while driving, check the audio streaming platforms below.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/121cb50f-92e9-4342-a881-2464a79ecf08/

I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed recording it.

People. Planet. Progress.

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When we released the trailer a few days ago, plenty of people picked up on Tina Wilson’s three ingredients for success: confidence, curiosity and courage. The full conversation goes much deeper than that..

Over 45 minutes we talk about leadership, ambiguity, sponsorship, building teams, making difficult decisions and why the best leaders don’t always have all the answers. Tina describes herself as at her best when the path isn’t clear, and she means it. This is someone who got a call asking her to set up company operations in a war zone and found a way to do it.

We laugh a lot too, about Madonna on the running playlist, getting lost while running in unfamiliar cities, and turning up to guitar lessons alongside the three-year-olds. She makes a serious point through that last one: it’s perfectly okay to be rubbish at something when you’re learning, and the further you get in a career, the fewer chances you get to feel that.

If the trailer gave you Tina’s CV, the full conversation gives you her generosity. She talks openly about imposter syndrome, the sponsors who backed her, making decisions when nobody else in the room will, and why creating opportunities for others has become the most rewarding part of her career. Her proudest achievement is building a team that no longer needs her.

There’s a lovely moment towards the end when I ask what she hopes people will remember about her work in twenty years’ time. I’ll let you hear her answer for yourself.

If you’re interested in leadership, people, organisations, or simply how someone builds an extraordinary career while staying relentlessly curious, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

As always, thank you for listening, reading, sharing and supporting The Third Half.

Listen to Scott’s full Blueprint conversation with Tina Wilson here.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/af9f9c71-af84-4b32-9d86-694e324323c4/

Scott and Happy

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A few weeks ago I shared a short clip from my conversation with Matt Knight, co-founder of Freely Fruity. It was actually Mrs H’s idea, and she’s been on at me to publish the rest of it ever since. Here it is..

I thought we were going to spend an hour talking about fruit trees. We did... but only in the same way that Ted Lasso is about football. This is really a conversation about optimism, about community, about food, biodiversity and volunteering, and about what happens when three friends stop asking “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” and instead ask “Why don’t we?”

Matt tells the story of how Freely Fruity began over a pint in a Berkshire pub just before Covid, how they nearly became “the Banksy of the tree world”, why they pivoted during the pandemic to grow fresh produce for food banks, and why they’ve since gone on to appear on national television, create community orchards, work with schools and help businesses make a genuine local impact.

What comes through clearly is that Freely Fruity isn’t interested in shouting at people or telling them how to live. Their approach is refreshingly simple: make it easy, make it positive and invite people to get involved.

If you’re a business thinking about biodiversity, employee volunteering, community engagement or creating a visible local legacy, this conversation is well worth your time. There may even be an opportunity to work with Matt and the team, whether that’s sponsoring school orchards, supporting community projects or getting your own people involved.

If this got you thinking about food, community and biodiversity, go back and listen to my conversation with Rebecca Ghim, founder of The Ferm. She’s built a kimchi business out of rescuing cauliflower leaves and broccoli stalks that restaurants were about to throw away. Different ingredients, same spirit.

If you’d like to get in touch with Freely Fruity, you’ll find all their details in the show notes.

Forget the TV appearances for a second. These are unsung heroes on our doorstep, doing something with real purpose, purposeful enough to get even this ageing Airdrieonian eating more fruit. At the end of the day,

Turns out Mrs H was right.

Listen to Scott’s full Blueprint conversation with Matt Knight here.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/c9d44530-8332-4d81-b891-a1f8d0e297e3/

People. Planet. Progress.

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A song released in 1974 is finding a whole new audience in 2026 after being covered by Paul Weller. Along the way it also caught the attention of Morrissey and Noel Gallagher, not bad for a song that began life as a deeply personal diary entry.

But that’s not really why we invited Brian Protheroe onto The Third Half. He’s our Musician of the Month for July because, more than fifty years after Pinball, he’s still doing what great artists do: staying curious, still questioning, still writing, still recording, still creating.

His latest album, Still Walking, is his fourth release in as many years, and it’s anything but a nostalgic look backwards. It explores ageing, belonging, politics, memory, music and the simple determination to keep moving forward, which feels like a very Third Half record to make in your eighties.

Our conversation wandered from Shakespeare to Sergeant Pepper, from songwriting to acting, from Donald Trump to Paul Weller, with plenty of humour along the way. Brian reflected on why his wife asks him not to write another death song, why creativity becomes even more important as we get older, and the difference between acting and songwriting with one memorably simple observation: “Music is to do with my inside, and acting is to do with someone else’s inside, which I try and put inside me.”

As always with On the Turntable, we’ve selected four tracks that tell the story behind the conversation.

- ‘Pinball’ is the song that refuses to fade away, still connecting generations of listeners more than half a century after it was written.

- ⁠’Still Walking’ captures the spirit of the album and, in many ways, Brian himself.

- ⁠’Mad Dog’ reminds us that he’s still writing about the world as it is, not simply the world as it was.

- ⁠And ‘Belong’ became an even more powerful song after hearing Brian explain what belonging really means to him.

Whether you’ve followed Brian Protheroe since the 1970s as an actor or singer, or only recently discovered him through Paul Weller’s cover of Pinball, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.

At the very end of our interview I asked Brian what he hoped people would take away from Still Walking.

His answer:

“The urge to play it again.”

Watch on YouTube | Listen on your favourite audio streaming platform:

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/c43ed0ca-a2bc-4468-a2ec-fe14188fb491/

People. Planet. Progress.

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A few years back, in a bric-a-brac shop in Normandy, I found a pile of old Charlie Hebdo comics. Not framed behind glass with a brass plaque. A pile. Stuffed in amongst old books, chipped crockery, yellowing postcards, all the stuff that piles up when nobody can be bothered throwing it out.

I wasn’t even looking for them.

Like most people outside France, I knew Charlie Hebdo because of the murders in Paris in 2015. The shock, the marches, the slogan.

Je Suis Charlie.

Back then the debate was all about whether you agreed with what they published. Some did, some didn’t. Wrong question, though. The real question was whether people get to question, challenge, mock and satirise without somebody turning up to shoot them for it.

Standing in that shop years later, I actually looked at the work instead of the headlines. Some of it was ballsy and crude. Some of it was genuinely clever. Some of it went straight over my head, on account of my French stretching to ordering a beer and finding the toilet.

Nothing was off limits. Politicians, journalists, social trends, the powerful, the powerless, ordinary punters. Nobody got a pass. Probably not even the cartoonists themselves.

I bought four, stuck them in cheap frames, the kind that don’t pretend to be anything else (sorry Pip!) and hung them in what’s technically the spare bedroom and occasionally my office. They make me smile every time I walk in.

Why I bought them has changed over the years. At first, just because they were colourful and quirky, reminded me of a good trip, looked good on the wall. Now I think they stand for something bigger. Not Charlie Hebdo. Not France. Not politics. Just one idea: nobody’s beyond question. Including us. That’s the bit everyone conveniently forgets.

The older I get, the more that matters. Everyone bangs on about diversity and somehow means conformity. Everyone loves debate until you actually disagree with them. Everyone tells you to find your voice, then has a face like a slapped arse the minute you actually use it.

Every tribe’s got its sacred cows. Every movement grows its own orthodoxies. Every organisation ends up with the one thing nobody’s allowed to question, usually invented by the same people who used to complain about being silenced themselves. That’s generally where it starts going to shit.

The Third Half was never meant to be a campaign or a movement, just curiosity, and honestly it still runs on curiosity and people being decent enough to talk to me for an hour. Musicians, founders, teachers, bankers, environmentalists, sportspeople, artists. People with stories, people with ideas, people who change their minds halfway through a sentence and don’t apologise for it.

Nobody turns up with all the answers, least of all me. The moment you think your side’s got a monopoly on wisdom, you stop listening. Stop listening, you stop learning. Stop learning, and progress turns into dogma, which is a rubbish thing to put on a t-shirt.

That’s the link between four old comics in cheap frames and a not-for-profit outfit in Berkshire. Not the cartoons, not the politics. The spirit. Asking the awkward questions. Laughing at ourselves. Sitting with ideas that make us squirm a bit. Checking our own assumptions before we go after everyone else’s.

Maybe that’s the real lesson on my wall. Not Je Suis Charlie. Something smaller. Less grand. Closer to what we’re actually doing here.

Je Suis TTH.

We haven’t got the answers. We’re still up for asking the questions, and having a laugh while we’re at it.

My mother-in-law has just bought me a subscription to Private Eye. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a gift or a message. Either way, the wall’s about to get busier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_suis_Charlie

People. Planet. Progress.

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I have known Tanishq for over two years now, and every conversation I learn something new about him. This one was no exception.

Tanishq is the founder of Dash, your AI Chief Sustainability Officer. The idea is simple. Make sustainability business friendly and ROI driven rather than a tick box exercise nobody really understands.

But the real story goes back further than any pitch deck. Tanishq grew up in a small town in India in a family that recycles ships for a living. His dad buys decommissioned vessels and brings the metal back into circulation. His grandmother ran her own creative business from home long before anyone called it entrepreneurship. Sustainability and entrepreneurship were never concepts to him growing up. They were just life.

In this conversation we talk about leaving a comfortable career at the London Stock Exchange after spotting a fundamental flaw in how sustainability funds were being rated from the top down rather than the ground up. We talk about the brutal shift in investor expectations since 2023, the existential wobble every founder hits at some point, and why he has learned to treat those moments as brainstorming sessions rather than verdicts.

We get honest about AI. About building a sustainability business that also depends on AI infrastructure with a real environmental footprint, and why he sets hard spend limits rather than letting AI quietly creep into every part of the product.

And we talk about leadership in a team of three. What young founders misunderstand about hierarchy, the courage it takes to say I do not know everything, and the very real imbalance between what early team members put in and what they get back out.

Tanishq is honest, reflective, and refreshingly unguarded about the pressure of building something this early. I have huge respect for what he is doing.

Want the full story? Listen to Scott’s full Blueprint conversation with Tanishq Jain here.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/5a7749c2-3e49-4b44-a247-9b4f98a6a780/

If you enjoyed this conversation you might also love our episode with Rebecca Ghim, founder of The Ferm, on turning food waste into something worth eating and building a values led business without losing yourself in the process. Watch the full episode here: https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/tth-blueprint-episode-21-rebecca

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I went into this conversation thinking we were going to talk about kimchi.

We did. But we also ended up somewhere I did not expect.

Rebecca Ghim is the founder of The Ferm, an award winning fermented food business built around a beautifully simple idea. The vegetables that get thrown away before they ever reach a plate are not waste. They are ingredients. They just need someone who cares enough to do something with them.

Rebecca came to London seven years ago to do a master’s in design for social innovation. She did not come here to start a business. She came here to stay. The startup visa was the plan. The kimchi was the vehicle. And somewhere between a pitch to her university endorsement body and her first farmers market, something real started to happen.

In this conversation, Rebecca talks about growing up in Korea, leaving at fifteen, and building a life in a city where you have to figure out a lot of things on your own. She talks about her complicated relationship with food, the frustration that became a passion, and why her grandmother’s instinct to use every part of every vegetable is the beating heart of everything The Ferm does.

We talk about what it actually takes to build a supply chain around rescued vegetables. About onboarding suppliers who have never thought of their offcuts as sellable goods. About the moment you realise one supplier generates around 300 kilogrammes of perfectly good vegetable waste in a single night and what that does to your sense of urgency.

We get into identity and culture and why food is one of the most personal things there is. We talk about the AI backlash she faced from her own community, and why she handled it with more honesty and self awareness than most brands three times her size would manage. And we talk about the tension every values led founder faces at some point. How much of yourself do you keep in the jar as you scale?

Rebecca also makes kimchi tiramisu. Italians may never forgive her. I think it sounds incredible.

This is one of my favourite conversations of recent months. Rebecca is thoughtful, funny, completely unpretentious, and building something that genuinely matters. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Find Rebecca and The Ferm at theferm.net and on Instagram at @the.firm.london

Want the full story? Listen to Scott’s full Blueprint conversation with Rebecca Ghim here.

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/3fc0168c-4103-4bc7-a83e-9f6bd5d29577/

If you enjoyed this conversation you might also love our episode with Bruce Soord, the songwriter and creative force behind The Pineapple Thief. Bruce opens up about twenty five years of quietly building an audience, writing an album alone in hotel rooms, grief, memory, and why he stopped chasing success and that is exactly when things started to happen. Watch the full episode here: https://www.thethirdhalf.uk/p/he-quit-chasing-fame-700000-fans

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Every now and then on The Third Half you meet someone who quietly challenges what success is supposed to look like.

Bruce Soord is one of those people.

If you know Bruce, you’ll probably know him as the songwriter, producer and creative force behind The Pineapple Thief. If you don’t, his story is perhaps even more interesting.

Because this isn’t the story of an overnight success.

It’s the story of someone who spent more than two decades steadily building an audience, releasing music, refining his craft and refusing to give up.

When we spoke for this month’s On The Turntable, Bruce was preparing for a run of solo shows while simultaneously finishing a new Pineapple Thief record. Slightly self-deprecating, and with tongue firmly in cheek, he described himself as “Mr Chaos” - the band member constantly juggling ideas, projects and last-minute inspiration while everyone else tries to maintain some semblance of order.

Yet beneath that chaos sits a remarkable consistency.

Twenty-five years ago Bruce stopped chasing the traditional music industry dream. No more hoping for the record deal, the big break or the executive who might magically change everything.

Instead, he focused on writing songs.

Ironically, that’s when things started to happen.

What followed was a conversation that went far beyond music.

We talked about creativity and why the best songs often arrive when you’re not trying too hard.

We talked about growing older and discovering that experience gives you something far more valuable than youthful ambition: perspective.

We talked about camper vans, the Jurassic Coast, switching off from work and finding stillness in a world that constantly demands attention.

And we talked about Ghosts In The Park, Bruce’s new solo album.

Written largely in hotel rooms while touring, the record emerged during a period shaped by loss, memory and family. Bruce spoke openly about the death of his father, his mother’s Alzheimer’s and the strange experience of watching life continue around you while your own world momentarily stands still.

Some of the most moving moments in our conversation came not from discussing music, but from discussing memory.

Towards the end of our conversation I asked him what success means now.

His answer was revealing.

Not chart positions.

Not fame.

Not streaming numbers.

The real excitement still comes from writing a song and knowing there’s something special in it. What he called “the magic”.

After twenty-five years, that’s still enough.

And perhaps there’s a lesson in that for all of us.

Stop chasing success.

Focus on the work.

The rest will take care of itself.

Enjoy the conversation.

Watch on YouTube | Listen on your favourite audio streaming platform:

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/761f9128-ccd7-4388-8962-60d44c0a5b39/

Scott

The Third Half

People. Planet. Progress

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