Still Talking Crohn’s

When childhood friends Andy, 36, an employability project officer currently living in Glossop, and Jake, 30, a sports development manager in Manchester, started their podcast Talking Crohn’s during the first lockdown, they couldn’t have imagined the journey their show would take them on.

The podcast’s increasing popularity has helped to attract some special guests, including staff from Crohn’s & Colitis UK who issued the duo with an innovative 31 Day Challenge to raise money for the charity. Having raised an impressive £1,080 to date, we asked the pair to share their experiences and plans for the future.

Who have you been speaking to on the podcast?

Jake: In the Season One we didn’t really have guests. We just sat down and tried to pick a topic that affected everybody. We did have a family episode; both our brothers know each other well and we thought it’d be great to get them on and get their point of view for people that don’t have Crohn’s or Colitis but who support family members with it.

Andy: At the end of Season One we brought in Crohn’s & Colitis UK, which was great, and Jake and I then decided to plan for a guest in every episode for Season Two. We had a fitness episode with the Paralympian weightlifter Ali Jawad and that was great to get his life story. Then we did an awareness episode with Bryony Hopkins, who’s a journalist. We did a children and parent episode with a couple of mums; one who’s a parent with Crohn’s, and the other whose daughter has IBD, to try and get the differences in their experiences. We just did a vaccination episode with a friend of mine who’s a lead pharmacist at a children’s hospital, which was really enlightening. We’re really pushing to get Dynamo on now!

Jake: [laughing] If you go on our Twitter account, you’ll see lots of replies from us to Dynamo about his Crohn’s!

You spoke with Sarah from Crohn’s & Colitis UK in one of your earlier episodes. Can you tell me about the 31 Day Challenge that came from that?

Jake: We thought we’d get Sarah and the charity to set us a challenge so we couldn’t back out, and what they put together …

Andy: It was kind of like they went to town on us … in a positive way! The whole team apparently had input in creating this document, and rather than just saying run so many miles or do this many squats, they mixed it up a little and made it a bit spicy. There was a challenge a day; some were physical activities but there were also mental wellbeing ones and some fun things chucked in. There were cooking challenges, and baking challenges and body circuit exercises, writing letters to loved ones challenges … It was a whole holistic approach.

What were the most challenging of the challenges you were asked to do?

Jake: Oh, it’s a tough one, because the physical ones were kind of like you’d expect. One was, how many squats can you do in eight minutes, but I think some of the creative challenges were much harder. One was about wearing household items and we both clearly had very different ways of thinking … Andy put everything that he could find in his house on his body, and I just tried to create clothes out of them. Yeah, the creative ones were much harder.

Andy: They were more enjoyable, I thought. The creative ones like dressing up and writing and drawing and cooking, they were the most interesting ones.

You’ve now made a list of 12 months of challenges for other Crohn’s & Colitis UK fundraisers to use. How did you come up with the ideas?

Jake: You don’t necessarily need to do a big walk or a big cycle or even bake a cake. We wanted people to be able to call up the charity and if they ask for ideas, there’s a template of challenges at the ready. We looked at it as a monthly challenge, so people can sign up and walk 10k, but they can do that over 30 days, so that people can actually get out and about and do something.

Did you receive a lot of positive feedback when you were doing the challenges yourselves?

Andy: Yeah, for some of the challenges we had to interact with our listeners in our Instagram world, and they had to vote on certain things, and we would ask them to come up with ideas. Two or three times we got listeners to set the challenge for us, and some of the feedback we got was great. Some of the challenges they gave us were a little bit bonkers … people just wanted to see us eat things!

What do you have planned for the podcast next?

Jake: We spoke about having a Season Three, and we’ve been coming up with ideas because we want to continue it. We’re hoping that as we come out of lockdown we can do a podcast with shorter episodes, similar to what Crohn’s & Colitis UK do on Instagram with their stories. We want to call it Talking Crohn’s Stories for Season Three, and again we’ll get in a different guest every week. We’re hoping to have a set eight or ten questions we can ask to learn more about their journey with Crohn’s or Colitis. Just short, sharp snippets of life from different people in the community, taking the focus away from me and Andy waffling on about absolute rubbish. And we have discussed the possibility of doing another fundraiser, but that would be in the future.

To discuss fundraising ideas to support Crohn’s & Colitis UK, please email fundraising@crohnsandcolitis.org.uk

https://www.crohnsandcolitis.org.uk/get-involved