Ten years ago to this day was a Monday evening that changed my life. I stood in the reception of my workplace Bauer Media in Soho’s Golden Square and greeted Jack, Farrell and Dom for the first episode of a brand new podcast called Fulhamish.
Our relationships with one another were loose at best. I’d spoken to all three of them once or twice online, but I’d never really spent time with any of them. As with so many friendships that I’m sure you can relate to, the only common ground we needed was a shared love of Fulham FC.
At the time, the media world was all quite new to me. I was a year out of university and the season previous to starting Fulhamish I was working for the club as a freelance presenter hosting pre-match build up before Gentleman Jim’s iconic commentary. Sadly, the club decided to change their coverage plans and I was out of a role.
Podcasting at that time was starting to take-off and therefore I decided that starting a new Fulham podcast might be the way forward. Fortunately, I was working for Absolute Radio at the time as the station assistant and I knew that the radio studios were empty and available after working hours. Nowadays, you don’t really need a studio to start a podcast, but back then it was a huge bonus.
Initially, I was planning for Fulhamish to be some sort of quirky, off-the-wall, irreverent spin on supporting Fulham - slightly influenced by Alan Davies’ famous Arsenal podcast ‘The Tuesday Club’.
With no word of a lie, I can reveal that for at least a fortnight I planned on calling the podcast ‘Fulham Fish’ as some awful play-on-words on the term ‘Fulhamish’. Eventually, I came to my senses and decided to just stick to Fulhamish.
Ideally, we’d have launched the podcast before the season started, but we didn’t actually get going until game six of the 16/17 season. I threw together an awful logo, found the now iconic theme tune called ‘High Stepping Girls’ (composed by somebody called Steve Sidwell would you believe) and eventually we managed to find the time to actually record episode one. I tried listening to it whilst writing this article and I lasted about 45 seconds before I couldn’t take anymore.
Sadly, after a bright start to the season which included hard fought wins over Newcastle and Blackburn, our first game was discussing a highly forgettable 0-1 home defeat by Birmingham City. That was then followed up with a poor home draw against Burton, a forgettable goalless draw away at Wigan and then back-to-back home defeats by Bristol City in the league and cup. We questioned whether this podcast lark may have upset the footballing gods.
Eventually, Fulham’s form turned around and quickly the Monday evening pattern of meeting up at my work and recording a Fulhamish became routine. By that point Ben had joined the fold and the positive feedback from other Fulham fans continued to grow. We all felt a sense of excitement of being part of a new community and soon we were starting to even know our listeners on a first name basis.
Those early days we were hungry to grow Fulhamish in whatever way we could. We started a website, recorded fan-cams on YouTube with some young buck called Jack Kelly, and we even spent one pre-match handing out flyers on the Stevenage Road. We were all in our 20s and had time to devote to this shared project that was all about our collective love of Fulham.
The amount of people who gave up their time for free to help in one way or another was astonishing. Many people started as listeners and then donated their time and expertise for no other reason than just wanting to help out.
What we couldn’t have foreseen was the amount of drama on the pitch that we had to discuss throughout our first few years. That first season saw us reach the play-offs before the heartache at the Madjeski and then we had the ‘yo-yo years’ as Fulham went up three times and back down twice. It meant that we were never short of material, but by the time Marco Silva safely guided us to Premier League mid-table in 2023, we were also relieved to ‘hit the beach’.
I wouldn’t change those up and down years for the world, but we did get taught some valuable lessons about how best to run a fan podcast during good times and bad.
Those three promotion podcasts are some of my most cherished memories, the disbelieving joy after Villa, the euphoria after Brentford and then the pride after Luton were a privilege to be a part of.
However, I think we learnt more from the relegation seasons than the promotion seasons. Contrary to what some people think, our listener numbers fall through the floor when we lose and finding the motivation to chat about defeat after defeat can be challenging. During the bad times, us fans get angry for a variety of different reasons, and trying to reflect that in a podcast is a tricky thing to do.
Over the years we have done our very best to feature a wide range of voices and the thing I am most proud of is how Fulhamish has helped many people to build their careers either in the media or in football generally, including myself!
Above all, I’m proud that Fulhamish is a community. Not just for the people involved, but those who listen, read and watch us from all over the world. As somebody who grew up not knowing any other Fulham fans (except my Dad) I would have loved having something like Fulhamish where I could hear like-minded people discuss the one thing that I also loved.
Nowadays, there are more Fulham outlets than ever before offering all the coverage on the club that us fans could ever dream of. There may not be much interest from the wider media in what Fulham does, but fortunately we as a fan base have risen to the challenge of filling that void.
If you’ve engaged with anything that we’ve made over the past decade, thank you for choosing to do so. If you are one of the dozens of people who has contributed to Fulhamish over the years, I am so grateful for all of your help, there’s no way we’d have made it to ten years without your generosity.
We are excited for another decade covering the world’s greatest football club.
N.B: If you would like to celebrate the last 10 years of everything Fulham, please come to our special live show at the Half Moon Putney at 3pm on September 26th where we will be joined on stage by the legend that is Kevin McDonald!
Tickets are limited, but are still available here.
Congratulations chaps. It's always worth a listen. This and the Cottage Tactico at FF are both worth an ear drum.
Congratulations, guys. I hope to hear your audience stats going through the roof and not the floor this season, starting this weekend. COYW!