Ali Bender

Alison Bender is an award-winning football presenter, reporter, podcaster, author and producer who has worked for Sky News, Sky Sports News, ITV, BBC and ESPN.

Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

In this episode we discuss:

Early career
- Trust the process
- Dealing with a miscarriage while working
Online abuse
- Dealing with sexism as a woman in football
- Why abuse only happens on social media
- Being a victim of deep fake po*n
- The role of tech companies in stopping online abuse
Using social media positively to build a career
- How to go viral on TikTok
- Ali’s new podcast After the final whistle
Quick fire football questions
- Breaking the Peter Odemwingie story

Alison Bender

Alison Bender is an award-winning football presenter, reporter, podcaster, author and producer who has worked with leading broadcasters including Sky News, Sky Sports News, ITV, BBC and ESPN. She helped launch Real Madrid TV in Spain in 2004 and has covered major tournaments including the FIFA World Cups and UEFA European Championships, regularly interviewing players and managers at Premier League and Champions League matches.

Alongside broadcasting, Alison is a digital content creator with a combined social audience of over 369k followers and more than 25 million video views, with a particularly strong presence on TikTok where her football content regularly goes viral.

She is also a TikTok trainer, mentor and founder of the Alison Bender Football Academy, helping the next generation break into sports media.

Alison is currently launching a new podcast, After The Final Whistle (ATFW), exploring the emotional realities of life during and after professional football.

She regularly works as a host, speaker and trainer with brands and organisations across sport, media and education.

Find Ali on TikTok and Instagram or at https://www.alisonbender.com/

One Question

One Question is a start up I’m building (that’s me, Andi Jarvis). If you hear this episode before Tuesday 10 March, you can vote for me in a start up competition and I might win £50,000 to help build it. Just visit this page on the Belfast Telegraph website, scroll down until you see One Question, click it, then click next and you’ve voted! No registration required.

Strategy Sessions Host – Andi Jarvis

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Episode Transcription

This transcript has been done automagically using Happy Scribe and hasn’t been checked by a real person, so there may be some hilarious mistakes where the AI can’t work out our accents – I’m sure they’re trained on just the American accent.

[01:00:00.000] – Andi J

Alison Bender, what one thing do you wish you’d have known 10 years ago?

[01:00:06.760] – Ali B

Yeah, 2016, there’s been a lot of chat about it on social media, so it brought it back to me. And I think it was a really bad year for a lot of people. So I’m going to sound a bit smug here because it was a really good year for me. It just happened. It followed a bad year, to be fair, but 2016 was good. And I hate all these clichés, but I’m going to give you three big clichés. One is trust the process. You’re never ready. Just do the thing, just do it, and just don’t listen to other people. I want to put it into context. Basically, I just turned freelance, not because I wanted to, actually. I was let go of my job at the Premier League, so I just had a baby. He was two. I’d rushed back to work six weeks after just to prove that I may be a mum, but I can still do this. When I got back, there was new management, and I was one of the casualties. Basically, I’ve got this two-year-old kid. I’m freelance. I have no particular work lined up, and I was thinking, Oh, my goodness, my career is over.

[01:01:08.420] – Ali B

I think 2016 is just when everything happened. I got this phone call from ESPN, and I never forget the words. It was a head of talent. I was just laughing to myself because he said, Alison, your stocks on the rise and we want to be a part of it. Very cheesy line.

[01:01:25.340] – Andi J

Was that person American by any chance?

[01:01:27.450] – Ali B

He was American. Actually, he’s an Australian, he’s an Aussie, but he’d been working for an American company. Really great guy, actually. But I just found it hilarious because I was thinking, my stocks on the rise. My stock feels like it’s in the gutter right now. Do you know what I mean? I think you hear so many of these stories, don’t you? When the I always tell people now, like any time I hear someone made redundant, I literally phone them up and tell them that story because I literally was about to quit. I thought, well, I’ve got no work. What am I going to do? Then ESPN, the biggest sports company in the world, gave me this magnificent opportunity. I covered Leicester’s title-winning season, which was just insane. If anyone hasn’t followed the story, I know you know it, Andi, but they were 1,500 to one to win the title. It was ridiculous. And against all the odds, they won the title. And I was there following them every step of the way. And then they sent me out to Paris for the Euros for six weeks. I had to leave my baby, well, my two-year-old.

[01:02:23.340] – Ali B

But at that point, because I’d seen how hard things can be, I was willing to do anything. So I travelled all over Paris and actually the rest of France for the Euros. And then I went to New York and LA to host from the ESPN HQ. So literally, for my career, it was one of the best years of my life, to be honest with you. But yeah, to think at the beginning of that year, I literally thought that’s it all over.

[01:02:50.140] – Andi J

It’s amazing how those things can change, isn’t it? That one phone call that changed your life. But it isn’t necessarily the one phone call that changed your life. It’s the process, isn’t it? That And your phone call only happened because years before that, you went off to Spain because you did that. Those things- I’ve been putting in the graph, but I felt like no one had been seeing it.

[01:03:10.400] – Ali B

Because I think things are so different now. Obviously, you have a platform now to shout about yourself, right? But back then you were owned by the broadcasters. So you went along and you did your job and you had no feedback loop, you had no ownership of any fans. And it’s amazing to think that I’ve lived through three areas of the media landscape because the very analogue era and then digital and now AI. It’s incredible. But the other thing about the trusting the process is something that happened at the Euros, which I remember. It might seem so strange to think about this now because it was only 10 years ago. But ESPN obviously sent Cameraman and Sound and everything out, and I had a big team. But they’d started to figure out that we should be using Twitter back then to our advantage, doing very rough, raw and ready edits on our phones. I just was not used to this. They told me to get a phone out in a crowd and right up to my face, and they wanted it to be raw and rugged, and then they wanted me to post it unedited straight on the espn.

[01:04:11.120] – Ali B

Com website. I remember I was standing outside the Stade de France doing this piece to camera, and literally this fan just started laughing at me, and he was laughing to his mate, and he went, Look, she’s doing real TV on a phone. And literally, I was so embarrassed. Now It just seems like the weirdest thing to say, right? This is only 10 years ago. I actually turned around to him and I said, I do have a cameraman as well, because I felt like… And just to think that now this is what everyone’s doing. The best content creators are doing work on their phone. Trust that process, and I should have embraced it more because it would then become what I end up doing. It’s very rare now that I’m actually in front of a broadcast camera with lighting and sound. Majority of the work that I do is on my phone. So I’m pleased that I had the opportunity to work for ESPN then and learn it on the ground. But yeah, it’s just so funny thinking how things have changed.

[01:05:08.740] – Andi J

Probably just a couple of years before that, I worked in TV. I worked for ITV in Northern Ireland, in marketing, not on TV. And we just started recruiting what were known as cross-platform journalists at the time. So not just broadcast journalists, they did a bit of TV, they do a bit of radio, but they would also post stories on the Internet and on Twitter, Facebook. And Why were they looked down on in the organisation? This isn’t proper journalism.

[01:05:35.500] – Ali B

You were striving to get on a TV channel. That was the end goal. And then I’ve seen the rise of the content creators, and then I had to become one of them because I just thought, I’m getting left behind here. But it’s actually incredible, like you say, the way people used to look down on those content creators, and now they’re owning the landscape. I always try and remind myself going forward, we don’t know what’s next, right? So always try and be an early adopter. If something comes along that seems a bit silly, just jump on it. Joining TikTok is the best thing I ever did. For a woman in her 40s, there aren’t that many content creators in sport, in football, in my age group, but it’s the best decision I ever made.

[01:06:17.020] – Andi J

Also in 2016, Allie, you said you had a two-year-old, you were juggling motherhood and a career. How did all that work out as well? That must have been tough.

[01:06:26.500] – Ali B

It was so tough. I just remember It’s hard because I was a freelancer as well. Work would suddenly just drop on my lap out of nowhere. Often I’d have a toddler with me. I remember the very first time I was asked to write for a newspaper, I was so excited because it was my first ever job. They wanted me to do a piece on Frank Lampard, and I knew I could do a really good job of that because I knew Lampard well. I had this baby, and I phoned a couple of friends, I phoned my mum, no one could look after him. In the end, I just thought, I did what I’ve come to do a lot now, and that’s just do my best, but done is better than perfect. I went to a play café, and he was just playing around with some toys, and I wrote this article. I really wanted to write at the bottom by Alison Bender, Written in a Play Café, Juggling Mum, which nowadays you probably would, but at the time it just felt so like I couldn’t tell anyone. But it was a really tough year actually, towards the end of 2016, actually, because, yes, I’d got my two-year-old boy and I was trying for a second baby.

[01:07:40.340] – Ali B

As anyone knows who’s had fertility struggles, it’s not easy. I I’ve already had a miscarriage before my first son. Sometimes people say when you already have a child, the miscarriage isn’t as bad. It’s one of those lazy stereotypes, right? Actually, this one worse, I have to say, because I had done all those calculations that everyone does of what age gap I’d like and how close they were going to be. In many ways, you sometimes do this for the other child. It hit really hard this one. It was a really tough time. The hospital didn’t deal with it well either. They asked me to pay for my scan photo, and I refused. I said, Do you mind if I pay for it after I come out of the scan? Because it might be bad news. And the woman looked at me like, No, don’t be silly. She said, Of course, it won’t be bad news. So of course, when I then went in, saw no heartbeat, I just felt outraged at this woman. And it’s not her fault, but if you’re working in the NHS and you know the statistics of one in four, the end in a miscarriage, why would you be doing that?

[01:08:52.940] – Ali B

And my husband had to literally hold me back from going up to that desk. And it’s not that I wanted a refund. I was just so angry that she’d put me through that embarrassment.

[01:09:04.140] – Andi J

The stats around miscarriages, like I said, one in four, I think, are actually part of the problem in that it’s a relatively common occurrence, sadly. But we’re still fucking terrible at being able to talk about it. You get this, Oh, well, you’ve got a child already. It’ll be fine. Or, It’s just normal. Don’t worry about it.

[01:09:24.460] – Ali B

Yes, exactly.

[01:09:26.020] – Andi J

Thanks for your really help. I know people are shit at times like this, and they’re trying to be helpful, But it’s really not, is it?

[01:09:32.320] – Ali B

It’s not. It’s so hard. Actually, the Miscarriage Association are really good. They put out messaging, and they just say the best thing to say is just, I’m sorry, because any advice you then go on to, it’s just not necessarily what they want to hear. It was hard for me because I was working for a very male-dominated company, and all my bosses were men, and I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. I actually went into work, and I was still I was bleeding, I was on painkillers. I think it was West Ham. I was in the tunnel doing my interviews with terrible cramps. But I just thought, I can’t tell anyone because then they’re going to know I’m trying for a baby, and then they’re going to maybe not give me a promotion. What would that mean for my career? So all of that is wrapped up in it, exactly. God, this sounds like a big sob story. I’m here on the therapist couch, but I do think it’s important to talk about these things that other people don’t feel alone like I did. But the other that happened that was a big deal, I think does not get spoken about enough, and I hardly ever hear this actually, is when I eventually did fall pregnant, because I knew how important that was and how hard it was, I felt like I had to feel joyous about it, right?

[01:10:46.980] – Ali B

But I was more sick than I’ve ever felt in my life. I felt atrocious. I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to go to work. I lost interest in the one thing I loved, which was football. I couldn’t even watch football. I went off everything that had a smell. So we’re talking about not just perfume and deodorant, but I couldn’t put face cream on my face because it made me want to wretch. I mean, whatever was inside my body hormonal-wise, just threw my body out of kilter like I’ve never been thrown before. And to the point where I ended up the doctor’s just saying, I think this is depression. I’ve never felt this ever. And I’m miserable. I wake up every day, I’m miserable, and I go to bed every night, and I’m miserable, and I’ve got nothing to look forward to. And the doctor, disappointingly, said to me, We have heard of cases like this, but frankly, by the time you get diagnosed and by the time we can do anything about it, you’ll have had your baby and you’ll be fine again. And I just felt so unseen. And I went home and felt not miserable again.

[01:12:01.360] – Ali B

And they were right. The moment my child was born, the second she was out of me, myself just came back again. And it was such a crazy experience where I was like, wow. And I felt so sad for anyone suffering depression because I thought, I’m so lucky that mine only lasted nine months and mine was caused by a hormonal imbalance that is now gone. But what about all those people that are born like this? Or that have this in their life and are ignored. It really was such a… Everyone talks about Princess Catherine had the, I actually forget the name of it, but the severe morning sickness. But She was being sick. I think because I wasn’t being sick, I wasn’t taken so seriously. I just felt nauseous.

[01:12:53.060] – Andi J

Which is almost the classic problem with mental health, isn’t it? If there’s no physical signs, people then just assume everything’s okay.

[01:13:00.000] – Ali B

Everyone kept telling me, You look so great. You’re glowing. Because I was like an influencer, I was getting given all this stuff, all these maternity clothes, and they were like, Oh, can you wear them on TV? Actually, I look at my presenting from that time and photographs, and I look dead behind the eyes. I can literally look at my photos on my face and I can just see the pain that I was in. But at the time, I just had to keep going. I was I could represent her. That was my job, but it was miserable.

[01:13:33.960] – Andi J

Incredible. Thank you for sharing that, Ali. It’s great to hear people talk about that, and hopefully it will resonate with people listening on the show and they’ll be like, Oh, not alone. And reach out to Ali. Details in the show notes, obviously, but do reach out if you’ve got any questions. Ali, thanks so much for that great opening discussion. We’re going to come back after this introduction, where we’re going to talk more about some of the dark side of social media, about your content creation, about your career as well. Stick with us. We’ll be back in about 60 seconds after this intro. Hey up, and welcome to the Strategy Sessions. My name is Andi Jarvis. I am the host of the show and the strategy director at Eximo Marketing. Before we go any further, I’ve got a word from our sponsors. Our sponsors? Well, actually, the sponsor is me this time. I have a new position. I’m the founder at a startup called One Question. It’s a market research startup. You’ve heard me say, talk to your customers. Well, this is the product for that. But I need your help. If you are listening to this before Tuesday, the 10th of March, I need you to vote for one question.

[01:14:39.600] – Andi J

We’re in a startup competition to win 50,000 quid. Yeah, you can join in at that bit. Yeah, okay. So we’re in a startup competition to win 50,000 quid. What I’d love you to do is go to the show notes. There is a link right at the top. We’ll take you to a LinkedIn post, and that’ll tell you everything about how you vote. Dead simple. It takes 10 seconds to vote on the Belfast Telegraph website. All the details are on the post, but basically go to that post, click a link, Belfast Telegraph, click one question, submit. Done. That’s it. Take your 10 seconds, maybe even 15 seconds. It’s taken me much longer to explain it than it will It’s good for you to do it. So thank you very much for that. I also want to give a shout out to a conference that I’m going to be speaking at later in the year, which is called Mind Control. Why am I telling you that now? Mind Control is taking place in May, and it’s going going to be on Wednesday, the 27th in Belfast. Mind Control is an event about the psychological tips and tricks that marketers use, and actually maybe where they came from and some of the dark sides that happen When these tools and tricks and psychological nudges are used in an aggressive way by, well, bad actors, really, whether that can be state or people who want to take your money off you or take your liberty off you, various of the things.

[01:16:00.680] – Andi J

There’s an incredible lineup of speakers. If you’ve listened to the Kill This podcast, the guy who did that’s on there. There’s someone who survived a cult and got out of a cult. There’s just this huge array of speakers, and then this idiot is going to be hosting it and launching a new presentation called Anti-Social Media. It’s a look at the dark side of social, really. So I just wanted to mention that. Again, there’s a link in the show notes, because if you’re interested in the conversation I have with Ali, especially some of the stuff when we talk about the negative impact on social media, this might just be the conference for you. So three asks. One, vote for one question. Two, have a look at mind control. And three, if you enjoy the episode, please, please, please share it with a friend. Thank you very much. Now, let’s get back to Alison Bender, and we’re going to talk about football, social media, and building a career as an influencer. See you soon. Ali, do you want to give yourself a little introduction? Some people might be looking at the screen going, I recognise that woman’s face, but I can’t quite place it, or where do I know her from?

[01:17:02.740] – Andi J

Tell everybody where you work now and give us the career background that got you to there.

[01:17:07.420] – Ali B

Yeah. Well, so I’ve been doing this for about 20 years now. I’m a TV presenter, a reporter, and content creator now in football. And it’s quite funny, actually, because every now and again, someone comes up to me on the street and recognises me, and I think, Oh, well, it must be from TV just because I’ve got that mindset. But they’ll actually say, Oh, no, I follow you on TikTok. And that’s how things have changed. But every now and again, I get someone who remembers me from my very first job, which was at Real Madrid TV. I was super, super lucky because I’d come straight out of university I was working for CNBC, business news channel. I did everything. I did writing, editing, guest booking, whatever, just bottom rung of the ladder, worked my way up. But my very next job after that was launching at Real Madrid TV with a team of six presenters. So I moved to Spain, packed my suitcase, one-way ticket. And you know when people say, what’s the biggest payoff?

[01:18:11.940] – Ali B

And pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, I I did not speak a word of Spanish, and I launched a channel in Spain, which is mental.

[01:18:20.220] – Andi J

You didn’t speak it. I just assumed you were fluent in Spanish, which is how you got the job.

[01:18:25.040] – Ali B

No, no. And in fact, I remember they brought me… I think they just wrongly assumed assumed that you must know a bit of Spanish, right? So they brought me into this meeting and they said, Right, this is going to be the brief of the whole channel. And I sat in that meeting for an hour. It was in Spanish. And of course, I didn’t understand a word. I didn’t speak Spanish, right? But then when I came out of the meeting, they said, You got the gist of that, right? And I honestly wanted to burst into tears at that point. I was like, Of course, I didn’t get the gist of it. I don’t know Spanish. I don’t know any Spanish. And it was insane because I put on a crash course. I went to language school, I watched TV, I read newspapers, I learned all the technical words for football, and all my technical staff were Spanish. So when I was presenting on air, they were counting down on my ear from 10 in Spanish. And I was obviously launching the English version of the channel, I should point out. So I was speaking in English and the other team of presenters, they were all English.

[01:19:25.280] – Ali B

But it was just really funny. So little things I would say, So if we can just take a look at the the league table, expecting the director to cut to the league table, but he just didn’t understand a lot of the stuff that I was saying. I would keep saying it in different ways, hoping that he’d understand. At one point, they called it la classification. At some point, I’m literally like, if we look at the classification, and I’m literally like, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it was the only way to get myself understood. But yeah, and I had an incredible time there. I mean, Galacto era, so I was watching the likes of Beckham and Zidane and Gooty and Ronaldo, the original, but a Brazilian Ronaldo, I should point out. The best Ronaldo. The best Ronaldo. Michael Owen was there as well and Jonathan Woodgate, and it was a wonderful, wonderful time. I’m sorry. Anyway, career, yes. I’ve done a lot. I went from Real Madrid TV back to England. I wanted to stay there forever, to be honest with you, but I got offered a job on Sky Sports News and Chelsea TV, which is my club, and I I couldn’t say no to that.

[01:20:31.140] – Ali B

So I came back and did that.

[01:20:32.160] – Andi J

Thanks very much for doing the interview, Ali. I’m sorry we can’t platform Chelsea fans here, unfortunately. So lovely chatting to you. See you later. Goodbye. Sorry. I do apologise. We welcome Chelsea fans. We’re a broad church here.

[01:20:42.400] – Ali B

A little bit through gritted teeth.

[01:20:45.040] – Andi J

No, it’s fine. Sorry, I interrupted.

[01:20:47.400] – Ali B

No, you’re fine. I did go and work for United for quite a lot as well. Well, I worked for the Premier League, so after spending about a decade at Chelsea, I actually got a bit tired of the same club over and over again. It’s funny how grass is always greener, right? Because now I’d almost give anything to be back at Chelsea and to have that continuity again. You just interviewed the same players over and over again, but you could go a bit deeper because you knew them really well. But I was told at the time, actually, that it would be a hindrance for people to know me as one team, which is quite funny now thinking about it, because any content creator, you know what team they support, and it’s not a hindrance. But back then, it was suggested to me that I do some other things. So yeah, I went to work for the Premier League and I was reporting all over. And yeah, since in America at ESPN, which really changed things for me, actually, because I think I’d suffered a lot of sexism in England. And I think going to America, I suddenly became a legitimate voice of football, which was a really big shock to me.

[01:21:51.000] – Ali B

The Americans treated me so differently. So when I came back from America, I was really confident, really in charge of myself. And I think I needed to be in that place to deal with some of the misogyny that was about to come my way.

[01:22:03.260] – Andi J

I don’t like putting out negative podcasts into the world, right? But there’s a good chunk of your story we need to cover, and I think we’ll do it now, and then we’ll get that out of the way, and then we’ll finish on all the positive notes as well. But you mentioned the misogyny. So let’s jump into that. You’re a woman in football, which in the UK, you’re right up there with murderers, right? Surely, as one of the worst people in the world.

[01:22:26.900] – Ali B

Well, absolutely.

[01:22:27.480] – Andi J

Because there is still that chunk of I was going to call it a vocal minority of football fans who still think that women’s take on football is wrong. But is it a vocal minority or is it a vocal majority? Because there is a lot of abuse out there for women in football, isn’t it?

[01:22:47.520] – Ali B

It is definitely a vocal minority. But I do think there are a majority… I think there are a lot of fans that don’t want to admit it, but they didn’t like a woman speaking about football. They didn’t like a woman’s voice. I could tell by some of the compliments that I was getting. So for example, Oh, I quite like you actually, when you’re on the radio because you talk about football like a lad. So that was palatable. I think what happened is I spent so long around men that I did start talking about the game in perhaps a way that I’d heard, and maybe it was a bit more masculine. I certainly was told to lower my tones, in fact, because when I was on Sky Sports News, my boss told me that girly voices. And I’m sad, actually, because I did have quite a nice little girly voice, and now it’s quite low because it was trained out of me. And that was how I was told I would be taken seriously and how I’d have more authority and be more authoritative. So that’s what I did. I did anything in my power to be accepted.

[01:23:49.080] – Andi J

So there’s two things here. Let’s stick with the fans for the minute, and I want to come to professional advice without naming and shaming anyone, obviously. But fan culture. I know from talking to you that you know more about football than about 95 % of the world, right? You just do. You’re a football expert beyond most people’s comprehension. Yet when you post content about football, you still have to deal with an overweight bloke called Dave who plays Sunday League football and once could have been a player, telling you that you’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and giving you a level of abuse which is just is wrong, right? That’s still happening today, isn’t it, in 2026?

[01:24:25.340] – Ali B

100 %. And it’s why a lot of the time I can’t be bothered to use X, which is a real shame because social media It can be a really powerful tool for reach. Actually, that’s why I found TikTok actually a much better platform. I wonder whether it’s because it’s a younger generation who are perhaps a little more accepting on the whole. I certainly think it’s about being very opinionated. If I have a strong opinion, I remember there’s a couple of things that really stand out. I remember when I was voting for footballer of the Year, and I voted for Jordan Henderson some years back. Now, oh, my goodness me, the amount of abuse I received for that. But let’s just put this into context. Jordan Henderson won that year. We’re talking about 100 journalists making a vote, and most of them are men, and most of them picked Jordan Henderson. Now, we’re not just talking, I know that you’ve got a wry smile on your face, and I’m not just talking about football talent, and he’s no Ballon d’Or winner. But at the time, we have categories that we have to vote in. One of the things for footballer of the year is that you have to have done something within the society.

[01:25:31.000] – Ali B

He had done a lot. I think it was around the pandemic at the time, and that is taken into consideration. But I noticed that the male journalists weren’t getting the abuse that I was getting. And it was literally the typical to get back in the kitchen, but also to the alarming what they wanted to do to me in front of my children. And that crosses a line.

[01:25:54.520] – Andi J

So just to box Jordan Henderson off before we… I’m coming back to that. Jordan Henderson, Liverpool captain when they won several trophies, probably not England captain at that point, but went on to captain his country. And people still bag you for… Football fans are idiots, right? They’re just idiots.

[01:26:10.980] – Ali B

And everyone’s allowed an opinion, but it was the assumption that if this girl voted for him, she must be a clueless human and doesn’t know anything about football. And you want to rise up and say, Look what I’ve done. And it’s It’s pointless. You’re just wasting energy.

[01:26:31.800] – Andi J

It’s hard. My only view into this world is arguing with racists. It’s slightly different, but slightly the same. I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that actually when you argue with these fucking idiots, you make yourself as thick as they are instead of… And it’s really hard sometimes to let that go, but that’s the way I approach it.

[01:26:52.700] – Ali B

It’s not right or wrong. Although sometimes you can turn them around. I know that I shouldn’t have to, but every now and again, I often think that these people, and they do it to players as well, are the same ones that will then come up to a player and ask for their autograph, or they can abuse them, and then the next week they want to be around them. And so if you actually say something to them and it resonates, I’ve actually had a few guys going, Fair play. Actually, I feel really bad. Sorry, I said that, and move on. And I found that as a bit of a small win. My husband is like, What on earth are you doing engaging with those guys? But every now and again, I just think, Well, why not? If I can shut one person up, maybe they won’t go and abuse one of my colleagues.

[01:27:37.920] – Andi J

I’m pleased that you take that that way. I’m going to the pitchforks. But am I right in thinking you’ve never had any of this abuse in person? No one’s ever stopped you in the street and said, you’re a silly little girl with a stupid view on football. Well, of course not. The keyboard warriors do it via the safety of their front room, they’re be arresting or they’re be and think that it’s okay to abuse you. I can’t quite understand how we’ve got to a position where this is now acceptable and there aren’t more guardrails in place on social media and in society, generally, for the repercussions of this to come.

[01:28:15.640] – Ali B

Why does it happen just online? Completely. Well, it’s because it’s not policed, it’s not patrolled properly, it’s not controlled properly, and it’s the social media companies. The problem is if you put a copyrighted piece of music or if I put up some football from a Premier League match, it will get torn down pretty quick. So they do have those in place and they can act, but it’s become so prevalent that it’s very difficult to police. That’s why I believe that you need to register properly, because otherwise it’s just going to keep on going. Then people get shut down and they open a new account, and then it just carries on like that. You always know the ones that are going to abuse you. I can tell a mile off by the profile picture, by the name. Some of them are bots as well, but you know when you’re going to get a fat load of abuse from someone.

[01:29:10.780] – Andi J

Social media, we’re coming to the upside shortly. There are downsides to it. You take a lot of abuse. You mentioned you don’t use X, but you have had a particularly traumatic experience with X. I’m really introducing this badly, Ali, but do you want to talk about that? I’ll let How did you save me from asking you a really shit question, which is what I’m doing right now.

[01:29:33.980] – Ali B

Yeah, no, it was more of a shock, to be honest, than anything, because I opened up X. I use it here and there, not too much now. And I opened it up one day and I had a load of messages. I’d been tagged in something and loads of people were responding to it. And I thought, oh, what is this that I’m tagged in? Let’s have a look. And it was a porn movie with my face, someone else’s body. And I thought it was me. It was so realistic. It was insane. I was just like, wow. Because, of course, when you’re a presenter and you’re online and your image is online and you’re moving your face in lots of different directions all the time, it’s pretty easy to stitch that onto another body. I was shocked. I was like, wow, who’s actually going to believe this is real as well? I mean, it had only just started happening. Now we’re hearing a lot about it. I think Vicky Pattison has done a big documentary about it as well. I’ve also got two kids, and actually I’m keeping my kids off phones and social media for now.

[01:30:40.500] – Ali B

But imagine if my son had seen that and thought, What has mommy been What are you up to? So obviously, I report it straight away to Twitter, to X. And you have to actually tick a box. So whether it’s a likeness of you or sexually explicit, you can’t tick both. And whichever one I decided to tick in the end, it basically said, this does not violate Twitter X’s guidelines. So then I went back and did the other one and the same thing came back. And I’m thinking, how does this not violate your guidelines? You’re using my likeness for a porn movie. I have to be honest, I blocked the guy. I blocked a couple of the people that were responding to it, and then I moved on. And it kept coming for quite a few months, they did several different ones with different men, and they, I guess, got bored, and I haven’t had one for a while.

[01:31:40.000] – Andi J

Look, I’m rarely lost for words, right? Yeah. I don’t know, angry, disappointed, fucked off, amazed.

[01:31:53.060] – Ali B

I’m not even shocked. I’m not even surprised. I have to say it was- Well, let me be outraged on your Go on then. Actually, a few people contacted me and I felt like I ought to have been more angry. But the really sad part is I’ve had this my whole career in different ways. So when I first started out on Sky Sports News in 2006. This was before Instagram reels and before a lot of the social media. So it was the comments on the website. And I remember reading a comment, and it does affect you. It’s so stupid, it shouldn’t, but they I’ll draw your attention to things. I’m just about to draw your attention to it now. They said, This girl speaks out of one side of her mouth like Elvis or something. And then one said, oh, it looks like she’s had a stroke. And then the next one said, I do her, but only from the right-hand side, not going anywhere near that left-hand side. And I’m reading this. And obviously, I’m a young presenter wanting to get better. And so the next time I’m on sky, I’m literally just focussing about how I’m speaking out of my mouth.

[01:33:02.180] – Ali B

And again, you shouldn’t listen to it, you shouldn’t read it. But when you do, it’s one of those things, isn’t it? Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So it began then, and I’m just used to it now, and I shouldn’t be. And the only The only reason I get outraged now, actually, is because I sometimes think I’m okay with this, but if a younger girl getting into this industry is subjected to this, it might be enough for her to leave it altogether. I feel I owe it to other people who maybe aren’t quite as thick-skinned.

[01:33:33.600] – Andi J

So there’s lots of points that I’ve hopefully tried to place into words now. So first of all, people making deep fake porn, have you got so little going on in your life that you wake up in the morning and go, Ali Bender, right? I know what I’m going to do today. Get a fucking grip. Go and get some friends. Get out of the house. I don’t know. But then we’ve got the tech companies, and this is generally where my eye is drawn to. They have the ability to take that shit down before it’s even posted, right? They They can stop that happening. If they wanted to, they could do that. They just clearly don’t want to. When there’s a profit motive, music companies say, We’re going to sue you if you do it, we can find a way to do it. But they don’t want to, so they don’t do anything about it. Why don’t they want to? Because it fucks with their engagement metrics. You post that shit and bang, it gets eyeballs.

[01:34:34.400] – Andi J

What do they want? Eysballs because eyeballs sell ads. So they do nothing about it. Then, okay, you say, Right, okay, maybe they want to let it post because they’ve got this engagement metric they’ve got to hit. What the fuck is going on with the reporting process? Any sane actor will look at that and go, This has to come down because it’s not you. You are the person depicted in that video, and you’re telling us this is not you. Why can that not come down? So we’ve got the lunatics in the bedrooms.

[01:35:05.560] – Ali B

I’m pretty sure it’s still there as well.

[01:35:07.440] – Andi J

I didn’t look too much at the law that the government are trying to introduce about revenge porn and things like that. I didn’t get into the It’s a bit of detail, sadly. But if we’re going to make it illegal in this country to do that, is it not illegal anyway? But the fact that the tech companies don’t want to act to do that, I think is genuinely criminal that nobody I was doing anything about that. When I heard this story, I’m so annoyed about it, so annoyed about it. And just the fact that you have to go, I just have to let it go because there’s nothing here.

[01:35:40.760] – Ali B

The revenge porn stuff, and they were saying, I think they said 48 hours They’ll take it down. Is that the amount? So it can be done. I think they said the problem is there’s just so much of it, and that’s the thing. And it does, Oh, it worries me so much for my kids as well.

[01:35:55.940] – Andi J

Oh, there’s so much of it. It’s a bullshit argument, right? There was so much tobacco go until we did something about it. There was so much asbestos in the roofs before we did something about it. If we have behaviours that we don’t like, we do something about it through law, whether that be speeding, wearing seatbelts, whatever it is, we We don’t have laws in place to stop it. We don’t go, It’s a bit of a big problem. We can do hard things, right?

[01:36:20.540] – Ali B

That’s what we have a government to do. Hundred %. In the physical world, there are wonderful boundaries that have been built up over so many years. And in the digital world, we’re just so far behind. And it’s just we’re playing catch up.

[01:36:33.380] – Andi J

And from a collapse of social norms, which happens when everything goes digital. So the social norms of nobody’s going to follow you around the streets showing a video Showing you that video, right? Because societal norms are wrong. The police will turn up and get involved. Somebody might punch them in the face for it. There is a physical threat. There’s an emotional, there’s lots of potential things that are going to happen to you. When you isolate the societal norms and put the person on their own, none of that happens. So they feel invincible, often fuelled by alcohol, I would guess, I don’t know. But then you start to get that invincible of alcohol with the invincible of nothing’s going to happen because I’m safe in my room. Leads to behaviours that are a negative for society. And yet what do we do about it? Nothing, because the tech companies are based in the US, where legislation is an evil word.

[01:37:27.800] – Ali B

That’s why I want to keep talking about it. And people People always say, Don’t look at it. But I’m just about to launch a brand new podcast and I’m using social media. That is how I’m going to amplify. And so you have to open it and you have to look at it. And again, just going back to that, things are what’s been seen can’t be Unseen. So it’s really hard. Actually, the more and more popular, for want of a better word, you get online, the more of it you start seeing, obviously. And so it’s a necessary evil social media. It always has been.

[01:37:58.820] – Andi J

I I hear this. Actually, evil is an interesting word because I hear the people say, Oh, social media is evil. I don’t think a technology platform can be evil. I don’t think it could be good. It’s the usage of it that I think is the issue. But alcohol causes problems. It’s a poison, and people drink it. There’s no other way to describe alcohol other than a poison to your system. People drink it, people become alcoholics, people die from it, people have heart attacks from it, people have all sorts of liver problems, kidney problems because of drinking alcohol. But I could also point to some of the best times of my life have involved being pissed. Alcohol is not good or it’s not evil, but how you use it can have positives for you or negatives for you.

[01:38:42.880] – Ali B

Nice analogy

[01:38:45.420] – Andi J

Social media is alcohol. It can have positives for you used in a certain way, and it can have negatives. But at the minute, we have no guardrails around the negatives. We do for alcohol. You’ve got to be over 18. People, you buy a drink in a pub, if you’re too drunk, you’re not allowed to sell it anymore, right? There are guardrails. It doesn’t stop people taking it further should they want to. But we also have a societal way to do that. You drink and get in your car and drive, you go to prison.

[01:39:11.260] – Ali B

And it’s a nice analogy because it affects people differently as well, because some people are fine with excessive alcohol and other people aren’t. And some people can use social media in a safe and respectable way. And some people, actually, it’s a way to release their anger. They set these accounts because they have to get that anger out somehow, and that’s what they do.

[01:39:36.560] – Andi J

We’ve covered the negatives here of social media. You’re right, there is positive uses of it as well. And you’ve grown a huge following now. You’re up to nearly 400,000 fans on social.

[01:39:48.220] – Ali B

Yeah, it’s incredible. Because everything changed, like I said, I used to be a freelancer working for broadcast media. So you’d go along, you’d do your job, you’d leave, you’d get no feedback loop. There’s no ownership of fans or views or analytics or anything. And suddenly, if you’re building your own brand, you have an opportunity to use those numbers to your advantage. I was really lucky, actually, because I started using TikTok during the pandemic. I was one of the very few reporters that was allowed to go to Premier League games when everyone else was locked up indoors. I noticed when I was in these places, particularly the one that It stood out was when Liverpool won the league in front of no fans. I looked around the stadium and I was like, Oh, my goodness, I’m one of a hundred people in here. Think of all the millions of fans across the world, and I am here. I’ve got to show this to people. They did this really beautiful thing, actually, that hardly anyone knew about where they had this ticker tape that was flying around. I grabbed a piece and I was like, What is this?

[01:40:53.460] – Ali B

Each one had a little message from a fan on. It was like, The fans may not be here, but they’re in here in spirit. I filmed that, put it online, and poof, I mean, wow, because people wouldn’t have known that, right? I suddenly thought, Wow, we’ve got something here. I wasn’t being abused. I was being thanked. People were like, Thank you, Alison, for showing me what’s going on. I thought, This is a platform for me then. I’m being thanked. People are guiding me, telling me what they want to see. I grew and grew, and a couple of my videos hit 10 and 15 million. And then I just experimented, tweaked and repeat and learned how to make viral videos. I then went on to teach it. I made a TikTok course. I do an online course about how to go viral and how to moneytise. And so it’s become a really key part of my my new brand. And when I have a new product I’m launching, like my new podcast, I just know that I can really make it fly on TikTok. I’m still trying to figure out Instagram, but TikTok, I’m a guru if I’m allowed to call myself that.

[01:41:56.200] – Andi J

So there’s people screaming at their phones right now and into their headphones going, You won’t move on until you’ve asked Ali what the three secrets are of going viral on TikTok, because everybody wants to know that. So what are the couple of tips you would give people to go viral on TikTok?

[01:42:09.860] – Ali B

I think it’s storytelling at the heart of it. It’s entertainment, humour, or storytelling, or teaching someone something. It’s really good. Every single person’s niche is different, so you have to experiment. But I’ll give you a really good example. You could take a video of a football player. I’m just going to use Ronaldo, for example, because- Hold on you. I’ll go new Ronaldo. New Rinaldo. New Rinaldo, right. Okay. You’re watching him training pitchside and you’re filming him, for example. Anyone can do this. Any fan in the stadium can do that. And you can post that video on its own, and it might get not many views. But what you have to do is you have to make that somehow better. So you put some music on it, like trending sounds is obviously a really good idea, and then maybe repost it, see how it does with the music. And you have to keep testing with the same video to what’s hitting the fans. So for me, music and a little bit of text explaining, usually text that’s longer than your clip as well, so people have to watch it several times through, right? So If your clip is seven seconds, make sure you put some text that’s 30 seconds long.

[01:43:21.220] – Ali B

Then if people are engaged in that text, you know they’ve already watched it three times through. That’s the simplest. I mean, there’s hundreds of these, and that’s something. Then you could put a little extra edit on it. You might want to time the kick of the ball with the music. I found that people really loved that when I’d actually choreographed and synced it. I tried that and then I thought, Oh, that works. Then you might maybe try reversing it and think, Oh, that looks a bit weird. Let’s try that. People loved that. That gave me a 15 million view clip. I think the first one, it got 10K, and it went up to 15 million just by reversing the clip, a really small tweak. So I think, just don’t be afraid to repost the same stuff, test with it, and then work with what goes best. And then so then I learned what my niche like. So they love to see football skills. They love to see them paired with music, but in a creative way, where I’ve actually made a bit of effort to sync it up somehow, and a little bit of text explaining what’s happening as well.

[01:44:22.200] – Ali B

So with with Ronaldo, you could say, did you know that Ronaldo doesn’t come straight out for interviews because he has an ice bath for 40 minutes or whatever it is? Just information that I know because I’m a reporter, but probably you can find out there as well.

[01:44:35.640] – Andi J

This has made me terrified for the TikTok clips we put out for this episode, which won’t be that good. And fingers crossed, they’ll hit 15 million. Test and learn is a big takeaway from that as well, which I think is quite hard. A lot of people are just like, Oh, I post like this, and therefore… But no, you got to keep adapting, you got to keep sticking with it. Good advice. Clip that up, we’ll get that out. But you also And I mentioned you’re launching a podcast as well at the minute, and I think there’s a really important discussion in that. So tell us about your new podcast and when is it out?

[01:45:06.740] – Ali B

So do you know what? I’m not going to tell you everything because I’m not a patient person, right? And I love… I just talk, obviously, for a living. And I have had to keep this secret inside of me for about a year now while I’ve been working on it. And I wanted to only release it when I’m ready to tell everyone exactly what it’s all about. But there’s a few things I can tell you. So it’s a podcast and video first YouTube series. It’s going to be on all the podcast platforms. It’s going to be on YouTube. It’s going to be on TikTok and Instagram. It’s all about professional footballers after they’ve retired and how that hits them, how the void of retirement hits them. We talk a lot about mental health. It’s called After the Final Whistle. I’ve worked so hard on it, honestly, I can’t tell you. The idea was from 2020, but then lockdown came and I decided to wait. This is like six years in the making, which sounds ridiculous, but it’s going to be big. I’ve got a lot of contacts in the industry and I’m going to hopefully get it to fly because I think it’s really important.

[01:46:12.460] – Ali B

I’ve got the support of Samaritans. Men don’t speak much. The one message that I’ve learned from every single one of my guests is just open up to someone. It doesn’t have to be your best mate. If you don’t feel like it, it could be a complete stranger, it could be Samaritans over the phone. But Start talking to someone about anything that’s bothering you is just going to lift a weight off your shoulders. I’m sure you, yourself, Andi, and I’ve also had close friends who we’ve lost to suicide. It’s the worst thing to think that someone maybe wasn’t there to listen. You don’t even have to solve any problems. People always say, What should I do? Every single guest said to I don’t want someone to solve my problems. I just want to be heard. And so the whole purpose of this is to say, even these great footballers that you respect, they also went through tough times and they’ve come out the other side, so they’re also giving their advice. So I’m really, really excited about it, and I want it to be a project that I can do for years and years to come, hopefully.

[01:47:21.180] – Andi J

Hugely important discussion. The episode previous to this, myself and David Tipp and David launched in with a discussion on mental health, and we We talked about that for the opening 15 minutes. Typically in an episode, I get bits of feedback, mostly on social media. I’ve had more emails about that episode than any other episode, just people saying, thanks for having the discussion. It’s important to have the discussion. ‘ And I think what’s interesting, what’s happening in football recently, there was an ad campaign that was out recently about… Was it Brighton did a campaign about talking to a mate? There’s been a lot of mental health and football.

[01:47:56.500] – Ali B

And Tottenham have got a bench as well where you can sit. And at the phone booth as well, they did. Brentford have a bench, in fact. And I just think all these initiatives are wonderful because it’s that demographic. This is why I feel like I know that demographic. I’ve been going to football matches my whole life. And to think that that stadium, the number of mainly men in that stadium who could have had depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts. And hopefully this will be helpful one or two people.

[01:48:31.500] – Andi J

I think so. It’s why I think Tyson Furie is a really important person in the UK. It’s not just sports scene, it’s just the UK culture. Let me be straight. Tyson Furie has some views I would call deeply problematic- Yes, he’s divisive. On lots of subjects and views I would completely disagree with him on. But Tyson Furie is a 6’6 heavyweight champion of the world from the Gipsy community, fights for a living, and talks openly about how he really struggles with his own mental health, ballooned to 25 stone, came back, keeps talking about how he keeps fighting because of his mental health and how he goes through that. Tyson Fury reaches a demographic of people and says, It’s okay for you to talk about your mental health that very few other people can reach. The only other people who you might be able to get to reach that demographic are footballers. And as that generation gets a bit older, into their 40s, into their 50s, and maybe it becomes harder and your circle might get a little bit smaller, hearing ex-footballers talk about people you can remember and relate, I remember watching him play. People you can have that relationship with and listen to them talk openly about, it’s really important that’s out there.

[01:49:44.940] – Ali B

Yeah, it’s been so powerful. I mean, one of the things that just hit me the most when talking to my guests is that these were guys that were at the peak of their success, and we were watching them on the TV and just thinking, They must be having the best life ever. And some of them said, See that where I’m lifting that trophy? See where I was dead inside? I came home and cried myself to sleep. I suppose it also makes you realise that it’s not about circumstance then. And that’s really important because there might be someone sitting at home thinking, It’s because of my life. It’s the way that I’ve done something wrong. If I’d done something better with my life, whatever. But these boys, they’re doing what they dreamed of their entire life, and they are still affected. So it can affect anyone.

[01:50:34.860] – Andi J

And hopefully, look, football is pantomime as well, right? When you’re in the stadium, it’s panto, right? There’s two sides shouting at each other. There’s the referee who’s the villain of the piece, no matter where you go, it’s panto, it’s theatre. It draws a line all the way back to early Shakespeare and probably before that, right? And part of that is that when you shout at the opposition, you barric them, you have a go at them, that stuff. But Hopefully, series like this makes you realise, wouldn’t they have real people as well? I’m not saying we should take the atmosphere off the football stadium.

[01:51:06.180] – Ali B

The refs is a huge one. I mean, some of those refs and managers, there has never been a worse time to be a football manager. The pressure they are under, and they are just human. I was thinking about this the other day when I was at the North London Derby. Every fan in that stadium thinks that this is the most important thing, but you don’t know what those two managers are going home to. I mean, as a mother of two kids as well, you know how important your children are to me if they’re going through something. And it’s just like, of course, football is the most important thing of all the unimportant things.

[01:51:42.060] – Andi J

And you get a pair of 10 million a year for kicking a ball about When you live in your big house and you should work hard, and you’re like, all of that, right?

[01:51:49.700] – Ali B

They’re just human. Just human, yeah.

[01:51:52.940] – Andi J

Yeah, it’s just there. Look, it’ll be a fantastic series. Ali’s contact details are in the show notes, so do connect with their own social media, and then you’ll be able to follow when the podcast is released. So I think it’s important that this gets out there and important that you use social to reach as many people as possible, because maybe one way for us to improve social is to flood it with better content of people smiling and happy and important discussions, not necessarily just happy news. So maybe this will help. Maybe one day we’ll change social media through great content. Fingers crossed, anyway. And there will be football fans listening to this, so I’m not I’m going to ask you who your guests are. I’ll wait for that reveal to come out. But I am going to ask some football geekery questions and things to go back through your career. Who have you enjoyed interviewing the most?

[01:52:41.520] – Ali B

Didier Drogba just sprang into my mind straight away because what a legend that man is, and he transcends the sport, right? I mean, love him or hate him, because obviously I’m a Chelsea fan. He scores so many important goals for us. But also this guy stopped a civil war in his country, in the Ivory Coast. This guy has power, and he is such an incredible laidback guy. I read his autobiography as well, and there’s really interesting stuff in there. He works on his peripheral vision just to get the edge on his opponents. He’s a trained accountant, so if he hadn’t done football, his parents were very into him having a second career. Love it. But he’s just a thoroughly good guy. Really, really good guy. In fact, I’ll tell you one little story from I was at the World Cup and I was in a press conference and I’d had my hand up the entire time. And the press officer who was going around picking people, she just was ignoring me. She wasn’t going to pick me. And at the end she said, Right, press conference over. And Didier just tapped on the mic and he said, I don’t think it is because…

[01:53:49.100] – Ali B

He knows my name, but he just said, This young lady has had her hand up the whole time and you didn’t pick her. And how nice is that?

[01:53:59.340] – Andi J

What a legend Yeah, what a legend. What’s a legend. Okay, Didier Drogba. I love Didier Drogba. Yeah, fantastic. The joy of being a Bradford City fan is I don’t really have strong feelings about any Premier League team, which is wonderful.

[01:54:13.720] – Ali B

You’re Bradford City. I had it in my head, you’re Manchester United.

[01:54:16.300] – Andi J

No, Bradford City. In Liverpool as well. So I have a soft spot for Liverpool, but I’ll get the hate mail will come in now. What’s your favourite story you’ve ever broke on football?

[01:54:30.320] – Ali B

That’s a good question. You should have told me this before so I could- I know.

[01:54:34.900] – Andi J

These are all questions I’ve just dropped on you last minute. Okay. So Skysports news, ticker coming on, breaking news. We’re going to Alison Bender.

[01:54:41.540] – Ali B

The one that they still talk about today, I suppose, is that it’s not really that… It’s not even that great, but it’s a funny story. I was the reporter that stopped Peter Odemwingie’s car outside QPR on transfer deadline. On transfer deadline? And he had driven himself- Hold on, sorry. He had driven himself.

[01:55:02.970] – Andi J

Let me just give you a second. Just explain. So there’s people who don’t listen to football be like, Who’s Peter Odemwingie? So transfer deadline day, all the deals have to be done by midnight on a certain day. So as it gets towards the end, Sky Sports news go live, lots of chaos happens. Harry Redknap usually drove up in a ranger of a sport with a window down. All of this became a bit of a circus. So give us the very brief backstory to Odemwingie turning up in a car.

[01:55:30.460] – Ali B

Well, it was just so funny because like you say, there was only a couple of hours left on the deadline. And you hear about all these stories of players jumping in aeroplanes and private jets so that they’re in the right place because they’ve got to sign this paperwork before the window closes. At QPR, we were told which players were expected. They had a lot of money that year and they were going to sign a lot of players. Lo and behold, each player turned up just as the chairman had told us. But then a car turns up and Peter Odemwingie is in it. I think he was at West Brom at the time, is that right? Yes, he was a West Brom striker. I remember, and everyone was a bit like, Peter Odemwingie, no one’s expecting. We get on the phone to QPR and they’re like, Well, we’re not expecting him. We didn’t sign him. And so suddenly there’s this big story like, he’s driven himself. He’s forcing his own move. He’s driven himself from West Brom all the way down to QPR to sign this deal, which made him look really stupid because then he has to go back again and no deal was made.

[01:56:34.360] – Ali B

But it’s really interesting, actually, that we’re talking about mental health because years later, at the Best of Africa Awards, I bumped into him and I said, I just made a joke and I said, I was the one. And She said, Yeah, worst day of my life and actually caused me some real issues, real problems, because the amount of abuse that I received for forcing my own move. Actually, that wasn’t the story at all. I was invited. But of Of course, you don’t know what to believe. Clubs are denying things. And so once again, we forget this is just a young footballer who has been probably told by his agent, Get yourself down there. But it was like the first football meme, wasn’t it? And it still pops up even now, all those years later. So, yeah, I’m afraid that was me.

[01:57:21.640] – Andi J

Wow. Okay. That is big news.

[01:57:24.100] – Ali B

I tapped on his window bravely.

[01:57:26.420] – Andi J

The window comes out. I mean, that is an iconic moment in British football. There’s a There’s about a third of the listeners to the show in America all sitting there going, I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I’ll see if I can find a link and put it in the show notes. Chelsea, memory, you were there. Were you there before Abramovich or were you after?

[01:57:43.940] – Ali B

I was there in the Abramovich era, and actually one of the few people who actually got to meet Roman Abramovich, who is a great guy, actually. Well, I know that there’s so much background to this, and like you say, there are non-footbally people listening as well. But He just loved football. He came to the training ground fair bit in those early days. Actually, I do have a quick Abramovich story to tell you that just shows why women have to work so much harder than men. But when I was working at Chelsea TV, we got a call from Abramovich and his people saying, The way to pronounce his name is actually Abramovich. It’s a Russian way. This is the Club channel. You should be doing it correctly. I thought, Fair enough. My bosses have told me, he’s watching. Let’s do it that way. And then I was working at Sky Sports at the time. And so I did this on Sky Sports, and literally the abuse I got of this stupid girl, she’s never even heard of Abramovich. And there I am thinking, well, I’m one of the very few people that’s actually had a conversation with him, and I’ve been told to tell his name, but I had no platform.

[01:58:50.540] – Ali B

And again, you just have to suck it up. But it’s just a horrible feeling when you know you’re right and you can’t say anything.

[01:58:58.340] – Andi J

I get all the time because I am right constantly. My wife agrees as well. She agrees I’m right all the time. But yeah, it’s just weird, isn’t it? Because Brits, we have this belief that we say every word correctly, even when we’re butchering it. So from being told how to pronounce his name, And then being told you’ve got it wrong. It’s almost like the perfect example of football stupidity, isn’t it?

[01:59:20.820] – Ali B

It’s just- A hundred %.

[01:59:22.280] – Andi J

Absolutely. Oh, dear. Well, and listen, just because what I want here is to crystallise everything we’ve talked about in one discussion. I want a clip to put out on social media. It’s going to be rage bait because of the question I’m going to ask. So hopefully this will be the clip that gets millions. But who’s going to win the Premier League this year?

[01:59:41.640] – Ali B

Oh, it’s the most stressful thing because I’ve been going to pretty much every Arsenal game now, and I’ve been speaking to Arteta afterwards. He’s sick of the sight of me. I think I see more of Arteta than I do my own husband. And I feel the jitters. There’s nine games to go, and you just see these little uncharacteristic mistakes. I actually asked him the last time I interviewed him, I said, Is there anything extra you’re doing to your players in this running to make sure that they’re calm? Because it’s just frustrating because you know that Man City just won’t let go. They can grind out a result. They can win ugly until the end of the season. Are you all so worried that if Man City go first and slip up, you just know that the Arsenal are going to slip up because of the pressure as well? So it’s going to be the most stressful. Listen, it’s a weird thing for me to say as a Chelsea fan, I would really like to see Arsenal win the league. It’s been 22 years. They have been the bridesmaid, never the bride, so many times lately.

[02:00:41.560] – Ali B

And I really do like this team of players in every position. And I think they deserve it.

[02:00:46.260] – Andi J

The Chelsea fans are coming for you now, Ali.

[02:00:47.690] – Ali B

I know, honestly. They’re going to hate me. The Chelsea fans are coming, you’re going to hate me. They’re going to hate me. Well, can you imagine? How can these two things be true? I am a Chelsea fan and I want Arsenal to win the League, and I’m reporting at Chelsea against Arsenal. So I’m like, I really want my team to win. And also we’re in a massive fight for Champions League places. But I also don’t want City to win because we’ve seen them win so many times now. And the whole beauty of the Premier League is we want to mix it up. We want to make it feel like a real fight. So, yeah, I’m going to say Arsenal.

[02:01:20.340] – Andi J

Okay. I’ve a mate who’s an Arsenal fan who believes they’ll win the triple of knockout trophies, FA Cup, League Cup, Champions League, thinks they’ll slip up for the league title. And I said to him, he’s like, Does that mean it’s a good season or a bad season? And he was like, I don’t know.

[02:01:36.920] – Ali B

I know.

[02:01:37.640] – Andi J

Last footballing question for you. He’s so frustrating. Go on. Who’s the best player in the Premier League at the minute? I’m going Cole Palmer. That’s a good question.

[02:01:49.060] – Ali B

Yeah, but he’s playing in an inconsistent team. He is, but I think he is. I know. Yeah, it’s a really tricky one, isn’t it? Cole Palmer is wonderful, and I absolutely I adore him. But you know what? I’m going to go Cole Palmer as well because I don’t want any more abuse if I pick an Arsenal player. I’ll be honest. The player who has impressed me so much this season is Declan Rice, and it does not surprise me. And we can be happy because he’s an England player and he’s going to win us the World Cup as well, right? But it doesn’t surprise me because I’ve always seen that mentality from him. I was reporting a lot when he was at West Ham, and he He’s got such great vision. He never gives up. When they go a goal behind, he’s the one to get everyone going. And quality on corners as well, which set pieces have been such an important part of Arsenal’s game. He’s just such an all-rounder, and I think he’s really impressed me. But I think Cole Palmer does have more natural ability than him. Yeah, brilliant.

[02:02:54.790] – Andi J

So cracky look. Right. Enough football questions. I’m sorry. Last question for the whole podcast. Do you have a recommendation, whether it’s a book, one of the ones from behind you or a show, or something you think people should listen to, if just there’s a bit of advice from you.

[02:03:07.660] – Ali B

Yeah, that’s all my football books behind me. Because I’m such a fan of TikTok, I’m going to give you a TikTok recommendation. For anyone that’s thinking about starting a TikTok for whatever area they’re in and thinks they are too old, there is an incredible woman who actually has a background in movies and and trailers and that thing. And she’s on TikTok and she’s in her probably 50s. She is absolutely sensational. She’s called The mothership. She teaches you how to do all kinds of trends on TikTok. But she also teaches you that you’re never too old to be on TikTok. For the platform’s reach, I think it’s a really important platform, you don’t need any followers to go viral. You can have 10 followers and put out a clip that gets seen by 10 million people. And so it’s different to so many of the other platforms. So, yeah, the mothership, she’s absolutely wonderful. I also followed an incredible journey with her. My goodness me, she’s been doing all this stuff. She edits and she teaches you. And then one day she came to the screen and she said, I’m blind. I’ve gone blind. I can’t see a thing.

[02:04:21.250] – Ali B

I don’t know what to do. I’m going to keep doing my daily videos because I don’t know what else to do. And her daughter was helping her. And so I went through this a whole journey with her online where she had cancer, she had to have a tumour removed. Incredibly, she regained her eyesight again. But it just the power of connection I felt to that woman, even though we’ve never met, just from following her on social media. The fact that she’s gone through that and she’s… What an incredible story. But she’s got over a million followers now, and rightly so, because she really teaches some great tips. So check her out at the mothership, Mother with a U.

[02:04:59.220] – Andi J

Excellent. That in the show notes as well. Ali, thank you very much for your time today. It’s been absolutely amazing. Can’t wait for the podcast to come up.

[02:05:08.090] – Ali B

Pleasure. Thanks for having me, Andi.