Concordia 25_cover section.indd

“An exorcist threatened to kill me; police tear-gassed and water cannoned me; and Viggo Mortensen called me a virgin in front of millions on live TV. But I’ve never felt quite as stressed as I did during my A Levels.”

Those touches made me brazenly believe I could learn languages without lessons and make documentaries without a background in film. So why not podcasting? Despite doubting many of my abilities, I considered myself a good listener and conversationalist – I’ve always been fascinated by other people – so podcasts provided the perfect platform. I invested in a camera and microphone, and sent guests invitations. My first was a formerly homophobic Westboro Baptist Church fanatic. Another favourite is the Coffin Confessor, who crashes funerals to reveal the deceased’s secrets. Then there’s the extremist who planned the Boston marathon bomb, and a neuroscientist who realised he was a psychopath. I adopted certain values in my interviewing, reminding myself to be curious not judgemental, and to prize people over ideologies.

Concordia Winter 2022

9

receive an award, and interviewed by Adrian Chiles on BBC 5Live. The film placed in BBC’s ‘Best of 2018’. But I was brought down to earth weeks later, when the BBC declined my next project about a pro-lifer known as the Crazy Baby Lady. Embittered by gatekeepers, I started my own podcast, On the Edge with Andrew Gold. Odds were against me – the average podcast episode gets 27 listens, and the top 1% get 3,200. I’d need 15,000 listens per episode to make a living. I wonder if that was where my MTS schooling helped. I was in the bottom sets, and spent more time in Saturday Detention than the library. But perhaps just being there instilled in me a belief (guided or otherwise) that I could do anything if I worked hard. I recall teacher David Lawrence urging me to take Advanced Extension Award English. It was an exam relevant only to Oxbridge candidates, so was alien to someone like me. But David pushed for weeks, until I took the exam. I got a Distinction. It did little for my university prospects, but a lot for my self-belief.

As my podcast grew, it was curated for promotion by Apple. It attracted bigger names, such as Richard Dawkins, David Baddiel, Jon Ronson and Amanda Knox. And after 18 months, I went full-time. I have a book deal now with Pan Macmillan about the psychology of secrets, and do two weekly podcast episodes, videos of which I upload to YouTube. My ambition is to grow my channel large enough to be able to produce my own documentaries online, without the say-so of TV gatekeepers. Subscribe to On the Edge with Andrew Gold on Apple, Spotify or YouTube, and let me know that you read this. It seems many students saunter through the halls of MTS with unflinching confidence, and become the doctors and lawyers they were born to be. Others, like me stumble awkwardly out the back, and need a little time to adjust to the light. Doubts continue to haunt. But it is our uncertainty – much like that which still slithers into the exam halls of my dreams – that spurs us all on. Maybe.