Aroundtown Meets Toby Foster
What do you call a man with one of the most recognisable voices on South Yorkshire’s airwaves? The same thing as the one whose acting credits include TV’s greatest ever comedies. The inimitable Toby Foster. For more than twenty years, Toby’s career has been a merry-go-round of sitcoms, stand-up and...
Aroundtown Meets Charlie Smark
She’s the 23-year-old who makes running a business look like a piece of cake. Since launching Dolly’s Desserts five years ago, Charlie Smark has brought hordes of people into Barnsley to satisfy their sweet tooth cravings with her range of velvety gelato and decadent desserts. But as well as its...
Aroundtown Meets Brian Hirst
How many kids dream of being a footballer when they grow up? But how many would sacrifice their dreams for family? Brian Hirst did. When given the opportunity to break into the first team of his boyhood club, Rotherham United, he turned down the contract to put his family’s considerations...
Aroundtown Meets Tony Batty
He might call himself the Sweeny Todd of Barnsley. But barber Tony Batty is anything but demonic. He’s shear saintlike, a breath of fresh hair who’s changing lives one haircut at a time. Over the last few years, 58-year-old Tony has made it his mission to give back to the...
Aroundtown Meets Lynsey Lockey
If there’s one person you’d want in your corner, it’s Lynsey Lockey. A force to be reckoned with in women’s boxing, she’s a fighter in every metaphorical way. She’s fought gender bias and injustice, battled melanoma, depression and personal loss, and combatted the struggle of being a busy working mum...
Aroundtown Meets Billingley Christmas Tree Farm
The big man in red might get all the glory, but there’s someone here in South Yorkshire without whom Christmas might not be so magical. His black boots are covered in mud, not soot, he carries loppers rather than a sack of presents, and in place of a sleigh is...
Aroundtown Meets Tom Masters
He’s the Barnsley lad with the big voice, big heart and big hair. And it’s clear to see why Tom Masters has instantly struck a chord with audiences across the region. Over the last few years, we’ve seen Tom mature from this young tenor in the award-winning Barnsley Youth Choir...
Aroundtown Meets Dr Bijoy Mondal
As specialist in ageing, it comes as no surprise to hear that geriatrician Dr Bijoy Mondal is still working at 82. Many of his patients are younger than he is. But his motto – to himself and his patients – is ‘use it or lose it’. “Working keeps my brain...
Aroundtown Meets Cynthia Shaw MBE
When a letter from the Cabinet Office came through the letterbox at her home in Harley, stating that she was to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in King Charles’s 2023 New Year Honours List, Cynthia Shaw put it down in semi-disgust. Thinking it was...
Aroundtown Meets Wilson Design Collective
It’s strikingly obvious that the two women we’re here to meet are identical twin sisters. But theirs is a story of life imitating art around the fabled connection between twins. Doncaster artists Caroline Perkins and Louise Draper have been inextricably bound to each other since doctors failed to spot one...
