Hard-earned lessons from people who've faced the worst and come back stronger.
Hosted by Andy Coulson. Follow for weekly insights into the art of the rebuild.
Crisis What Crisis? is powered by Kingsley Napley — the lawyers you want in your corner when the pressure is on. Visit kingsleynapley.co.uk
Site
RSS
Apple
Données mises à jour le 30/09/2026
Classements récents
Dernières positions dans les classements Apple Podcasts et Spotify.
Liens partagés entre épisodes et podcasts
Liens présents dans les descriptions d'épisodes et autres podcasts les utilisant également.
JO TUTCHENER SHARP: I faced the pearly gates and felt regret
Saison 7 · Épisode 206
mardi 29 septembre 2026 • Durée 30:20
Recorded live at BizFest in Essex, this is the story of how a near-death moment became a £16 million business.
Jo Tutchener Sharp had built a successful career – running the beauty division of Purple PR, leading communications at Estée Lauder, then founding her own agency, Beauty Scene, and growing it to a turnover of around £5 million. In 2015, with two young boys at home, she decided to step away. But the stress of the exit took a physical toll, and shortly afterwards she suffered a brain haemorrhage that could bleed again at any moment, with potentially fatal consequences.
Facing what she calls her "pearly gates" moment, Jo was overwhelmed not by fear but by regret – the feeling that, were she to die tomorrow, she would not have made a big enough mark on the world.
So Jo made herself a promise: if she survived, she would dedicate the rest of her life to doing good. Just eleven months after brain surgery, Scamp & Dude was born, a clothing brand with purpose stitched into its heart. Today Scamp & Dude turns over £16 million a year, has donated 4.5 million products to charitable causes, and given more than 95,000 scarves to women starting chemotherapy. For her work Jo was awarded an OBE for services to fashion and charity.
In this business episode, Andy Coulson explores how Jo turned a life-threatening crisis into a moment of opportunity, and what it really takes to build a brand where purpose, family and commercial success pull in the same direction.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters, and build real resilience when the pressure is on. This episode is powered by Kingsley Napley. Visit www.kingsleynapley.co.uk for more details.
FOUR LESSONS FROM JO
Take the calculated risk, not the leap of faith. Jo lined up five clients and £25,000 a month in fees before she resigned from Estée Lauder. De-risk the jump before you make it.
Build the business around the life you actually want. Jo walked away from a £5m agency because it cost her time with her kids. Scamp & Dude was designed the opposite way – with her family built into it. Success isn't just the turnover; it's whether the business gives you the life you wanted.
Purpose is the engine that keeps you going when it gets hard. For Jo it's charity; for you it might be something else entirely – but find the reason you're really doing it, because that's what stops you quitting.
Awareness can be worth more than margin. Know which parts of your business are there to make money and which are there to build the brand, and don't confuse the two.
CHAPTERS
07:04 – Why a great job still wasn't enough
08:50 – How to de-risk backing yourself before you jump
10:11 – Walking away from a £5m business to get her life back
10:24 – Stress and the warning she ignored
13:54 – Choosing one last Christmas before brain surgery
15:30 – Waking up alive, and the promise made in a hospital bed
19:42 – Hospital bed to product in eleven months
24:34 – The Super Scarf mission, and 95,000 women starting chemo
26:54 – How to turn your hardest moment into your superpower
Mike Soutar is an entrepreneur, publishing titan and the forensic interviewer familiar to millions from BBC’s The Apprentice.
In this bonus episode of Crisis What Crisis, Mike shares the four points of personal navigation he relies on when life gets hard: a person, a habit, a comfort and a single piece of advice.
If you haven’t heard our full conversation yet, go back and find it in the feed. It’s packed with hard-earned lessons about risk, resilience and leadership.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
MIKE SOUTAR: The Apprentice star on the real ingredients for success
Saison 7 · Épisode 205
mardi 15 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:10:03
Millions know Mike Soutar as the forensic interviewer on The Apprentice, the Scottish voice across the boardroom table for the last 15 years. But long before the television, he built one of the most remarkable careers in British media – on a deceptively simple formula of hard work, optimism and self-belief.
In this business episode, we go back to the beginning. Mike started out at 17 writing horoscopes and romantic fiction at DC Thomson in Dundee, working on hot metal presses with a pencil he wasn't allowed to replace until it was a stub. By his early 20s he was editing Smash Hits. He went on to turn FHM into the biggest-selling monthly magazine in Britain, launched some of the country's best-known titles, and sat on the board of IPC when it was sold to Time Warner for more than £1 billion.
But the biggest turning point of his career came not in a boardroom, but in a hospital bed. In 2006, at the height of his corporate success, a chicken Caesar wrap left him seriously ill, his organs beginning to fail, unsure whether he'd survive. Lying there, he asked himself whether he had ever really tested himself — and the honest answer was no. So he walked away from the security of corporate life, raised £4 million in five weeks, remortgaged his home and launched ShortList.
His new book, Next Gen CEO, is about how the next generation of leaders can navigate an age of AI and uncertainty by becoming, of all things, more human.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters, and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
Optimism without a plan is just naivety. When ShortList failed on day one, hope didn't save it, a plan did.
UNDERSTANDING PERSPECTIVE: How to Find It When You Need It Most
Saison 7 · Épisode 204
mardi 8 septembre 2026 • Durée 22:36
Perspective is one of the most useful tools we have in crisis – a way of taking pressure out of a difficult moment, stepping back and working out what really matters.
In this special compilation episode of Crisis What Crisis, I share the story of the five most terrifying days of my own life and revisit four extraordinary guests whose lives have been shaped, and sometimes almost undone, by the pursuit of perspective.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY:
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
In this country, one in six of us will experience significant anxiety at some point in our lives. It's an epidemic that doesn't care about class, wealth, gender, age or race – and yet, as this episode argues, anxiety isn't the enemy. It's information. A signal to be read, not a fault to be removed.
In this special compilation episode, Andy Coulson draws on his own experience of anxiety attacks and revisits six past guests – a broadcaster, a journalist, a content creator, an adventurer, a designer and a cellist – who each faced anxiety in a very different form and found their own way to live alongside it.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters, and build real resilience when the pressure is on. This episode is powered by Kingsley Napley.
Most guests give me their Crisis Compass looking back on a crisis they've survived. Erin Baker is different. Her partner died just 12 weeks before this recording, and she is, by her own account, exhausted by the demand to keep being strong.
These four points aren't hard-won wisdom viewed from calmer shores — they're the things holding her up as we speak. That, I think, makes them rarer and more valuable than almost any compass I've been given.
In this bonus episode of Crisis What Crisis, I sit down with Erin to discuss her Crisis Compass. The four points of navigation that she turns to in order to help survive a crisis – a person, a habit, a comfort and a piece of advice.
If you haven't heard the full conversation yet, go back and find it in the feed. It's well worth your time.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY:
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
ERIN BAKER: “I'm sick and tired of being resilient”
Saison 7 · Épisode 202
mardi 18 août 2026 • Durée 01:10:17
This is a very unusual episode. It is rare that we would choose to have someone join us on the podcast so close to their crisis – usually our guests come to these conversations with the clarity that a few years' distance can bring. Erin Baker is just weeks on from the death of her partner, James, and still very much living in it. What she offers instead of distance is something rarer: the raw, unfiltered honesty of someone grieving out loud, in real time.
A warning – this conversation is powerful and at times very difficult, and some of the themes may be upsetting.
Erin Baker is one of the most respected motoring journalists in the country – the youngest and only female motoring editor on Fleet Street in her day. But in the autumn of last year, her life came apart. Her partner of thirteen years, James, was diagnosed with an aggressive, terminal brain tumour, and the blows kept coming: her father died, one of her sons was rushed to hospital, the family dog was put down, and a car was written off in a collision with a deer. Wave after wave, all at once. Then, this year, James died. He was 53.
Rather than retreat, Erin made the conscious decision to grieve in public, writing for The Times and keeping a diary on Substack called Postcards from Grief, documenting James's dying, the days since, and the unexpected things his death has taught her. She joins Andy for a conversation about resilience and its limits, about loss and control, about black humour and love, and about what actually carries us through the very worst of it. She is, without a shadow of a doubt, someone we can all learn from.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY
Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters, and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
Being "strong" can be a trap. If people decide you're resilient, they assume you're coping – and leave you to it. Sometimes the bravest thing is to admit you're not fine, and to ask for the help you need.
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER'S CRISIS COMPASS
Saison 7 · Épisode 202
mardi 11 août 2026 • Durée 05:27
Julian Lloyd Webber spent half a century as one of the world's great cellists — and then had to discover who he was without the instrument that had defined his existence.
In this bonus episode of Crisis What Crisis, Andy sits down with Julian to discuss his Crisis Compass. The four points of navigation that he turns to in order to help survive a crisis – a person, a habit, a comfort and a piece of advice.
If you haven't heard the full conversation yet, go back and find it in the feed. It's well worth your time.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY:
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
Julian Lloyd Webber is undoubtedly one of the country's greatest living musicians – the man who, perhaps more than anyone of his generation, took classical music out of the concert hall and into the mainstream. But in October 2013, ten minutes into a recital in a Suffolk seaside town, the power drained from his right arm and he found he could barely draw the bow across his cello.
Within six months, at 63, he was forced to retire – unemployed overnight and stripped of the thing that had defined him since he was a boy of thirteen.
For half a century, the cello had been Julian's whole life. He toured the world, playing with everyone from Yehudi Menuhin to Elton John, took an Elgar recording to a Brit Award and his brother's Variations to number two in the pop charts. He was the first officially licensed busker on the London Underground and the only classical soloist at the London Olympics closing ceremony.
Then, at 64, he sat the first job interview of his life and went on to lead the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire into a £57 million new home, winning it royal status along the way. On his 75th birthday – and while quietly managing a prostate cancer diagnosis – he walked back onto the Wigmore Hall stage and played again. And now, twelve years after the power drained from his arm, Julian is touring – a full run across Ireland this autumn with his cellist wife, Jiaxin.
His memoir, Bows & Arrows, is out now, and this conversation is about the abuse he survived as a boy, the instrument he loved and lost, and how you rebuild an identity when the thing that made you who you are is taken away.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing a crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters, and build real resilience when the pressure is on. This episode is powered by Kingsley Napley.
Frank Gardner has lived, by his own description, two very different lives — and found a way to carry the best of the first into the second. Twenty years on from the attack in Riyadh that nearly killed him, the BBC Security Correspondent is still reporting from the places most of us wouldn't dare go.
In this bonus episode of Crisis What Crisis, Andy sits down with Frank to discuss his Crisis Compass. The four points of navigation that he turns to in order to help survive a crisis.
Frank is the BBC's Security Correspondent and the author of a series of best-selling thrillers — the latest, Ballistic, is out now. If you haven't heard the full conversation yet, go back and find it in the feed. It's well worth your time.
POWERED BY KINGSLEY NAPLEY:
I know what it is to have the right legal support around you when facing crisis. Kingsley Napley are the kind of lawyers I wish more people knew about – there to help you make the right decisions, protect what matters and build real resilience when the pressure is on.
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video).
Investors back people first, ideas second. Ideas change the moment they meet the real world. What backers are really buying is you.
When you're fighting a difficult boss, keep it principled, not personal. Argue for the customer, not for yourself, and keep bringing the data. It's very hard for anyone to argue against a case built on what's genuinely right for the people you serve.
Chasing purpose. Mike had sold his company, had the money and the status, and still felt hollow. He thought what was missing was a job, instead it was a purpose..
CHAPTERS
06:38 – Why AI makes human leadership more valuable, not less
10:13 – Whether a self-made career is still possible in a flat economy
14:59 – How instability early on can forge the drive to control your own destiny
21:42 – Fake it till you make it: backing yourself into a job you're not ready for
24:27 – The FHM playbook: build in service of your customer, not your advertiser
28:43 – Why he left a hit at its peak – and what fear of failure does to founders
32:12 – How to stand your ground with a boss who holds all the cards
39:41 – The near-death moment that asked him: have you ever really tested yourself?
44:23 – Losing control, and what to do when you're forced out
46:27 – How he raised £4 million in five weeks – and why investors really said yes
50:16 – The launch-day disaster, and the case for protecting your team from the panic
53:22 – The £1 million opportunity he turned down – and the lesson in why
55:03 – Why success and status left him feeling hollow – and what actually fixed it
59:15 – Knowing when a job isn't worth your reputation, and walking away
01:03:27 – What 15 years on The Apprentice taught him about how to treat people
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
Honesty is what makes people feel less alone. It's not the tidy, theory-shaped version of grief that helps others but the messy, unguarded truth. Say the thing that feels too close to the bone; it's often the thing someone else desperately needs to hear.
You can't control the future, because it doesn't exist yet. Make your plans, but hold them loosely, they're only ideas of what you'd like to happen. Learning to live a day at a time is the only way through.
Find your release. For Erin it was writing, walking in nature, even paint-by-numbers – something meditative to pour the fear and grief into. When you can't carry it all in your head, give it somewhere to go.
CHAPTERS
03:37 – “I'm sick and tired of being resilient”: the exhaustion of always being the strong
07:52 – Grieving out loud: the decision to write through it
11:55 – The formidable mother, and a childhood that built the muscle
13:55 – Keep buggering on
15:20 – Fighting her way to Cambridge, and up a male-dominated newsroom
20:23 – Meeting James
23:05 – The life that looked perfect from the outside – and wasn't
25:08 – The Amazon night shift: the proudest she ever was of him
30:30 – The diagnosis
39:49 – When the blows kept coming
47:02 – Her son's seizure: the worst thing she's ever seen
51:02 – Learning to hold your plans loosely
53:22 – The last night, and a hug she'll never forget
57:04 – The chaos of loss
1:06:05 – The stranger by the roadside who knew exactly what to say
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
FOUR LESSONS FROM JULIAN
Talent and hard work aren't enough on their own – you need passion, because that's the only thing that gets you up to do it all again after a bad night.
A second string to your bow can end up saving your life. When you lose the thing that defined you, throw yourself into whatever else genuinely moves you – even if it's nothing like what you did before. Find something that truly absorbs you, and the healing takes care of itself.
When a setback knocks you down, picture the alternative. For Julian, the fear of ending up disappointed with his life was the fuel that kept him going.
Healing is not forgetting; it's reaching the point where the trauma you carry doesn't drag you down.
CHAPTERS
04:01 – Growing up in a chaotic, bohemian home
09:12 – The day on the Tube that took his childhood
11:03 – Why some things you don't get over – and shouldn't have to
15:21 – His father's warning that lit the fire
17:39 – Fifty years at the top: how he kept the flame alive
27:25 – The longest relationship of his life
33:12 – A football bet, a number two record, and a gold disc
35:01 – The night the power drained from his arm
39:02 – Losing your job, your income and your identity overnight
39:59 – The first job interview of his life, at 64
44:22 – The daughter's remark that brought him back to the cello
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
Podcasts Similaires Basées sur le Contenu
Découvrez des podcasts liées à Crisis What Crisis with Andy Coulson. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
