INTERVIEW: Ardee podcaster Nicola Bardon on scooping top award

The Dundalk Democrat chatted to Ardee’s Nicola Bardon on the rise of her successful podcast and winning the Best Newcomer Award at the Irish Podcast Awards.

“If you ever saw any video footage, you would well believe I had absolutely no idea,” she exclaims, with a mix of disbelief and humility. Recounting the surreal moment of her win, she admits, “They told anyone that they thought was going to be a winner to sit on the edge, and I was sitting in the middle. There were about five people I had to climb across to get out.”

The shock of winning the award is evident in her words as she reflects on that unforgettable night. “I was very shocked. It was very bizarre for me, and I don’t remember my speech,” she confesses. Even though someone recorded her acceptance speech, she adds, “I never watched it back because God only knows what I said.”

Originally from Mullingar Nicola moved to Ardee when she was young attending Scoil Mhuire na Trócaire and Ardee Community School before embarking on a media career that has seen her work as a researcher for 2FM and RTE, a presenter on Q102 and now a features writer for the Sun newspaper.

It was her time as an early morning presenter on Q102 that first gave her an idea for her ‘Tis Yourself Podcast.’

“I was working on Q102 in Dublin and I was presenting on the breakfast show every Friday, myself and my co presenter Liam Coburn, and then they gave me my own celebrity based interview show every Saturday morning.

“But it was on really early from 7am to 8am and I imagine the only people who got up to listen were taxi drivers and people going to the airport,” she laughs.

“It was a great learning ground for me because I obviously had to get the guests myself and fit them into anywhere between six and twelve minutes.

“It sounds easy because it’s not that long, but actually to get a story out of someone and wrap it up, it’s actually quite quick.

“So I find you don’t actually get much. It’s like when you watch interviews on the Late Late Show that are only ten minutes and you don’t get much of their back story or anything.”

Having grown frustrated at having to cut down the longer form interviews she began uploading them in full.

It was an interview with Canadian actor Noah Reid from the popular sitcom Schitt’s Creek about going drinking in Dublin and backpacking around Ireland that convinced Nicola that “this needed to be heard by more than just taxi drivers at 7am.”

“I saw they were doing better, and people were actually hearing them,” she says.
Nicola decided to launch the official podcast on St Patrick’s Day 2021 with two episodes featuring Edele Lynch from B*Witched and Brendan Lawlor the Louth Village golfer.

Nicola said she felt it was important to her to feature someone from home.

“It was a bit less daunting starting with talking to him [Brendan Lawlor] because he’s very normal and I knew he wouldn’t have any airs or graces.”

Fast forward and the podcast has now seen four seasons in two years.

Guests have ranged from Dann Florek from Law and Order SVU, Rob Maschio from Scrubs, James Patrice, Trisha’s Transformation, Aslan’s Billy McGuinness and Packy Lee from Peaky Blinders.

“When people ask me which ones should I listen to, I always point out Brian Penny, who is a lecturer in neuroscience in Trinity and he’s a recovering heroin addict. He was addicted for years and went to some very dark places, but has now built himself up to be one of the most renowned lecturers in the country.”

With dozens of episodes behind her, Nicola says the key to a good interview is to make the interviewee relaxed and at ease.

“Relaxing is the key thing. If people are on edge, they won’t answer your questions properly and as a journalist I’ve had so many interviews where people are like that. They just don’t relax and therefore you can’t get anything out of them, and if I’m not relaxed, they’re not relaxed.

“At this stage I don’t even write down questions or anything like that and just kind of wing it because I find if you’re talking to somebody and the conversation is flowing, if you have a list of questions there you tend to keep looking at them rather than listening to the chat that’s actually going on.

“Then the next thing you know you’re like, ‘I never asked that question’ and you start panicking instead of just letting the conversation flow.

“I’ve often had guests on the podcast where I’ve listened to interviews with them before and said ‘that’s a really good point they’ve made there, I’ll bring that up’ and then afterwards realising I never brought it up because we went on tangents here and there… on some crazy story that happened to them.”

“I suppose you treat them like a normal human being. I often try to treat it like it’s my friend that’s coming on and what would the stories be that I’d want people to know about my friend?

“When they come on, I usually chat for a few minutes before we interview and put them at ease and say we’ll talk about whatever they want and not try to steer it in any direction.”

It’s usually one question in particular that Nicola says always gets interesting responses:

“I usually ask them if they always wanted to be what they are now, and interestingly, most people say no.

“I had Simon Harris on and he said that he wanted to be a vet, and I just thought this is hilarious. One of our ministers in one of the most powerful political parties in the country might not have done this and could have been fixing dogs and cows down in Wicklow.

“That question always gets people to go ‘oh God no, I never wanted to be this.’"

It was on the back of receiving a string of interview refusals and while contemplating whether season four of the podcast would be the last one when Nicola was awarded Best Newcomer at the Irish Podcast Awards.

“That really gave me a new lease of life to continue.

“It is hard work because it’s only me doing it… it’s me just begging celebrities to come on via Instagram or through their agent.

“I don’t make any money from it so I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it.

“Every year when you go through a dip or an episode doesn’t go as well as you think it would you think, ‘well that’s it now, I’m going to give this up,’ but then someone will reach out to you who’s a new listener or who found something in the episode [that they really loved] … so you brush it off see what happens the following week.”

“I’ve some lovely people from Ardee who are always sharing it and these are people I wouldn’t even know that well and when somebody sends you a message, people don’t release how much it means.”

Awards aside, Nicola says it's the support she gets from Louth that she is particularly grateful for:

“It’s great for me to see local listens. When I see listens from Dundalk, Drogheda, Ardee Carlingford it means more to me to see them than one from America or Australia because I know somebody at home is either cleaning the kitchen or walking the dog and thought ‘oh that girl from Ardee I must give her a listen,’ and that means so much.

Season five of the ‘Tis Yourself Podcast’ is due to be coming out in October/November this year and the podcast is available via Apple, Acast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.