Falkirk-daft John keeping the peace between Old Firm fans Grado, Shellsuit Bob Stephen Purdon and Chris Toal and keeps the football daft podcast fans entertained

John McInally is making sure Falkirk are well represented in the football podcast world.

John, or Producer John, as he became known for years working on George Bowie’s breakfast show on Clyde 1, has welcomed Lee Miller, David McCracken, Owen Coyle and Gary Gillespie onto the popular podcast he produces each week.

Dominated by the big personalities, and big Old Firm fans, actors Stephen Purdon, Chris Toal and wrestler Grado, John keeps calm amongst the panel while the banter bubbles away. Unless of course a Falkirk legend enters the fray.

The current first-team managers have been in to the AudioFrontier studios, while Kieran McAnespie and Kenny Deuchar were recently involved virtually in episodes of Football Daft. But when one of the producer’s football heroes Owen Coyle was a guest, the panel let him know all about it.

John laughed: “Owen Coyle was on and I had to edit a lot out – I came over as a complete mark for one of my football favourites!

“We had Crax and Lee on too, when I was completely embarrassed by the three guys in front of the managers – whenever I started asking questions they shut me down! They were great and so was Kenny Deuchar – he was great value.

“Any chance of a Falkirk figure on I’d be keen. I’d love to get Yogi on. Yogi and Grado in conversation would be terrific.”

AudioFrontier has recently branched out into Old Firm specific shows with Celtic fan Toal leading the Hoops show and Grado and Purdon aka Shellsuit Bob on the other.

John also works on the Wrestling Daft show with Grado, and other audio output.

He explained: “We do the two original podcasts, and I do a lot of business-to-business stuff, but those are our original ones.

“Working with Grado and Toal, Grado is some boy. He’s always got a great story up his sleeve. Chris is a good lad – for a Celtic supporter – and despite the other two being Rangers fans and me a Falkirk fan I get on with them great – we all do.

“Stephen is really, really good, the knowledge both he and Chris have is unbelievable actually, I’m surprised at the depth of their knowledge. Grado not so much – but he’s not bad on Rangers to be fair. Wrestling is more his subject. He knows all of that – he is an expert on the Attitude era of WWF and WWE and he has some great stories from travelling the world, that’s for sure.

“We have a lot of fun. That’s the thing about podcasts. You can listen to the big shows or phone-ins and they’re quite restricted in what you can say or do. But football podcasts you don’t have that. Obviously we want to stay within the realms of taste and decency but you have a lot more freedom and I think the guests feel that too.

“It’s a relaxed atmosphere with Grado, Chris and Stephen all having chat and banter and you talk to these guys like they’re your mate in the pub. You get a lot more honesty and better stories out of these guys.”

The banter, for anyone who hasn’t listened, or watched, is plentiful.

“We’ve had some random stuff on it too. Vladimir Romanov stealing David Templeton’s boots to practise free kicks for example. Chris Toal ended up on holiday with Lee Miller and there was another great story of his about being thrown into the swimming pool by the Motherwell team,” John added.

“We had Joe Tortolano on our Legends Lottery feature too - that was another one I told the boys about and they embarrassed me again. It is like a red rag to the bull telling them – they were on about the abuse he took at Falkirk straight away!

“It was the same with Jim Leishman - I should learn to keep my mouth shut! But I made sure in our quiz he was given the question of who beat Dunfermline in the 2009 Scottish Cup semi-final. That was a wee win for the Bairns listening that day too. We had good stories about the banter between him and the Falkirk fans.”

For those who have missed the episodes they are all avaialble in the usual podcast places, but also YouTube, which has been boosted over the lockdown period.

“Before lockdown we were in a studio but since then it’s all been done from home,” John added. “It’s not been as bad as I’d thought it would be. We’ve managed to get them all out. There’s a little dip but as long as you have a good quality mic you can make up for it and it’s actually sounded really well.

“Surprisingly we’ve not noticed a big increase over the lockdown, because people aren’t commuting. Podcasts are now part of everyday life and people working from home, don’t seem to have the same amount of time to spend on podcasts – that’s similar to radio listening because people are out of their work-day routine.

“Funnily enough, while the podcast listen has gone down the YouTube views have gone up, so people are tuning into the shows but watching at home, rather than listening.”

The two new shows are in their infancy but John still has that Falkirk representation to stand up for on Fitba Daft too, in addition to wearing his navy blue shirt on the Youtube videos.

He added: “I’d love Yogi on but any of the big three – Russell, Simon [Stainrod] or Crunchie – they’re all welcome. I’d have loved to get stories from Latapy, we’ve had a few about him from Marvin Andrews. He was a legend at Hibs, at Falkirk, played under Advocaat at Rangers. He’d have plenty of interesting stories I’m sure.

“That’s the Falkirk FC trinity.”

John’s brother Dave is also heavily involved in the ‘Crunchie Initiative’ the fundraising drive to have the Falkirk Stadium south stand be renamed and dedicated to Player of the Millennium Kevin McAllister.

You can listen to the podcast here or watch the Youtube links here.