Toast - Friends Reunited

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 695 Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up… Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of wonder products and businesses which had promised so much to consumers.

You can contact us at toast@bbc.co.uk

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea which ended up toast, examining the reasons behind the failure and discovering what can we learn from its story today.

Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition, speaking to expert commentators to discover how they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently.

Sean is assisted by the self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, as together they try to work out what went wrong.

This week, Sean and Sam look into a hugely successful website from a time when most people in the UK were slowly getting used to the internet.

Friends Reunited provided a unique way for users to reconnect with old school friends.

It made a fortune for its founders but was closed for good in 2016. Could it still have been successful today?

Toast is a spin-off from Sliced Bread, the series in which Greg Foot investigates the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in May. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

The producers are Jay Unger and Jon Douglas.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.
0:05.1	My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.
0:08.7	It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs,
0:13.5	moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.
0:19.1	And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music
0:21.7	means we can tell those stories like no one else.
0:24.5	We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative.
0:28.6	So whether you want an insightful take on music right now
0:31.3	or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music,
0:36.1	check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:47.6	Hello and welcome to Toast, brought to you by the team behind BBC Radio 4's hit series, Slice Bread.
0:54.7	Here at Toast, we have a look at wonder products or businesses that promised the earth but left their back as burnt.
1:03.0	I'm Sean Farrington. With me, as usual, is Sam White, entrepreneur, crucially, self-made millionaire.
1:10.1	Less crucially for us, but quite good for you, Sam.
1:12.7	Hello, again. Hello, how are you? I am good. You've still got many business successes?
1:17.4	Absolutely, and still had my fair share of squeaky bum moments. That's okay. They're allowed as well.
1:23.1	In fact, they're pretty useful when we get your analysis because after we hear from our other expert
1:27.5	guests, it is Sam's job to decide why today's wonder product went from potentially being
1:32.8	the best thing since sliced bread to toast. And we'll have a look at what lessons we can learn
1:37.9	along the way as well. Now, you will have heard of this one. I'm pretty darn sure you'll have
1:43.9	heard of this one. You may have used it.
	...

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