Lavenham and Wortham duo’s podcast Who’s Tom and Dick? brings in celebrity support including from Jimmy Tarbuck and Cliff Thorburn to promote positive attitude to ill health

What do comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, snooker world champion Cliff Thorburn, and Bucks Fizz lead singer Cheryl Baker have in common?

All three have been special guests on a growing podcast hosted by a Suffolk-based duo, who have set out to promote a positive mentality in the face of ill health.

Martin Weavers, of Lavenham, and Patrick Mortimer, of Wortham, launched Who’s Tom and Dick? – named after the Cockney rhyming slang phrase for ‘who’s sick?’ – in September 2023.

The pair, formerly the comedy act Martin and Moore, were inspired by their own experiences with illness – the former being diagnosed with cancer, and the latter with heart disease.

Martin told the Suffolk Free Press: “In July of last year, I was in hospital with pneumonia, a chest infection and a collapsed lung – I was seriously ill.

“Patrick, being a good friend, used to come in and see me every week. I had been singing in a band at the time, so he said, as you’ve got to give up singing, why don’t we do a podcast?

“We started out just chatting to each other about our illnesses and how we deal with them; then we thought we should have some guests, so we spoke to some of our friends who have been ill.

“We promote a positive mental attitude, because people may think that, once you become seriously ill, you can’t lead a normal life, but we want them to know that you can.”

Since launching their show, Martin and Patrick have spoken to people with cancer, heart disease, cerebral palsy and stoma bags, as well as cardiac arrest and stroke survivors.

They have also interviewed one of Britain’s top oncologists, and representatives of charities such as Macmillan Cancer Support, Cancer Research UK and Make A Wish.

The popularity of their podcast really started to take off, though, when they branched out into celebrity guests, which began with renowned comedian Joe Pasquale.

“We literally sent a letter addressed to Joe Pasquale and just the village he lived in,” explained Martin. “The postman must have been good, because he managed to get the letter to him.

“Joe rang me twice – I thought it was a friend playing a joke at first, but he offered to come and speak to us. He was our first celebrity guest.

“Since then, we’ve reached out to lots of celebrities, asking if they would come and speak to us about their illnesses, and almost all of them have said yes. It has been absolutely brilliant.”

Recent guests on Who’s Tom and Dick? have included Matt Lucas, of the comedy sketch show Little Britain, and former professional boxing promoter Kellie Maloney.

The podcast has also lined up future interviews with the likes of Sir David Jason, Stephen Fry, Harry Hill and Miriam Margolyes.

With one episode a week since beginning 14 months ago, the show has achieved more than 170,000 downloads, and has reached as high as 12th place on the Apple iTunes podcast charts.

To find out more about the podcast, go to www.whostomanddick.com.

Martin, who is still undergoing treatment for cancer, added: “It has gone off the scale from where I thought it would go when we started. It’s just unbelievable.

“We regularly get thousands of listeners per show. We seem to have built a large following in America. Our interview with Kellie Maloney was voted the top podcast in a poll, out of 47,000 podcasts.

“We want to keep promoting a positive attitude to illness. I had a friend who had a stroke, and she was very shy in talking about it.

“I convinced her to come on our podcast and that, if even one person listens to her story about how she came through her stroke, they will think, ‘she survived it, so I can survive it, too’.”