'The ultimate celebration of cricket' - Greg James on Tailenders podcast

Greg James looks back on a remarkable 99 episodes of the Tailenders podcast - a loose (and sometimes musical) look at cricket, which he presents with England fast bowler Jimmy Anderson, The Maccabees guitarist Felix White, and a distant relative of India's greatest ever batsman...

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Celebrating a century is something proper batsmen do. A true tailender wouldn’t know what to do if they got to 100, and we sort of feel the same. So that’s why we’re celebrating our 99th episode of the podcast and letting the 100th slip by unnoticed.

We actually don’t feel as though we’re worthy of the BBC giving us 100 goes at this. In all honesty, it wasn’t supposed to go this well (cheers). It was only ever (as we point out perhaps too regularly) going to be a ‘six episodes and see how it goes lads’ type thing.

And yes, obviously we would have been gutted if nobody had cared and it was binned immediately, but the fact I’m sitting here writing about our 99th episode makes my head spin with confusion and pride.

It was all a very happy accident. Yes, we like to joke about the fact that the show can be completely all over the place (though a lot of the time that’s true), but we all care about it intensely. Hopefully that comes across when people listen.

My absolute favourite thing about Tailenders has been getting to show off to Jimmy, Felix and Mattchin just how special radio is at bringing people together and creating a club of listeners. Jimmy has felt the rush of taking five wickets at Lords and becoming one of the world’s greatest ever cricketers. Felix has experienced the unfathomable excitement of playing to tens of thousands of people at Glastonbury, and only Mattchin knows what it’s like to sell roll-up shoes to Al Pacino.

But for me, there’s nothing quite like radio. The pure out-of-nowhere nonsense of Felix telling us the story of being sat next to Michael Vaughan at a lunch, who tells him that his falafel is ‘a bit spicy that’ and then walks away, is weirdly the moment I realised the podcast was going to be a big part of our lives. When listeners grab onto something and run with it, you know that something’s going right. ‘Bit spicy that’ will follow Vaughan around forever. People still leave chilli emojis on his Instagram. It became a global call-to-arms for Tailenders everywhere and I still don’t really know why apart from...it’s funny.

Of course there will be loads of people who will never get it, and that’s the beauty. If you get it, you love it. That’s a club. A club which also has in-jokes like ‘Mango/River Island’, ‘Go Well/Cheers’, ‘Sorry I was late, I was interviewing Mark Steel’. The list is ridiculously long.

This sort of idiocy was what I loved listening to when I was growing up. And I absolutely burst with happiness to think that we’re now doing something similar with this podcast, that people get excited to listen to when a new episode appears. Obviously we couple the absurd with an enormous love for cricket - that’s what brought me, Felix and Jimmy together in the first place.

Felix and I will never stop being embarrassing fanboys of Jimmy, no matter how many episodes we record. Similarly, Jimmy and I will never not marvel at the skill Felix shows when he’s got a guitar in his hand. Whatever the world may throw at you on a weekly basis, it all falls away as soon as we start chatting to each other.

So, as we look back on Tailenders after 99 episodes, I want to say thank you to two of my very best mates Jimmy and Felix. No matter what else we have on, there’s always time for a Tailenders record.

And let me confirm to you that the friendship you hear on the pod very much spills over into real life. Two of the kindest p***-takers you could ever wish to meet. An enormous thanks goes also to Mattchin, the greatest addition to my life (excluding Bella) in the last few years. And finally of course to Sharky, who I’ve been doing radio with for nearly 10 years now.

Oh, and it should go without saying that we’re eternally grateful to you all for listening. It’s been said before but it’s worth saying it again. 99 episodes would never have happened without you sending in emails about cacti, coming to the live shows dressed up as Jos Butler’s stolen biro, taking our banners to Mount Everest, sending in legal documents for Jimmy to shred and maybe most importantly of all sharing your heartbreakingly beautiful personal stories of how cricket has helped you through the darkest times.

It helps all of us through life, and this podcast was always meant to show that - to be the ultimate celebration of all the reasons why we love cricket. It’s a true privilege to hear why you all adore the game as much as we do so here’s to the next 99 episodes. I can only imagine the fun we’re going to have next. And my GOD with the world as it currently is, boy do we all need it. (I hope you read the last sentence with a Mark Nicholas pre-adbreak flourish)

Go well,

G-Force.

PS. See it, say it, sex dolls.