05/12/2025
So! I said I’d write something today to better sum up how we’re feeling about the end of BYAMPOD. We were genuinely nervous making the announcement on the latest episode, because we know how much it has meant to many of you. Plus, it has meant a lot to us, and though this feels like the right decision… that doesn’t make it any less difficult.
It was hard to put into words when we were recording, but I’ll try now.
As we said, we’re feeling increasingly stretched these days. We’ve outstanding projects we need to get done for our YouTube audience, and on top of that there’s the day job. We’ve been struggling to fit everything in, and for a while now we’ve been saying to ourselves that something had to give.
BYAMPOD seemed like the obvious candidate, just purely because out of all the things we do it has the smallest audience and brings in virtually no revenue. It used to be bigger, but in taking a year off it shrank a bit.
Technically, we’re still just behind The Corona Diaries in listens, but we do feel less vital these days. And, alas, BYAMPOD feels less vital to us.
When we first started, we were making YouTube videos that weren’t really satisfying us. BYAMPOD fulfilled a need – I love to research things, learn new stuff, flex my dormant journalistic muscles – that I wasn’t getting elsewhere. In the past year we’ve launched a new YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/ - which scratches those itches.
Plus, as we said on the podcast, we’re honestly running out of things to say. Recent eps have been lighter on the Marillion content, because as we catch up to the present day there’s less that we – and others – don’t already know. We’ve become less about facts and more about subjective opinions. Wider tangents and discussions. Recent Marillion is much more well-documented.
What’s more… and much as it pains me to say… we’ve both sort of lost our passion for it all a bit. Sanja somewhat because the original format was that she was unfamiliar with Marillion (she no longer is). That felt unique and different to most music commentary podcasts, but inevitably we’ve lost that over time.
And me… because, well, I’ve had a few rough experiences relating to Marillion in the last couple of years. Nothing to do with the band itself, but unfortunately some of it dented my enthusiasm.
One of those – the Roundhouse gig (again, not the band’s fault) – was so grim that we ended up cancelling our tickets to the Port Zelande weekend. In fact, most of the iffy experiences were to do with gigs. Again, mainly due to other people rather than anything Marillion did wrong.
As you know, the past five years have been a rocky road for us personally, and along the journey we’ve had some bumps with BYAMPOD that didn’t exactly help with the stress. I don’t need to recount it all here, but the short of it is… when life is handing you lemons… you don’t need to be doing a podcast which invites more people to give you lemons. There’s only so much lemonade you can make.
If we were making a living from BYAMPOD, that would be different – we’d probably continue - but this has been a hobby more than anything else.
And, frankly, most people don’t receive negative comments or criticism for their hobbies. We’re big enough to take it, and we understand that putting yourself out there makes you a target for people who want to tell you why you’re terrible, but ultimately that does become another weight to add to the reasons-not-to-continue pile.
When people disagreed with us the vast majority were polite and took issue in the spirit of discussion and debate. But there were also those who were just plain rude or mean.
Simply put, life’s too short, y’know?
The other part of the format for the podcast was kind of telling our story through the lens of Marillion – the story of two people’s journey with the band, one who was new to it, and one who had been a fan his whole life. I dug up things that I’d never known, and sadly some of what we discovered along the way kind of coloured some of our opinions of the first four albums.
I’ll be honest, one of the turning points was Fish being instrumental in cancelling a book discussing his solo albums. The subsequent pile-on towards the author from Fish’s fanbase left a pretty nasty taste in the mouth. As someone who had grown up as a fan, it was another rotten ego death during a time in my life when they seemed to be happening weekly.
We were never anything other than authentic on the podcast, but – sadly – being honest about how we felt wasn’t always well received by certain areas (or by former lead singers). We took a lot of that in our stride, but ultimately – again – it did add to the reasons-not-to-carry-on pile.
In a world of fakery, we’re both pretty militant about authenticity, and our sense of humour isn’t always to everyone’s taste – we’re fine with that, we know we’re Marmite - but it always brings a risk of “Who are we going to upset this time?”.
And then there’s the fact that when it started, we’d been looking for a podcast idea for a while. We’d been specifically looking for something that nobody else was doing – a niche we could fill – and we realised there had never been a Marillion fan podcast. Well, that’s no longer the case, and because we’ve lost some of what made us unique, the need for BYAMPOD has gone.
And of course, we’ve come to the end of the studio albums.
In short, it feels like the right time. I never wanted to leave it the way we did last year when we just vanished while I dealt with losing my dad and my mum’s dementia. I reached a point where I realised I wasn’t functioning like I wanted. Things were getting to me that I’d otherwise have brushed off. I needed a time out.
I always knew we’d come back to put a full stop on things when I felt ready. And I’m glad we did, because we’ve managed to fulfil our intention to cover every main studio album.
There are a few loose ends – I’d love to have interviewed every band member - Pete, Ian, Rothers - as well as Chris Kimsey, Mike Hunter and Mark Wilkinson. I wanted us to go through the videos; there are some side projects and demos we’ve not covered, I would've killed for an ep with a Racket Club tour! But really… we’ve ticked most of the boxes since we started. There’s not much left to talk about without repeating either ourselves or what might be said on any of the other podcasts. Again, there just doesn’t feel like a need for us anymore.
As far as Marillion fans were concerned, we were a scrappy pair of outsiders who kind of popped up out of nowhere. We never had any existing links to the band, no friendships or favours we could call on. We were utterly independent. But I hope – I think – we punched above our weight, and produced something that could be enjoyed whether you were a Marillion fan or not.
I can’t stress how much we’ve loved doing it, how important it has been to us, how proud we are of this huge body of work. We began BYAMPOD at a time when Sanja and I didn't feel we had something that was purely "ours". BYAMPOD gave us something we'd been missing. Now that we have our own YouTube channel in our own name, that has also changed.
I’m also proud that we encouraged many of you to take a second look at music and songs you might’ve discounted, and even introduced some new people to Marillion. We knew we brought an existing audience with us, which is why we were always determined to avoid being too sycophantic. It was a conscious choice.
That way you knew that when we liked something… we REALLY liked it. We wanted new people to see the band as we did and give Marillion a chance. And they did!
Ultimately, I’m proud of how much it has meant to many of you. I know, because you tell us.
We’re not for everyone – that’s abundantly clear – but for those who got us, who understood our sense of humour, appreciated our tangents and saw the love beneath our bickering… you made us feel like part of a community.
I can often be the loudest person in a room (or on a podcast), but really it’s just masking a shyness, and that sense of belonging isn’t something I’ve had often in my life. I’ve always felt like an outsider.
I know I can seem confident, but I was never confident enough to really be anything other than on the fringes of Marillion fandom.
BYAMPOD – and all of you – gave me the feeling of being part of a tribe for a few years.
I can’t stress enough the gratitude I feel. There are so many lovely people in the BYAMPOD community (some of whom have become fans of other things we do, astonishingly) that we wish we could carry on just for you. I hope that doesn’t sound like an empty platitude, because we both mean it deeply. I’ve never felt warmth like it.
And on top of that, the band have been incredibly supportive of us. Lucy Jordache Marillion especially, who featured us on Marillion Monthly and often messaged us. We were in The Web Magazine, conducted interviews with h, Mark Kelly, John Arnison, Dave Meegan – those in particular are episodes that I am immensely proud of. The ep where we travel around Aylesbury is another of my favourites. So many great moments that we can look back on and say “Yep – we did a good job”.
As well as the band, we owe thanks to a lot of people. Stephen Wicks of Mockillion was an early supporter and always enthusiastic. Marko’s Marillion Museum was kind enough to share us a few times. And, of course, there's Lucy, plus Ant Short, Frasier Marshall, John and Craig at PM, and our friend Simon Thompson who donated his entire collection of Web Magazines.
And Pedanthony, probably.
I'm sure there are other people we've forgotten.
As I said in the latest episode, we’re not daft enough to think we might never want to do another episode. I'm a lifelong fan and will continue to be. My love for Marillion will last forever. There’s at least one more album on the way, and we’re heading to Pompeii next summer, Hammersmith next autumn... so, potentially, there are reasons to pop back up with an episode here and there, but we’ll see.
Going forwards, you're not short of other Marillion content. You've three other great podcasts to listen to. And you know where to find us if you want us.
There'll be one final episode before Christmas, and we’d love to feature some of you on it.
Send an email or voice note with your BYAMPOD memories to [email protected] and we’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks.
Thank you all again. That was great.
Paul (and Sanja)
