You grow up, you work half a century, you get a golden handshake, you rest a couple of years and you’re dead. And the only thing that makes that crazy ride worthwhile is ‘Did I enjoy it? What did I learn? What was the point?’ That’s where I come in. You’ve seen how I react to people, make them feel good, make them think that anything’s possible. If I make them laugh along the way, sue me. And I don’t do it so they turn round and go ‘Thank you David for the opportunity, thank you for the wisdom, thank you for the laughs.’ I do it so, one day, someone will go ‘There goes David Brent. I must remember to thank him.’

To those of you who are actually interested in the backroom intrigues of your favourite one of your favourite this stoke podcast – all three of you – I have some news. At the end of the season I’ll be taking a rather significant step back from The Wizards of Drivel podcast. Which means you’ll be hearing a lot less of my voice, reading a lot fewer of my Twitter ‘jokes’ and putting up with a lot fewer clangers in the edit.

It’s not a Brexit-style acrimonious split by any stretch of the imagination. I’m so proud of this thing that I have to let it go and hand it off to people with the drive, passion, talent, time and energy to take it back to the metaphorical Premier League of Potters platforms. ‘Real-life’ has been swallowing up a lot more time than it used to, so I’m saying a sad goodbye to my alter-ego, ‘Podcast Dave’ – a Dave not a lot of my real-life friends know nor care about. Podcast Dave has been there for real Dave a lot over the past four or so years, letting him play at being a football presenter while really just having a ridiculously good laugh with his mates.

I acknowledge it’s not all been fun, there’s been enough lost or mangled audio, time wasted, plans forgotten, Stoke defeats, Twitter spats and outright online abuse for a good while. However, I would put up with it all a thousand times over for the thrills of:

• Meeting my Stoke City heroes
• Making friends from all over the country
• Getting recognised and feeling like a minor celebrity at games
• Appearing in #themedia and dorking out with podcasters from other teams
• Talking to all kinds of Stoke fans online and in real life, commiserating and celebrating
• Being able to have the minor accomplishment of growing a platform and seeing the lengths people will go to support it
• Being able to use said platform to raise a huge amount of money for Stoke-on-Trent foodbank

It’s not a blanket goodbye, I’m sure I may pop up in your pod feeds every now and again in 2020/21 – but it’s time to let WODPOD flourish in somebody else’s hands. We’ll make plans in the coming months but if you’re interested in contributing our DMs are open.

To Chris, Tony, Ben, Tom, Jase and everyone else who’s contributed to WOD – thank you so much, it’s been a beautiful ride.

To everyone else, thanks for listening to my shit podcast.

Dave