Looking Sideways Action Sports Podcast

If you’ve spent any time on the internet recently you will have no doubt seen the man in the pink hat, Johno Verity.
As it happens, Johno is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We first met back in 1998, in the first weeks of my first season in Meribel, and he’s been one of my closest friends ever since.
Not that it’s always been smooth sailing. Me and Johno are both big personalities, with plenty of ego and vulnerabilities, and there have been times we’ve really clashed, and almost fucked it up.
But one of the great joys of getting old are the consolations of old friendships, and in the past couple of years myself and Johno have dealt with all that and come out of it stronger and better friends than ever.
And this latter period has also coincided with the unlikely season of his great recent internet fame. We’ve been chatting about recording a Looking Sideways x Man in the Pink Hat episode for a while now, in London, or Croyde at various points. In the end we made it happen in mid August 2026, in my new hometown of Bracklesham, at the height of the fifth heatwave, and during a particularly febrile and emotional week for me.
So it was that at 5.30am one hot morning we set off on a cycling and walking mission around Bracklesham and East and West Wittering, recording this conversation as we went.
And it was a beautiful and, for me, vital morning: emotional, life-affirming, and a reminder of the great power of the consolation of lifelong friendship, with the Solent, the Isle of Wight, Hayling Island and Portsmouth in the distance, all burnished by the rising sun as myself and Johno chatted.
We laid some ghosts to rest, reminisced about our shared history, and I got to find out more about this long, strange recent trip Johno is on as the man in the pink hat.
This conversation came along at just the right time for me. Thanks Johno. I love you like a brother.
---
This week's codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com:
FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre
LOOKINGSIDEWAYSXDB for 15% off anything from Db
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays
PASSENGER-SIDEWAYS10 for 10% off at Passenger
LS27 for money off ski and snowboard hire at Intersport
To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.
00:00 Introduction
03:25 Daddy Issues
19:11 The Pink Hat Accident
33:36 History and the Pushback
48:06 In Bed With Meta
1:01:06 Tenacity Over Talent
1:15:39 London Empty at Dawn
1:22:29 30 Years of Friendship
1:29:08 Housekeeping Corner


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

What happens when you achieve everything you want in life, as musician Liam Ivory of Maribou State has, and still find yourself with an itch that remains unscratched?
That's the question at the heart of my conversation with the brilliant Liam, one half of one of the UK's most successful electronic music acts, and somebody who, I learned, has also been grappling with a conundrum every Looking Sideways listener will recognise: how to strike a balance between 'the creative life, and finding moments to get out and ride'.
As a sentence that defines the Looking Sideways ethos, this is pretty much unbeatable. Even better, it's a direct quote from an Insta DM Liam sent me back in February, when he generously got in touch to tell me how much he was enjoying listening to the show and its celebration of the balancing act that has become increasingly important to him.
Naturally, like any good journalist, I immediately asked him to come on the show. So it was that on the eve of Maribou's biggest ever show, at LIDO Festival in Victoria Park, we met in London and sat down to go over the whole thing: that elusive search for balance; how board sports have been the defining anchor of his life; the seven-year gestation of Hallucinating Love; the twenty-year creative partnership that Liam describes as a marriage; and the highs and lows of an extraordinary career in music.
The resulting conversation is certainly a peerless insight into the creative reality of sustaining the type of career that eventually leads to a Glastonbury headline slot.
But it's also yet another reminder, as if we needed it, that notions of success truly lie in the eye of the beholder.
And that even the most outwardly prolific creative people are just like the rest of us. Fuelled by a search for meaning - and a desire to go riding as much as they possibly can, whatever the circumstances…
---
This week's codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com:
FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre
LOOKINGSIDEWAYSXDB for 15% off anything from Db
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays
PASSENGER-SIDEWAYS10 for 10% off at Passenger
LS27 for money off ski and snowboard hire at Intersport
To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.
00:00 Introduction
03:36 Liam the Looking Sideways Fan
12:16 Feeling Flat After Perfect Waves
28:03 Leaving London
32:26 Headlining Glastonbury
44:04 Why Creative Partnerships Are Like Marriages
1:09:05 The Crossroads
1:16:11 Housekeeping Corner


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

In this episode of Looking Sideways, I speak to Julie Maughan and Chris Hines about Dirty Business, the recent Channel 4 drama exposing the state of the UK’s water industry since privatisation, and the real-life tragedy at its centre.
The story of eight-year-old Heather Preen, who died after contracting E. coli following a sewage spill on a Devon beach, forms the emotional core of the series, and is what really makes this such a powerful piece of storytelling.
Because what Dirty Business does so effectively is remind you that behind all of this - the corporate failure, the regulatory collapse, the wholesale extraction of profits, the outrageous cynicism - there are devastating, long-lasting human consequences.
Julie, Heather’s mother, has spent nearly 30 years campaigning for justice. Alongside environmentalist Chris Hines, she has worked tirelessly to hold those responsible to account and bring national attention to the issue.
In this essential, riveting conversation, we explore Heather’s story, the long-term impact on her family, and the wider context: how the UK’s water system reached this point, why it has been allowed to continue; and what it reveals about privatisation, regulatory failure, accountability, and public apathy.
This is an urgent look at an issue that affects us all, and what might be the most emotionally impactful and important episode of Looking Sideways I’ve ever recorded. Don’t miss it.
--
To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Welcome to the final episode of my three-part Winter Olympics series, in which we’re tackling one of the biggest controversies surrounding the recent Winter Olympics: fossil fuel sponsorship.
This episode focuses on the Ski Fossil Free campaign, initiated by activists Calum McIntyre and Nikolai Schirmer, which seeks to end fossil fuel partnerships across IOC and FIS events.
This incredibly effective feat of climate campaigning saw Nikolai deliver a petition - signed by over 20,000 people - to the IOC on the eve of the Games, an act which garnered much publicity and pushed the issue into the spotlight at a critical moment. 
A week or so later, in an attempt to understand more about the campaign and its goals, I hosted an online panel featuring voices from across sport, activism and the outdoor industry, including campaign organiser Calum, Greenpeace, Creatives for Climate and Greenlandic Olympian Uqaaleq Slettemark.
We discussed the campaign, the role of athletes and brands in driving change, the challenges of effective climate activism — and the accusations of hypocrisy that inevitably follow. 
It’s a conversation about where responsibility really sits when it comes to the future of outdoor sports, and as such is a fitting end to this short Olympic series. 
--
This week’s codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com:
FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre
LOOKINGSIDEWAYSXDB for 15% off anything from Db
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays
To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There’s a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Welcome to the second of three post–Winter Olympics episodes in which I am examining the recent Winter Olympics from a variety of different perspectives.
In this second episode, I’m joined by Lesley McKenna, one of snowboarding’s great original thinkers.
A pro skier, snowboarder, coach and team manager, she is herself a three-time Olympian, and helped run GB Park & Pipe in the years when Jenny Jones and Billy Morgan won their medals.
She has spent the last few years working on a Phd that analyses the tension that exists between a traditional sporting structure as epitomised by the Olympics, and a none-conventional action sports culture such as snowboarding. She’s has called it the Risk Aesthetic Framework, and it is fascinating stuff.
Why does this matter? Because while snowboarding now looks fully integrated into the Winter Olympics, its relationship with the Games has always been complex — and at times uneasy.
In this conversation, we dig into judging controversies, cultural friction, performance vs. progression, and ask whether something essential is gained — or lost — when snowboard culture enters the Olympic machine.
As ever with Lesley, this is a mind-bending conversation: endlessly intellectually-stimulating, and full of the ideas and provocations that mark her work out as so original.
If you care about snowboarding and its culture, don’t miss this one.
--
This week’s codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com:
FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre
LOOKINGSIDEWAYSXDB for 15% off anything from Db
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders
LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays
To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There’s a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe