The Gentleman‘s Journal Podcast

Justin Hast is a watch collector and Gentleman's Journal's Watch Editor-at-Large. Today, he sits down with Harry Jarman to talk trends for 2024, the problem with watch boxes, and the time he let a priceless Louis Vuitton timepiece go for next to nothing.

Motoring Editor-at-Large Rory Smith talks us through his interview with Ineos's Sir Jim Ratcliffe — including the unlikely pub origins of the Grenadier car; his surprising shyness; and the Manchester United takeover. Plus! The most exciting new car launches of the year.

Harry and Joe turn the pages on the new American(ish) Issue of Gentleman's Journal — including tangents on the good life down in Miami; reasons why the 1994 Volvo Estate is the apex of modern culture; booze-less lunches with the creators of Industry; and Rolf Sachs's endless oomph.

Michael Murray is the CEO of Frasers Group, which owns some of Britain's best known retail brands — including House of Fraser, Sports Direct, Flannels, Jack Wills, and Gieves & Hawkes. Appointed to the role in May last year at the age of just 33, Michael has overseen an impressive leap in fortunes for the company, at a time when the high street seems in greater flux than ever. In a conversation recorded at the Fraser Group HQ, Michael tells us how his childhood growing up in Doncaster shaped his attitude to hard work and why he feels he was always destined to be an entrepreneur — as well as what the government might do to help the ailing high street, and just what the future of retail might hold.

When young men, starting out in life, their eyes wide and dreams un-crushed, say they wish to ‘work in the movies’ (whatever that means), it is because they hope one day to have an office like Charles Finch. They don’t make them like this any more — the office or the career. It is a serious room. A study in the proper sense. An accidental curation. There are wooden models of sailing yachts; hand-written letters from royal households; giant monochrome photographs of racing cars and distant relatives; stacks of books as impromptu side-tables; framed magazine covers from past lives — a fascinating monument, in other words, to the varied life and various careers of Charles Finch. The Gentleman's Journal Podcast is sponsored by Luca Faloni

People sometimes describe Tom Straker s a “TikTok chef” or an “Instagram chef,” and yes, it’s true that he has millions and millions and millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok, and that he’s known across the globe for his mesmeric butter-making videos, among many other things. But Tom’s also the real deal — a chef who trained at the Ledbury, the Dorchester and headed up the kitchen Casa Cruz before trying his hand, one day in lockdown, at making a cooking video for a few hundred followers. That first attempt was pretty dreadful, he admits — but now he runs an entire studio to produce his content, while his adoring fans flock from around the world to Straker’s, his new-ish restaurant in Notting Hill, which thoroughly lives up to the excellent reviews its had since its opening at the end of last year. A second is set to open in Manhattan in just a few months time. Tom and I spoke about all sorts of things in this episode, recorded in the office above Straker’s on the Golborne Road — including his earliest food memory, the ridiculous suit that he wore to his first interview at the Dorchester, his plans to shake up the butter market, and his advice for anyone unsure of what they want to do in life. Enjoy. The Gentleman's Journal Podcast is sponsored by Luca Faloni

It's remarkable to think that Reggie Yates is only 39 years old. In a career spanning more than three decades, Reggie has been a presenter, actor, radio host, screenwriter, director, and documentary filmmaker — but also a sort of spiritual older brother to the nation; a friendly, dependable, permanent resident on our screens. Today, in a wonderfully open conversation, Reggie talks to us about: The prospect of turning 40 How, for many years, he had trouble recognising his own value How we can all start to work out what we want to do with our lives How he gets interview guests and documentary subjects to confide in him Why he gives a copy of Rick Rubin’s new book to pretty much all his friends And his dreams and hopes for fatherhood. Reggie Yates partners with Barbour International for new Spring Summer 23 Tourer collection campaign, available to purchase on www.barbourinternational.com. The Gentleman's Journal Podcast is sponsored by Luca Faloni. Our thanks to Fitzdares Club for playing host.

To celebrate Gentleman's Journal turning 10 at the end of last year, we thought we'd invite, Harry Jarman, founder of Gentleman’s Journal, to sit down in the hot seat. Harry takes us on the meandering, rollercoaster journey the publication has been on from a small bedroom start up (and one that everyone said would fail) to an established and hugely successful media brand. We speak about how the worlds of magazines, luxury, and even manhood have changed dramatically over the past decade; how Harry’s hairline won him early advertisers; about the moment in the pandemic that he thought the party might be well and truly over; and whether, given the chance, he’d do it all again. Enjoy!

This is the last episode of the podcast for 2023. But fear not — we’re going out with a bang. Or a roar. Or whatever the noise is that Formula One cars make. Because our guest on today’s show is Christian Horner, the Team Principal at Red Bull and one of the sport’s most compelling ambassadors. Christian has petrol in his veins. He was a talented driver himself as a young man, before he set up his own race team, Arden International, at the age of just 25 — and then became the sport’s youngest ever team principal when he joined Red Bull at 31. We spoke earlier this month, at the end of another bumper year for the team and its talismanic driver Max Verstappen — and in a reflective conversation, Christian gives us the inside line on the 2021 championship (the spiciest in history, perhaps); the secrets he learned from the sport’s biggest characters; and why he always uses the same portaloo on race day. Enjoy, and we’ll see you in 2023.

Tim Brown sometimes talks about how much he used to dread dinner parties — and especially that moment when the conversation would turn to him and what he was up to for work. The truth was, Tim wasn’t entirely sure. A former professional football player in New Zealand who went to the 2010 World Cup, by his early thirties Tim had retired and embarked on what many people (including himself) though was a highly eccentric calling: creating a pair of shoes from his country’s greatest export, wool. Now, however, less than a decade later, his Allbirds brand is one of the great e-commerce and footwear stories of our time — and when it went public last year, it was valued at over four billion dollars. Today, Tim tells us why imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; how everyone originally told him the project was doomed to fail; and what it feels like to see Barack Obama wearing a pair of your shoes.

Our guest on today’s show is Giles Coren, the Times restaurant critic and columnist. We recorded with Giles for an hour, but it felt almost like we got two hours of content — and often at times, listening back to the recording, I was convinced I had my player going at double speed, such is the pace of Giles speech and mind. So, in a wide-ranging, highly entertaining conversation, we touched on the rise of the caviar 'bump', charges of nepotism, being seen as a person who ‘divides opinion’, why he regrets tweeting about a kid with a drum kit, trying to save Simpsons Tavern, the debauched days of 1990s Tatler, why lobster is overrated, his advice to young writers, why Keith McNally and James Corden deserve each other, and how nobody uses the word 'Proustian' correctly.

Our guest on today’s episode of the Gentleman's Journal podcast is Labrinth, the musician and super producer. We first met Labrinth back in 2019, just after his last album, 'Imagination and the Misfit Kid', came out — but before the wild, runaway success of the giant HBO show Euphoria, which became the most tweeted about program in history during its second season earlier this year. A huge amount of the show's success is almost certainly down to its soundtrack, which Labrinth, of course, scored and produced — and the music in the show very often has the otherworldly and yet soulful energy that is true of all of Labrinth’s music. His latest album, 'Ends and Begins', is certainly otherworldly — and we talk about the cosmic nature of Labrinth's music and beliefs in a highly enjoyable conversation that spans his feelings on his recent ADHD diagnosis; how he is excited about the great adventure of death; and why fame makes toddlers of us all.

Our guest today is Maro Itoje, the England and Saracens rugby player and Frieze London committee member. Maro has won four English Premiership titles with Saracens, three European Rugby Champions Cup titles, three Six Nations titles, and has played in a world cup final — that agonizing defeat, of course, to South Africa, which we talked about a bit during our conversation. On top of that, he’s been selected for two British & Irish Lions tours, and in the second of these was voted the Lions Player of the Series. Off the pitch, he’s a huge collector of African art and has curated an exhibition with Sotheby’s — and eventually, he tells us, he’d like to open up a London gallery of his very own. In a highly enjoyable episode, we talk about the origins of his ‘Pearl’ nickname; the fragile state of Premiership Rugby; the psychological tricks of England Coach Eddie Jones; and the last days of Roger Federer.

“My phone was exploding, mainly with texts from my kids: ‘Donald Trump knows who you are — do we need to leave the country?!’” Jon Sopel was the BBC's North America editor from 2014 to 2021 — perhaps the most eventful seven years in modern American history. Last year, he announced he was leaving the BBC after more than three decades to start The News Agents, a new podcast with former BBC colleagues Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall, which kicked off in the number one slot on the podcast charts this week. In a rather wonderful conversation, Jon discusses his high-profile scuffle with Donald Trump in the White House briefing room; the most devastating moments in his time as a foreign correspondent; and how his nerves almost got the better of him when interviewing Barack Obama. The News Agents is available on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.

"The older I get, the more I am interested in simplicity..." To celebrate the launch of our Summer 2022 Issue of Gentleman's Journal, the wonderful celebrity photographer Tomo Brejc talks us through his shoot with cover star Tom Hiddleston — and tells us how we can all take better portraits, no matter who we're shooting.

In this episode of 'Overheard at the Clubhouse', we sit down with writer and editor Dana Brown to discuss his new book, Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph and Disaster, which is excerpted in the Summer Issue of Gentleman's Journal. The book is brilliant. Charting Dana's clamber up the formidable masthead at Vanity Fair across the 1990s and 2000s, it's a wonderfully revealing romp through Manhattan's power circles at their most powerful.

"Men will always find a way to show off, no matter how uncool it makes them look..." To celebrate the launch of our Summer 2022 issue of the magazine, we sat down with Ed Cumming (a regular contributor and Senior Feature Writer at the Telegraph) to discuss the unlikely return of the mullet and the nauseating rise of the LinkedIn Man — two recent developments that may well be intertwined...

George Ezra is a singer, songwriter, and perhaps the loveliest and most thoughtful man in pop music. He is about to release his third album — The Gold Rush Kid — a record he says is his most personal and honest yet. But it is also a huge amount of fun, of course — that sort of sun-baked perfection that George does so uniquely well. In a highly enjoyable conversation, we spoke about the origins of his remarkable voice; the weirdness of social media; and how he almost lost a foot (sort of) while walking the length of the British Isles.

Munya Chawawa is the brilliant comedian and satirist whose viral videos have skewered the likes of Matt Hancock (in a memorable cover of Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’), Piers Morgan, Will Smith, Nigella Lawson, vacuous influencers, American YouTubers, and most of the current cabinet. He is also the host of Race around Britain, a documentary series for which he was nominated for a Bafta just last week, while in 2021 he was nominated for a MOBO award for best media personality. He is also the hardest working man in show business, I think, and quite possibly the nicest, too. In a thoroughly entertaining episode, Munya tells us how he pretended to be Idris Elba’s son in order to get an agent; what having a million followers does to your brain chemistry; what the back of Olivia Colman’s head looks like; and how middle-aged Lithuanian women might just be central to his success.

On the latest episode of Overheard at the Clubhouse, regular contributor Harry Shukman talks us through his piece about Oligart: a story of how the art market helped launder the reputations of the kleptocratic classes — and created a modern monster in the process.