Local Heroes Podcast

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Carley Armstrong of Sunderland - producer, filmmaker, and one of the hardest-grafting people in North East film right now.
She's gone from runner to script supervisor to producer the hard way, building her own company while refusing to leave the region that made her. Hendon born, Hendon loyal - the kind of place she can still knock on any door for a cup of sugar.
There's the young lass who heard Carley on BBC Radio Newcastle, messaged her on Instagram, turned up to set with her own car, and was working at the BBC five weeks later.
As Carley says, an email can change your life. There's the philosophy from our Sunderland filmmaker + a proper deep dive into 50 Cent's The 50th Law as a survival guide for the industry.
There's the moment she first found filmmaking and felt genuine love, family and belonging - keeping her loyal to the industry family ever since. She talks about thinking in decades not days, the strange loneliness of rising when the people who cheered you up the hill go quiet at the top, arts disappearing from schools, and why the North East only wins when we stop competing and start collaborating.
And, as is tradition on Local Heroes, Carley reveals her last meal - and it's about as Sunderland as it gets.
Saveloy Dip from Dicksons + a Muller's pink slice + a chip sandwich with Lurpak and red sauce.
Then the Greggs order.

<span;>This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with Andy Haddon - beekeeper, baker, accidental troublemaker, and the man Charlotte Crosby once crowned "the David Attenborough of the Stottie."
<span;>Andy's the founder of Big River Bakery in Shieldfield, but that's only where the story lands.
<span;>We start with bees - the waggle dance, the venom that kills cancer cells, and what twenty years of getting stung teaches you about altruism, resilience and the interconnected life.
<span;>From there it's a proper journey: a psychology degree, learning to fly at Cranfield to go and kill locusts, cold stores at minus 25, designing Marks & Spencer's Christmas hamper system, and a few empty years working for big companies for profit alone before a moment on a Shanghai high street sent this Geordie boy home.
<span;>What he built when he got here is something rarer than a bakery.
<span;>Andy talks about turning a pallet of leftover Spamalot tins into the seed money for a village climate group, growing the first wheat in Newcastle for 200 years, six or seven years without a wage, and why the bakery is really a business model in disguise - healthy, affordable food for all, with neurodiverse folk on the payroll and a cross-subsidy that keeps prices honest.
<span;>We get into shortening the supply chain, why you have to start where people are rather than preach rosemary sourdough at them, and the three times he very nearly didn't make it home.
<span;>And of course, the Stottie - going extinct until Andy brought it back, gave it a giant suit and appearance money, trademarked the Stottini, and turned the stale loaves into Stottie beer.
<span;>Plus a serious debate about whether you could strap two stotties to your palms and survive a fall.
<span;>Then the all-important food finish: top three stottie fillings, curry chips versus gravy, mushy peas on the fish, and a Greggs order that needs a time machine to answer.
<span;>#LocalHeroesPodcast #BigRiverBakery #Stottie #NorthEast #Shieldfield #NationalStottieWeek
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This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Bobzilla - artist, muralist, DJ, photographer, and a man whose own mum still refuses to call him anything but Robert.
The name itself is a tale. Born Robert Page (yes, both off Led Zeppelin), he became Rob, then Bob courtesy of a big lad called Robbie, and finally Bobzilla on a drunken night when a mate needed a DJ name and turned himself into Optimus Prime.
Sheffield-raised and Newcastle-adopted, Bob takes us from photographing illegal graffiti in dodgy railway yards (and getting arrested in one - though he did get a free lift back to town) to painting murals on the Quayside, in people's backyards, and on a Beetle now driven around by a Whitley Bay midwife.
There's the cars at the Salt Market, the burger joints he's transformed, and the eternal question of what happens to graffiti's soul when the money turns up. He talks about clubland and the photo book born from it - 'It's a Family Affair' - a gritty black-and-white document of grassroots nights at World Headquarters and beyond, back when people went out to dance and not a single phone was in sight.
He's honest about the baggage that comes with the lifestyle, and taking risks behind the decks - dropping Public Enemy into a techno set, and playing Windowlicker when nobody dares. And he's honest about the eight-year wait for an ADHD diagnosis, the medication that finally quietened his mind, the anxiety behind the cafe that didn't work, and why Newcastle - with neighbours who turn up to help with the gardening - has been the friendliest place he's ever lived.
Plus, his last-meal favourites get a proper airing: a fierce love of PEK, a deep distrust of tinned salmon, and childhood jars of potted beef made next to his school.
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This week, Chris and Dan set out to talk about what’s been happening in their lives and somehow end up covering everything from decorating disasters and DIY injuries to family diaries, old letters, horror films and the stories that shape who we are.
Dan shares his ongoing battle with decorating, including drilling through his own foot, near misses with electrics, and why he may never become the DIY hero he hopes his family thinks he is.
The conversation explores confidence, competence, and the pressure many people feel to be good at things they simply don’t enjoy. From there, things take a more reflective turn as Chris talks about discovering his grandmother’s handwritten diaries and his late father’s letters from working abroad.
What starts as a loft-clearing exercise becomes a powerful insight into family history, memory, gratitude, and the ordinary moments that often tell the richest stories.
Along the way there are debates about supper, school dinners, art classes, sketchbooks, Garfield slippers, horror films, Poltergeist, Jaws, Freddy Krueger, and why live radio somehow makes an empty house feel less lonely.
A funny, nostalgic and unexpectedly moving conversation about creativity, family, fear, and the importance of preserving the everyday stories that might otherwise be lost forever.
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This week on the Local Heroes podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Cal Byerley of Restaurant Pine - and Gordons (plural) steal the show.
Gordon, the podcast mascot, is named after a rock star, carved from a sculpture celebrating Mary Ann McCann's escape from slavery and destined for a bag stool at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Not bad for a bench.
There's also a dog called Gordon - named after Ramsay himself, Scottish and yappy - who nearly caused a very awkward moment on a TV set. The tale of many Gordons. Cal talks about Third Bite - the chef collective born from a conversation with Sir Brendan Foster that has since pulled together some of the country's best chefs to raise serious money for cancer research.
He talks about what it took to finally cook the main course at the Great British Menu banquet after three years of competing - including how the third time around you feel bold enough to put a dish shaped like genitalia on the BBC, complete with a police hat as the reveal.
There's also the story of how Cal once used ski-scene shower curtains as wallpaper in their staff accommodation, and how that slightly chaotic energy somehow became the foundation for one of the North East's most celebrated restaurants.
He also comes clean about his love of the air fryer. And, as is tradition on Local Heroes, Cal reveals his Greggs order.
Drum roll, please 🥁

This week on the Local Heroes podcast, Chris and Dan sit with Rob Sampson, the man behind "Gan for bait, like?"
One of the North East's most-followed food voices, the conversation that wanders from Capri Sun smuggling tactics and a wonky table nicknamed Gordon, all the way to foie gras at the old Cafe 21.
Rob talks us through how a lockdown creative itch, fed by Anthony Bourdain, years of writing band reviews for Narc magazine, and a hunch that nobody was telling Newcastle's food stories properly, turned into an Instagram blog, then a YouTube channel, then a 170,000-view Pickle and Peach video that changed everything.
We get into the ethics of food reviewing: why he won't slag off struggling small businesses, how one sentence can undo five years of a chef's work, and why a hyped London restaurant left him cold while somewhere like St Vincent would walk a Michelin star if you picked it up and dropped it in Soho. Then it gets personal. Dropping out of two universities, running the Mill Tavern in Hebburn at 23, the panic-attack night the dodgy football boxes blew up mid-match, and the boss who laughed at him for it.
And here's where it gets uncanny, Rob and Chris realise they've basically lived parallel lives. Same hospital, same year, same South Shields college, same tutors (shout out Keith and Ben), same media studies and sociology dropout arc, same brutal Thursday-night crawl from Oscars to Venue, same Smirnoff Mules, same bouncers who'd dent their own car bonnet on your head to teach you a lesson.
Two lads who somehow never crossed paths but absolutely should have.
We close with the important stuff: chip butties (double salt, no ketchup), the perfect cheese savoury (half mayo, half salad cream - non-negotiable), the pop man, chalk ices, Bass Shandy at the kids' disco, and a forensic breakdown of the ideal Greg's order. Sausage roll first, obviously.
A proper Local Heroes one. Funny, honest, and very North East.

This week on Chris and Dan sit down with Jo Feeley, co-founder of TrendBible, the Newcastle based trend forecasting agency helping some of the world’s biggest brands understand what people will want next.
From growing up in rural Northumberland to building an internationally respected futures and trend forecasting business, Jo shares how curiosity became a career, spotting patterns in human behaviour, culture, fashion, interiors, lifestyle, and consumer habits long before they hit the mainstream.
The conversation dives into the psychology behind trends, nostalgia culture, social media influence, fashion identity, home decor, masculinity, community, and why people suddenly all start doing the same things at the same time.
From Stanley Cups and skinny jeans to Stone Roses fashion, gym culture, and the rise of wellness communities, this episode explores how culture shifts beneath the surface.
Jo also opens up about moving to New York to work in fashion, hustling her way into the industry, building TrendBible from the ground up, and advising major global brands on the future of consumer behaviour.
Along the way, there’s plenty of Local Heroes chaos too, Greggs Empire biscuits, fish and chip shop curry sauce debates, weird dreams, bucket hats, berets in the North East, and why your sofa might actually be ruining your life.
A funny, thoughtful, and unexpectedly deep conversation about identity, creativity, trends, and the future of how we live.
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This week Chris and Dan are joined by comedian Lauren Pattison, one of the sharpest stand-up voices to come out of the North East in the last decade.
From doing her first gigs at 18 in Newcastle to becoming an Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee and touring internationally, Lauren talks honestly about the strange reality of growing up through comedy, while everyone else was off travelling, she was doing gigs in Derby and trying to survive the Fringe. We get into where her humour came from, growing up in a family where making each other laugh was second nature, discovering Billy Connolly and Only Fools and Horses young, and realising later in life that maybe she was just the funny one all along.
Lauren tells us her industry stories from the Fringe, viral twitter wars, touring life, panel shows, Last One Laughing, Ross Noble, Sam Campbell and why comedians are often still laughing hardest at the dumbest things imaginable.
But like all good conversations, it also spirals beautifully off track.
We do a deep dive on controversial jacket potato methods, emotional support sausage rolls, dogs judging ex-boyfriend and why hot-and-cold puddings might be one of humanity’s greatest achievements.
Funny, chaotic, brutally honest, and very, very Northern.
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This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, we’re joined by Toby Davison, the man behind North Shore Coffee, one of the North East’s fastest-growing specialty coffee brands.
From selling coffee on the Quayside with a small setup to building a multi-site business with cafés, vans, and a roastery, this is a story of graft, instinct, and backing yourself when there’s no clear plan.
We get into how it all started, from New Zealand inspiration to COVID survival mode, where Toby took a coffee van into local communities and accidentally built the foundations of a serious business.
The conversation digs into the reality of running a coffee company in 2026 — rising costs, tight margins, staffing pressures, and why being busy doesn’t always mean being profitable. Toby breaks down the numbers, the mindset shift from passion to business, and why understanding your margins is now everything.
We also get into the evolution of coffee culture, from flat whites to matcha madness, social media trends, viral videos and the shift away from nightlife towards coffee, fitness, and community-led experiences.
From dodgy cafetière attempts and coffee snobbery to Greggs orders, empire biscuit addiction, and the great curry vs gravy debate, plus stories of building a business on gut feeling, taking calculated risks, and learning to handle pressure when everything’s on the line.
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This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, we’re joined by Teesside’s very own Matt Ord, a straight-talking grafter turned business leader helping shape the future of the region.
From growing up in Middlesbrough to carving out a career without a clear path, this is a conversation about instinct, resilience, and making things happen when there’s no blueprint. Matt shares his journey through early graft, sales, and the Chamber, building relationships, spotting opportunity, and backing himself every step of the way. At the heart of this episode is something
deeper.
After 20 years living with colitis, Matt opens up about the decision to undergo life-changing surgery and living with a stoma, and how that moment shifted everything. This isn’t about setbacks, it’s about perspective, confidence, and helping others by being open about the reality. We get into leadership, integrity, and what it actually takes to create opportunities for the next generation, not just talk about it.
And as always, it goes off on one.
Childhood chaos, grafting for your first job with nothing but bus fare, dodging trouble on the estate, and the moments that quietly shape who you become.
There’s our usual food rabbit holes, this week includes, parmos, saveloys, and his Greggs order.
It's a proper dose of North East culture throughout.
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