EP72 Claire Liddle | Cake, Courage and Comeback | Local Heroes Podcast

EP72 Claire Liddle | Cake, Courage and Comeback | Local Heroes Podcast

What happens when you lose everything, and have to rebuild your life from the ground up? In one of our most powerful conversations yet, Claire Liddle shares her extraordinary journey from childhood trauma and alcohol addiction to prison, recovery, and building a thriving bakery business that’s changing lives. Claire speaks with remarkable honesty about growing up with abuse, the spiral into addiction, serving 22 months in prison, and why prison ultimately became the turning point that saved her life. She reflects on forgiveness, accountability, football as therapy, and discovering a passion for baking that gave her a new purpose. Today, Claire is the founder of Cakeaholics, creating award-winning cakes while proving that our past doesn’t have to define our future. This is a story about redemption, resilience, second chances, and finding hope when everything seems lost. It’s raw, funny, emotional, and ultimately incredibly inspiring.

EP71 | Carley Armstrong | Hendon, Hustle and Heart | 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.

EP70 | Andy Haddon | Bees, Bread and Belief | Local Heroes Podcast

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." Andy's the founder of Big River Bakery in Shieldfield, but that's only where the story lands. 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. 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. What he built when he got here is something rarer than a bakery. 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. 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. 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. Plus a serious debate about whether you could strap two stotties to your palms and survive a fall. 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. #LocalHeroesPodcast #BigRiverBakery #Stottie #NorthEast #Shieldfield #NationalStottieWeek Insta - https://www.instagram.com/wearelocalheroes/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@wearelocalheroes?_t=ZG-8tKWkdyntYm&_r=1 Website - https://www.wearelocalheroes.com/

EP69 | Bobzilla | Murals, Music and Mercury Missiles | Local Heroes Podcast

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. Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/LocalHeroesVIP Insta - https://www.instagram.com/wearelocalheroes/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@wearelocalheroes?_t=ZG-8tKWkdyntYm&_r=1 Website - https://www.wearelocalheroes.com/

EP68 | Solo | Diaries, DIY & Dread | Local Heroes Podcast

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. Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/LocalHeroesVIP Insta - https://www.instagram.com/wearelocalheroes/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@wearelocalheroes?_t=ZG-8tKWkdyntYm&_r=1 Website - https://www.wearelocalheroes.com/