That Peter Crouch Podcast

That Peter Crouch Podcast is football's funniest hour: the show where Crouchy, Chris Stark, and the crew turned a striker's stories into a national institution.

The premise was perfect. Peter Crouch — 6'7", robot-dancing, self-deprecating England striker — had the best anecdotes in football and the humility to tell them properly. The podcast gave those stories a home.

It started on BBC Radio 5 Live in September 2018, back when Crouch was still technically a footballer — winding down at Stoke City with almost two decades in the game behind him. Joined by BBC Radio 1's Chris Stark and the BBC's chief sports writer Tom Fordyce, the sell was disarmingly simple: a guide on how to be a professional footballer. Crouch had seen, in his own words, "some truly remarkable things." He wanted to take listeners inside "this wonderful, bizarre world." He also admitted, at launch, that he had no idea what a podcast was.

The chemistry is the magic. Crouch's deadpan, Chris Stark's fanboy energy, and Fordyce's dry journalistic mischief created the rare sports show that's genuinely laugh-out-loud. Episodes ran thirty to forty-five minutes and felt like sitting in the pub with two friends — which is exactly how Crouch described it on day one: "Is sitting in the pub with two friends talking football a podcast? I hope so, otherwise we're in trouble."

The guests are the draw. Teammates, rivals, and legends stop by for conversations that feel like the pub after the match — the stories players only tell each other, finally on the record. Dressing-room politics, the ins and outs of transfers, how to keep on the right side of your manager, where to sit on the team bus: the mundane mechanics of the footballer's life, rendered hilarious by people who lived it.

The numbers were enormous from the start. The show pulled in 12 million listens in 2019 alone, making it one of the most popular podcasts in Britain — and by the time it left the BBC for Acast in April 2022, it had racked up 60 million listens, cementing its place as the UK's most-listened-to sports podcast. The move to Acast was the moment the show went fully commercial: hosted, distributed, and monetized through the Acast marketplace, with Crouch joking that "joining Acast is just like signing for one of the world's biggest football clubs."

The awards followed. The 2019 British Podcast Awards Spotlight Award came with judges' praise for finding "a totally new perspective on one of the nation's most discussed pastimes" and bringing football fans together regardless of club allegiance. A silver for Best Sports Show at the 2020 Audio and Radio Industry Awards confirmed it wasn't a one-season wonder.

The running jokes became folklore. "Back stronger" — #backstronger — became the show's unofficial motto and the name of its big 2021 comeback episodes. Parched became a listener obsession. And the Shysters, the show's own awards ceremony for the best acts of "housery" nominated by listeners, turned the community's mischief into appointment listening — with Clive Tyldesley on MC duties and entertainment that could only come from this particular corner of British culture.

The Samrat is sacred ground. Much of the magic happened at a pub in Ealing where the gang returned again and again — Mr. Islam and the team became recurring characters in their own right, the kind of local color you can't manufacture. Football has cathedrals; this show had a curry house.

The robot dance is eternal. Somehow a goal celebration became a cultural touchstone — Crouch's stiff-armed shuffle, first performed in 2006, turned him from a player some fans had mocked into the most beloved man in English football. The podcast kept the Crouch mythology alive long after the boots were hung up, and Crouch — 22 goals in 42 England caps, two World Cups, spells at Liverpool, Tottenham, Portsmouth, Southampton, Aston Villa, Norwich, QPR, and Stoke — never once acted like the mythology was beneath him. Self-deprecation was the whole brand.

The show kept evolving. Five seasons deep, the lineup shifted — former teammate Steve Sidwell stepped into the hosting rotation alongside Crouch and Stark — but the formula never did. Episodes stayed episodic, weekly, and unapologetically silly, whether the guest was a West Ham legend or Harry Redknapp himself.

Why people listen: it's football with the laces undone. Fans who follow Men in Blazers' American take or Thogden's away days get the players' pub here: same love, taller host.

Previously covers That Peter Crouch Podcast because the robot demands respect. Back of the net — every episode.

The live tours sell out. Arena shows with the full crew — the podcast as stadium entertainment, the robot dance performed by thousands. The beautiful game meets the big stage.

In a sport that takes itself too seriously, the Crouch pod was the reminder that it's supposed to be fun. Sixty million listens don't lie. Do the robot — you know you want to.