Ashley Cain

Russell Howard’s Five Brilliant Things

Avalon

Comedy Interviews, Comedy

4.5 • 566 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of Five Brilliant Things is an enormously powerful listen; an emotional journey through the extraordinary life and times of the TV Host and endurance athlete Ashley Cain. He talks with disarming honesty about finding strength and wisdom after the tragic death of his daughter, and his Five Brilliant Things are actually borne of his adversity. He also goes into detail about what it was like to canoe around the British Isles with the threat of Killer Whales over his shoulder. Scary stuff! Ashley is hosting his show (that he mentioned in the show) on the BBC called ‘Into the Danger Zone’ and you can find that on iPlayer. And you can keep up with all of Ashley’s latest charitable challenges by following him on Instagram where he’s @mrashleycain. If this show is your bag, you can make it baggier (what? Why would you say that?) by becoming one of our treasured inner circle and joining our Patreon. You get all this, and an exclusive extra show every week, and no ads, and get it early. It’s a phenomenal thing to be a part of. Click this link to join or just have a sniff around: patreon.com/RussellHoward There we go. Another episode complete, and a much heavier one than we’d usually have but it’s nice to have that variation. I’m sure next week will be a refreshing counterpoint of sillness (well I know it will because I’ve planned it all out to be honest). See you then. Producer: Dan Atkinson Line Producer: Daisy Knight Exec Producer: James Taylor Composer: Fat Lady Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my friends, welcome to the show.
0:10.0	On today's show is an ex-footballer, reality TV contestant who's gone on to become one of Britain's most impressive endurance athlete.
0:18.0	It's Ashley Kane, and these are his five brilliant things.
0:28.5	Now this is very,
0:29.7	here's an interesting fact for you.
0:32.6	I was in the crowd when you made your debut for Coventry.
0:37.4	Are you fucking serious? I swear. It was Neil, 0, 0. Oh my God. Neil, nil against Charlton. You came on, you played right wing, and you were lightning. And there was, and you should have scored. Do you know what I mean? That was that moment, wasn't it? That's one of the hardest games I've ever had to watch, like Cov-Nill, Cholten-Nill, but... That moment wasn't in my five brilliant or beautiful things. You did all right. You did well when you come on. I mean, I've got a Starman in the paper for that performance, and that's one of the things that haunts me now.
1:11.5	Do you know what?
1:12.1	After retiring from football, you know, due to, you know, five surgeries, I don't miss playing.
1:20.2	Really?
1:20.6	I don't, you know, regret anything about, you know, choosing to pursue another career.
1:26.7	Yeah.
1:30.0	I'm fucking haunted every day by missing that challenge it's so funny isn't it yeah yeah do you know the reason is
1:33.1	and it and it taught me a life long lesson yeah when I played for the Academy and
1:38.2	when I played for the reserves I always played an age group or two age groups or
1:41.6	sometimes three yeah and always just coming off the right wing and hit the ball with the outside of my boot.
1:47.4	And he used to like, it was so unconventional that all my coaches used to be like, don't do that, strike through the ball. But he used to do it every time and score. and when I went through
1:56.4	you know on my professional debut
1:58.2	where my granddad put a bet on for me to make my
2:00.3	debut and score the winner against Charlton
2:02.4	I thought I don don't wanna fuck this up. Yeah, yeah. Let me strike through it, and I did. And I missed by that much, and I thought, you know what, I'm never ever again going against my gut. Yeah, yeah. Because it's left me regretting it for the rest of my life. But, you know, it's one of those things.
2:18.6	It's so funny, isn't it?
	...

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