About
TisTalk is a community podcast about the stories, events and people of Tisbury and surrounding villages, Wiltshire, UK. We cover the Nadder Valley and the wider Cranborne Chase area with 20 to 30 minutes of fantastic local content every week. Launched in 2022, we exist to bring you inspiring and positive stories about our beautiful area, with no ads, on a weekly basis. Mary Myers and Julie Ann are your TisTalk hosts. Liz Coyle Camp, Kate Gamm, Anne Martin, Lal Poynter and Peter Shallcross are regular – and treasured – contributors and co-presenters.
About us
Mary moved from London to Wardour 24 years ago and Julie Ann has lived in Tisbury for 25 years. We met when our sons became best friends at Wardour primary school. Then we bonded over loving radio, Tisbury, and a good meal and a drink in a local pub. In fact, it was over a particularly refreshing bottle of rosé, that we dreamed up TisTalk, one summer afternoon, back in 2022.
Mary is semi-retired and her 30 year career has been in international development, involving a lot of travel to Africa. Her specialism is communications and media: helping community radio stations in Uganda, D R Congo, Malawi, Mali and other countries. The African way of doing community radio, by and for villagers, is what inspires her to do TisTalk. She says: “I love radio. It sets the imagination free. Someone said it has the best pictures!” Mary did a BBC course in radio production, back when editing was done with razor blades and then, more recently, has learned her audio skills from volunteering at Salisbury Hospital Radio (Radio Odstock) and Alfred Community Radio in Shaftesbury. She is currently doing a Masters in journalism at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Mary loves: walking to Wardour Castle and listening to Desert Island Disks (often at the same time). Mary hates: the sound of her own voice!
Julie Ann grew up in London and went into a career in radio and TV. This included working for three years on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight and on various news and comedy programmes for independent TV. Then Julie Ann moved into education when she moved down to Tisbury with her husband and two sons. Now retired, she has more time to play pickleball and to edit Mary’s long-winded interviews… In April 2024, Julie Ann was interviewed by Andy Bennett on BBC Wiltshire: “We started TisTalk because there was nothing else in the area,” she told him. “Tisbury’s sort of on a road to nowhere, like a secret place, a little secret treasure. We’ve got a really thriving community: a fabulous high street, a great sports centre, swimming pool, couple of schools, Messums the big arts centre here, loads of stuff going on.”
Julie Ann loves: Crocheting (badly) while listening to crime podcasts. Julie Ann hates: … that she can’t play pickleball right now, due to an elbow injury.
Why a podcast for Tisbury?
We wanted to create a hyper-local radio station without the hassle and expense of radio masts, transmitters and licences, and without tying ourselves down to broadcasting 24/7 – so a weekly community podcast was the answer. Having seen how Tisbury and the surrounding villages came together during Covid, we wanted to celebrate all the unsung heroes and heroines in the area and all the interesting, generous and creative people we knew – and to search out those we didn’t. Whether it’s an interview with a local doctor, fashion model, artist, author, fund-raiser or fire-fighter… we cover all walks of life. From Tisbury’s Carnival to local elections; from art shows at Messums, to plays by Tisbury Arts Group; from the Angling Club to the History Society; from bats to gardening, from music in the church to mooing in the fields… we cover it all. Who knew that we had so many illustrious locals living here? Look through TisTalk’s past episodes and you’re sure to find some names you recognise!
We always ask permissions and never intrude on people’s privacy. We never publish interviews with, or pictures of, children without their parent’s and/or school’s consent. We never share our mailing list with anyone else. We are all unpaid volunteers and do not receive any benefits from any individual or company we cover (apart from the odd cup of tea!). We do not run advertisements or receive any commercial sponsorship. We are grateful for small annual grants from Tisbury Parish Council and to Nadder Community Energy for our running costs. The Alice Combes Trust and Cranborne Chase National Landscape have helped us in the past with our publicity. We should also acknowledge our wonderful sons and supportive husbands, who have helped with the TisTalk music, stings, logos, artwork, What's On listings and being quiet when we're recording in the kitchen! Huge thanks to our many many local contributors who are too numerous to mention.
love from Mary and Julie Ann