This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with Sir John Burn for a fascinating conversation about genetics, medicine, curiosity and a lifetime spent looking for better ways to do things. John talks about growing up in West Auckland, County Durham, in a working class family where university, let alone a career in medicine, was far from an obvious path.

After initially planning to become an engineer, a love of biology eventually led him into medicine and towards the emerging world of genetics, at a time when clinical genetics barely existed as a profession. That curiosity would go on to shape an extraordinary career.

John shares the story of helping establish genetic services in the North East, building one of the region’s first DNA laboratories and playing a key role in the creation of Newcastle’s Centre for Life. He also talks about pioneering research into inherited cancers, the potential of aspirin in cancer prevention and how advances in DNA testing could transform the way we prevent, diagnose and treat disease. But this is as much a conversation about mindset as it is medicine.

John reflects on the influence of his entrepreneurial father, his instinct for spotting opportunities and his tendency to chase the next interesting problem. He also speaks openly about the importance of surrounding himself with people who could turn those ideas into reality. The conversation explores the future of the NHS, personalised medicine, DNA testing, diet, microbiomes and the difficult ethical questions that come with knowing more and more about our genetic makeup.

Along the way there are stories involving Sting, Catherine Cookson, Anthony Gormley, an Archbishop of Canterbury, Newcastle United and why John has his own brass plaque on Newcastle Quayside.

And, naturally, we finish with the important questions: chocolate biscuits, red meat and the enduring appeal of a Greggs pasty.

A funny, thought provoking and hugely insightful conversation about discovery, DNA and destiny, and a North East life spent asking what might be possible.

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with Full Circle Brew Co founder Ben Cleary for a conversation about beer, business, community and the fine art of having a ridiculous idea and working out the consequences later.

Ben charts the journey from a career in wine and opening Pipstop to falling in love with craft beer and eventually creating Full Circle at Hoults Yard - only to release its first beers on the very day the country went into lockdown. What followed was six years of adapting.

From selling 80% of their beer into Europe during their first year to Brexit, rising costs, the impact of the war in Ukraine and the continuing pressures facing pubs, breweries and hospitality, Ben talks candidly about what it actually takes to keep an independent business moving forward when the ground beneath it keeps shifting. There’s also a fascinating conversation about how drinking culture itself is changing. Full Circle’s answer has been to think beyond the pint, building community through its Balance initiative, run clubs, sea dips, hikes and events - while exploring what a modern brewery can become as younger generations drink differently.

Ben also reveals the next chapter: Full Circle’s first city-centre venue at Fenwick, bringing together beer, fried chicken, burgers and some potentially dangerous ideas involving champagne, Yorkshire puddings and gravy. Alongside the business conversation, things wander wonderfully off course: bald heads and factor 50, foot peelings, luxury camping, travelling circuses, beer made using tights, experimental mead, the tragedy of an inaccessible tin of corned beef and a forensic examination of exactly how a burger should be constructed.

And, naturally, we finish with the question that really matters: Ben’s Greggs order. A funny, candid conversation about creativity, community and keeping an independent business moving forward - even when the original plan has long since gone out the window.

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with chef and street-food entrepreneur Ren Webb for a remarkably open conversation about food, family, resilience and starting again.

Ren talks about growing up in Slough, living with a stammer, experiencing racism and gradually finding the confidence to own every part of his story.

He shares the huge influence of his Grenadian mum and his late dad - the man who took Ren and his brothers into the kitchen as teenagers and taught them to cook so they would “never have to depend on anyone.” That lesson stuck.

From working in a butcher’s at 14 to professional kitchens, live-in chef jobs and eventually building his own Caribbean food business, Ren’s life has repeatedly found its way back to food.

He also speaks candidly about some of the hardest periods of his life: homelessness, discovering that the little girl he had raised wasn’t biologically his daughter, difficult relationships, losing his dad and the challenge of rebuilding both himself and his business. Moving to the North East offered an opportunity to start again - initially on a friend’s sofa, before finding work, a home and eventually bringing his food business to the North East too.

Alongside the more personal moments, there’s plenty of warmth and laughter as the conversation wanders through curry goat, jerk chicken, sugar sandwiches, the perils of putting pizza in a paper bag and Ren’s wonderfully questionable childhood combo of Red Leicester and strawberry jam.

There’s even a three-course last meal - despite Dan's strict two course limit! A warm, funny and deeply personal conversation about family, identity, second chances and the role food can play in carrying our memories, our culture and the people who shaped us.

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with North East actress, presenter and performer Libby Walker for a conversation about creativity, class, resilience and what it takes to build a career when you come from the North East.

From leaving Newcastle for London drama school and an unexpected detour via The X Factor, to returning home determined to help build a stronger film and production industry in the region, Libby talks candidly about working-class barriers, homelessness, financial betrayal and the health consequences of pushing herself too far - and how she somehow kept going, rebuilt, and turned those experiences into fuel for what came next.

There’s community, filmmaking and a determination to create opportunities for others, before things inevitably descend into council estate cheese boards, Red Leicester, Greggs, last meals, first-date disasters and the surprisingly emotional business of eating an apple underwater in the bath.

A proper Local Heroes conversation: creativity, class, grit, resilience and just the right amount of chaos.

#LocalHeroesPodcast #LibbyWalker #NorthEast #WorkingClassCreatives #NorthernStories

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This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan sit down with award winning South Shields restaurateur and storyteller Shah Lolan Amin for a conversation about hospitality, family, food, identity and a changing Britain.

From the lost art of great service and the standards learned in the restaurant trade, Shah takes us back to growing up in a Bangladeshi family in South Shields - working from a young age, pooling wages with his brothers, losing his first business and learning resilience from a Dad who taught him that five fingers are stronger together.

It leads into a powerful conversation about the racism of the 1980s, the kindness of neighbours, multiculturalism, migration, misinformation and Shah's Coffee Table Project - using conversation rather than confrontation to find common ground. Along the way there are smoky restaurants, horrific ashtrays, guilty pleasures, his mum's cooking, extra cheese and an ambitious attempt to give a Greggs cheese pasty the Michelin treatment.

A proper Local Heroes conversation: food, family, graft, humour and some of the bigger questions about the place we call home.

#LocalHeroesPodcast #SouthShields #NorthEast #Hospitality #BritishBangladeshi

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This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan talk to the team behind Acropolis, as they celebrate ten years of turning a slightly wonky Quayside market stall into one of the North East’s biggest street food success stories.

It all started with a cigarette, a coffee and the words: “We could do that.” A borrowed gazebo, a second-hand kebab machine, plastic tables, a badly pixelated Acropolis sign and a cash pouch later - they sold out on day one.

The lads talk about quitting their jobs to give the business a year, convincing family to swap Greece for Newcastle, building a team of around 60 people and why success brings a very different kind of pressure.

There’s plenty of food chat too: the rise of gyros in the North East, the great chilli sauce debate, smashed lamb kofta, family recipes, and the golden rule that they’ll never serve anything they wouldn’t feed their own family.

And, because this is Local Heroes, we also somehow get into ox tongue, kokoretsi, “King of Meats” merch, vegan Greeks, an international Greek-Turkish peacekeeping mission on Newcastle Quayside and Dan’s slightly troubling coffee bean confession.

Plus, for those who know their spanakopita from their cheese pasties, we ask the question that really matters: what’s your Grigoris order? The Greek bakery chain that proves wherever you are in the world, sometimes all you really want is a pastry, a coffee and absolutely no judgement about either.

A funny, warm and occasionally unhinged conversation about food, friendship, Greece, Newcastle and what it really takes to turn a weekend side hustle into a ten-year business.

This is the story of Acropolis.

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In this episode of the Local Heroes Podcast, we sit down with Nic Greenan, custodian of one of the North East’s most loved cultural venues to talk cinema, community, leadership and what it means to be the leading a place approaching 90 years old.

We talk about opening cultural spaces up to everyone, bringing younger audiences through the doors, the magic of the big screen and ambitious plans for the building’s next chapter. But this is Local Heroes, so naturally we also get distracted.

There’s Jaws, Goodfellas, Metallica, the Bee Gees, VHS tapes, 12-inch singles and wired headphones - before reminiscing about previous Greggs orders, cheese and onion pasties hot enough to remove the roof of your mouth, pasty-and-crisp sandwiches and the questionable genius of putting cheese bites inside a steak bake.

Culture. Community. Custodianship. Carbs.

This is Local Heroes.

This week on the Local Heroes Podcast, Chris and Dan are joined by farmer and trained shepherdess Helen Stewart for a conversation about farming, food, family heritage and what it really takes to get something from farm to fork.

Helen’s family have been farming on Lizard Lane since 1965, on land that once housed hundreds of soldiers during the Second World War. From her grandfather delivering milk around South Shields by horse and cart to Helen now running livestock, selling eggs and building the next chapter of the farm, it’s a story rooted deeply in place.

We talk about growing up around agriculture, training as a shepherdess, taking on her own flock and the reality of running a farm where there are no days off and you only get paid when you actually produce something.

Helen takes us inside the world most of us never see — lambing, vaccinating, fly strike, shearing, fluctuating livestock prices, abattoirs, local butchers and why keeping a short, traceable food chain matters.

There’s also the story of Alan, the farm’s much-loved and completely uneconomical sheep, pigs called Sharon and Tracy, 280 eggs a day, why fresh eggs really are different and Helen’s passion for helping people understand where their food actually comes from.

And unsurprisingly, eggs take over a large portion of the conversation.

There are boiled egg WhatsApp groups, egg decorating competitions, poaching techniques, double yolkers, egg facts, 84-egg stockpiles and some surprisingly detailed debate about exactly how many fried eggs is too many.

Add in pig facts, black pudding, sausages, farmyard mishaps, Greggs orders and plans to bring sheep into South Shields Market, and it’s Local Heroes at its most gloriously unpredictable.

Funny, fascinating and full of things you probably never knew about the food on your plate — a conversation about farming, heritage, animal welfare, local food and keeping generations of knowledge alive.