Accidentally Brilliant is a Be Broadcast original podcast that explores one big question: How did you get into what you do?
Most of us don’t follow a neat career plan - we stumble into opportunities, discover strengths we never expected, and build lives around solving problems in surprising ways. Host Josh Wheeler shares open, personal conversations with leaders and creatives from PR, media, and beyond.
From chance encounters to career-defining pivots, each episode reveals the quirks, challenges, and lightbulb moments that shape extraordinary careers. No jargon. No script. Just honest stories that are as funny as they are useful.
What do you wish somebody had told you when you started working in PR?
For the 20th episode of Accidentally Brilliant, Josh Wheeler goes back through conversations with people from across PR, communications, agencies and media to find the lessons that stayed with him.
It has become something of a cheat sheet for the parts of a communications career that nobody really prepares you for.
Andy Nairn on remembering what never changes, however quickly technology does.
Rob Waugh on why being recognisably human becomes more valuable as AI grows.
Laura Burch on the impact visibility can have on somebody you may never realise is watching.
Barbara Phillips on finding your people and refusing to navigate the industry alone.
Sara Thornhurst on creating clarity for people who need support at work.
Sheeraz Gulsher on winning hearts and minds while still making the business case.
Advita Patel on listening to people who do not think like you.
Stephen Waddington on the jump between being a great practitioner and being ready to lead.
Darryl Sparey on teaching yourself to understand the numbers.
Daniel Cohen on working out which number actually matters.
James Crawford on using evaluation as management information.
Nigel Sarbutts on talking about impact rather than activity.
Jennifer Delgado and Ashley Rudd on knowing what you want PR to achieve before you start.
Jo Carr on realising that, when you run the business, you are allowed to make the decision.
Caroline Eardley on the danger of allowing one client to become too important.
Nina Webb on thinking about succession before you need to.
Kate Hartley on why recovery is part of dealing with a crisis.
And Yvonne Eskenzi on remembering that nobody becomes more important simply because of their title.
Careers, leadership, business, inclusion, confidence, mistakes and some of the things most of us only learn by going through them.
Twenty episodes in, these are the lessons that stuck.
18 Sept 2026
19. Finding the Humans Among the Fakes with Rob Waugh
What happens when a journalist can no longer assume the expert pitching them actually exists?
Rob Waugh has spent nearly 30 years writing about technology and science. More recently, his investigations for Press Gazette have taken him into a much stranger part of the internet: fake experts, fake journalists, AI-generated content and businesses making serious money by getting invented people into genuine news coverage.
One investigation began when Rob received commentary from a supposed psychologist called Barbara Santini. Something didn't feel right. He started checking and concluded that she wasn't real.
By that point, "Barbara" had appeared around 120 times in British media, including the BBC, Guardian, Mail, Mirror and Express. Rob says the entire operation was designed to secure links and improve a commercial website's Google ranking.
And she wasn't alone.
Rob went on to investigate fake driving experts, skincare experts, lottery winners, a royal cleaner and a gardener who he says appeared around 170 times in British media despite apparently not existing.
We talk about how it happened, the pressure inside modern newsrooms and why AI has made producing this material dramatically cheaper.
There's also a bigger question for PR.
The people behind many of these operations aren't traditional PR practitioners, but they're using PR techniques. Rob believes the industry has an opportunity to respond by making genuine expertise, proper research and professional standards a point of difference.
And Rob isn't anti-AI.
He uses it. He thinks it can be great for ideation. His concern is what happens when we use it to flatten our writing, thinking and personalities into an average of everything that already exists.
His advice for the future is considerably more human:
"Be weird, be eccentric, follow your nose, just be yourself."
In this episode:
Rob's accidental route into journalism
Nearly 30 years covering technological change
MiniDiscs, BlackBerrys and the technologies that didn't quite win
Why convenience usually wins
How a request for expert commentary uncovered a fake psychologist
The commercial industry behind fake experts
How invented experts ended up across major British media
Fake gardeners, royal cleaners and journalists
Why newsroom pressures make verification harder
How AI has dramatically reduced the cost of producing fake content
What journalists can look for when checking whether someone is real
Whether audiences will eventually care if an influencer or expert exists
AI-generated PR and what journalists think when they receive it
Why the PR industry has an opportunity to raise its standards
What AI is genuinely useful for
Why AI can push writing towards the average
The growing value of eccentricity, judgement and individuality
Why being human could become your biggest advantage
11 Sept 2026
18. Making Disability Inclusion Mean Something with Sara Thornhurst
Disability representation in PR has changed considerably over the past decade. Sara Thornhurst is worried some of that progress could start slipping backwards.
Sara is a senior communications professional, disability inclusion trainer and Communications and Impact Manager at the University of York. For almost a decade, she has been challenging the PR industry on disability, accessibility and the way disabled people are represented in campaigns and workplaces.
We start with disability being used as a PR stunt. Sara explains why asking an able-bodied person to spend a day or a week experiencing a disability can end up centring their reaction while the people who actually live with that disability are pushed to the side.
Her test is straightforward: whose voice are you centring?
From there, the conversation looks at what has improved since 2016. Language has moved forward, accessibility is being considered more seriously and more people are identifying or disclosing disability, chronic illness and neurodivergence within the industry. Sara also points to areas where PR still struggles, including the lack of genuinely flexible and part-time roles.
There is also a really interesting discussion around neurodivergence.
Sara questions the way ADHD and autism can sometimes be presented through a “superpower” lens. That experience may be true for some people, while others are dealing with conditions that materially disable them and require support. When one version dominates the conversation, those experiences become much harder to talk about.
We get practical too. What should a job advert say? What happens when somebody discloses a disability? How can an employer remove some of the fear around asking for an adjustment? Why should that information already be part of onboarding instead of waiting for somebody to struggle?
The episode covers disability representation, language, chronic illness, neurodivergence, reasonable adjustments, psychological safety and the political and media narratives that can eventually find their way into workplaces.
In this episode:
• Why disability should never become a PR gimmick• Whose voice campaigns should centre• What has changed in disability representation since 2016• Why language can change people's experience of communications• Disability representation in imagery and the problem with "inspiration porn"• Flexible working, part-time roles and inaccessible recruitment• Why employers should explain adjustments and disclosure before somebody has to ask• The problems Sara sees in the "neurodivergence as a superpower" conversation• ADHD, autism and the experiences that can disappear from the discussion• How political and media narratives about disabled people filter into workplaces• What managers can do to make disclosure feel safer• Why getting the terminology slightly wrong should not stop people trying to communicate
Sara ends the conversation with the hope that one day her disability inclusion work will no longer be needed. For now, it is the messages from people who have changed something after hearing her speak that make her feel "accidentally brilliant".
Connect
Sara ThornhurstLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarathornhurst/
Josh WheelerLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshwheelerbroadcast/
Be BroadcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/be-broadcast/Website: https://bebroadcast.co.uk/
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