let everyone talk. The interest in it has been really good and we’ve got some really great played up for joining us, so I’m really excited about the whole thing.”
The fellow legends vary for each of the shows. Picking the guests for something like this can’t be easy, as you don’t just need legends, you need legends who can entertain a crowd too.
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“They’ve got stories to tell. It’s as simple as that,” Martin explained. "They’re World Cup winners, they’re players who have overcome adversity, they’re players who make me laugh and will make other people laugh. They’ll inspire you, they’ll motivate you and they’re insightful. We have Benjamin Kaiser who’s hugely bright and has a great insight into what on Earth is going on in French Rugby right now, as it’s suddenly in this rich vein of form. You’ve got Lawrence Dallaglio talking about winning the World Cup and the highs and lows of his career, you’ve got Sean Fitzpatrick talking about what it’s like to be an All Black. I’ve heard these guys speak, so I know they will have people in the palms of their hands. They are the very, very best.”
The shows will start with Martin chatting to the audience for the first half an hour. Then he will get the guests on stage and let them go.
“I’ll be interviewing them, they’ll be chatting amongst themselves and they’ll be very involved with the crowd. We’ll get people who are coming to send questions in advance over social media, then on the night they can ask them in person, kind of like a Newsnight format. It’ll be very relaxed and interactive. We want it to be reactive and off the cuff.”
Martin’s time in rugby coincided with the era when the sport suddenly went professional and players became actual household names. He recalls what that was like for him as a player.
“Nobody knew quite what was happening when rugby went professional. We just trained a lot more. Some of it worked and some didn’t, so it took a while to find its feet as a professional sport, though you could argue it still hasn’t quite got there even now, as a result of some decisions made at the time.
“There definitely were superstars in that England team when I was involved with it, for sure. I certainly wasn’t one of them, but you look at Will Carling, Jeremy Guscott, Rob Andrew, Brian Moore and people like that, they were real stars that everyone wanted to talk about, particularly Will and Jerry.
“Now there are far more stars as broadcasting and social media gives us 24/7 rugby, so you have far greater access to your team and players than you’ve ever had before. In the main, for all it can be intrusive, I’m sure that’s the way they would want it. The trolls are there and there’s racist, homophobic and misogynistic abuse on social media, but in the main it works well. It spreads the word and makes rugby more accessible than ever before.”
Before turning professional, Martin balanced rugby with being a serving police officer which can’t have been easy?
“I loved it, even though it was chaotic at times. It was the norm at the time. I would finish work and go straight to a game, or the other way about. You’d feel battered and bruised, thinking ‘I really can’t face night duty here’, but you’d just get on with it. I was a police officer, so I took that role incredibly seriously and wouldn’t ever let anyone down.
“It was crazy though. Like we won a Grand Slam in 1992 on the Saturday, hungover on the Sunday and back walking the beat on the Monday, with people beeping their horns at you and shouting ‘well played!’ Likewise if you lost a game, you had people just coming up and saying you were sh*t! I had to remind them I was in uniform a few times.
“When the game went professional though, I missed it terribly. It’s something now that’s hard to imagine, just going from amateur to professional within a matter of days. There were no rules and was pretty shambolic, but somehow it got through.”
Martin remembers one particular time as a highlight of his career. “When we went away with the Lions in ‘93 always stands out. I loved that tour. I know we didn’t win it, but we nearly did as we lost the series 2-1. I absolutely loved that, though. Just to be part of that history, to be able to say you were a British & Irish Lion is pretty special. I remember that tour with huge affection.”
Since then martin has shone in other fields too, most noticeably as a chef on the celebrity version of hit show MasterChef where he seemed like a natural. Many sportspeople have excelled on that so does Martin think it is his competitive spirit that drove him on there? “I loved doing that, but it’s not so much that we are being competitive, it’s more that you make sure what you do, you do right. I think that’s where sports men and women do well on MasterChef as they learn, listen and take on advice, as well as being very good
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