HLTCO – Dan Cook

HLTCO has grown from a Crystal Palace related blog to a media brand delivering two daily podcasts in addition to YouTube and other social media channels. The man behind the title, an acronym of a famous piece of Palace commentary ‘Hopkin looking to curl one’ is Dan Cook. His self-made success in the football media world meant he could turn a hobby into a full-time job. In addition to that, when he stepped out from behind the HLTCO moniker, his personal story was an inspiration to many.

“I’ve been going to Palace now for over a quarter of a century. The playoff goal by David Hopkin is the name of my podcast but I didn’t actually have a season ticket at that point. It was just a vehicle to encapsulate the emotions that Palace fans would have. I went to university to do sports journalism in 2007 with the aim of becoming part of the mainstream media industry. Over the course of those three years and maybe about twelve months after, I became quite disillusioned.

The ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch your’s’ nature of it didn’t really appeal to me. I didn’t like the thought of reporting on non-league games on a Saturday at the same time that Palace were playing. Palace are thing that made me fall in love with the sport in the first place.”

Emotive time

Dan’s podcast title comes from the commentary of David Hopkin’s playoff winning goal for Crystal Palace in 1997. It was a less salubrious period of the club’s history that led Dan to start his media journey.

“Crystal Palace went into administration in 2010. That particular period of my fandom was a very emotive time. We had players playing for free purely for the pride in the shirt. We managed to stay up on the last day of the season on goal difference. Around October 2011 I decided to start writing just for the enjoyment of writing about football and Crystal Palace. I started a blog which was HLTCO. At the start I was writing one or two articles a day. There were Google ads on there so I was making three or four hundred a month from it at its peak.

I got married in 2018 and had my son the following year. I knew that either this would need to turn into full-time income or I would need to knock it on the head. Ultimately, time is key when you want to be around your family.”

Podcasting

Cook dipped his toe in podcast waters as he looked to continue his media involvement. That led him to the realisation that he could venture into the footballing world outside of Selhurst Park.

“I started recording interviews. The first one I ever did was Darren Ambrose. I’ve interviewed Wilfred Zaha, Yannick Bolasie, Steve Parish, Chris Coleman, Julian Speroni and a whole host of Palace people. That was on the Patreon model which is behind a paywall. I was charging three pounds a month and I would put out one or two interviews a month for that. So, I realised that although there was a lot of good will towards me online, there wasn’t going to be an endless stream of people that I could interview.

I started doing a daily Palace podcast from Monday to Friday. That is like a bite-sized chunk of information about the club. I always said that if I could get to a thousand subscribers to that on Patreon, I would quit my full-time job. When I was walking to work one morning it ticked over to seven hundred subscribers. I put a Tweet out saying I was only three hundred subscribers away from being able to quit my job. By the end of that day, it had gone from 700 to 1250.

It had taken me two years to reach 700 but a lot of people who signed up that day weren’t Palace fans. They were signing up out of solidarity and wanting to see me be able to quit my job. At that point I knew, even if they stuck around for a month or two, it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. I then started recording a second podcast which wasn’t about Palace. I now do a Palace pod and a general football pod. They go out Monday to Friday and are in subscribers’ inboxes by eight-thirty in the morning. That has kept me in full-time employment for four, nearly five years now.”

Sports journalism

The move to podcasting was not something that Dan had planned. When he first started studying sports journalism the podcast medium did not even exist.

“I just went along with it really. I bought a microphone which I still use to this day. The thing is the ability to record a podcast and get your voice out to many people is not something that was available back in my university days. I’ve been very lucky timing wise that social media and podcasts took off when they did.

I don’t profess to be a professional. I know I can talk and people seem to like what I have to say, but I would never class myself as professional. It is quite a daunting thing putting yourself out there. I suppose over time you just get used to that. If I listened back to my early podcasts I would probably be mortified. That is just learning on the job. YouTube brings another aspect. I haven’t really run with that as it takes time to put out the volume of content to keep up a YouTube page.”

When Dan launched his YouTube channel, it marked the first time he had moved out from behind his HLTCO social media handle. That represented a big step for the man that had remained largely anonymous up until that point, for a very personal reason.

Anonymity

“I have cerebral palsy. Not to any severe level. I’m not in a wheelchair and I’m able to live a full and active life. I spoke about it in the first YouTube clip I ever recorded. I have a very strong opinion about football, I love it and I consume it every day. At school I did always wonder if my opinions were being given time by my friends almost out of pity rather than them being of value. I felt like the anonymity of the page was a great way to gauge that. You just saw a profile picture with an acronym. There was no other way to judge the content of the opinions themselves.

I found that very refreshing. It gave me a solid foundation to confirm that I do know what I’m talking about. By the time I got to 2023 I had amassed over ten-thousand followers. I got myself the house that my wife and I wanted and my little boy was settled. I felt I was in the right place to do that. That has led to being on Football Focus and The Overlap and different things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t put myself out there to be seen. The reason I never did that from the start was to let my opinions be taken for what they were rather than out of any sense of pity.”

Inspirational story

As inspirational as Dan’s story was, especially to those who could relate to his condition, he is still given reason to wonder if he made the right choice in being open about it.

“I still sometimes wonder if I should have done it or not. You get comments on social media. It is the nature of the beast that people will use the lowest common denominator to degrade someone. I had a comment on a post this morning that said ‘aren’t you in a wheelchair mate.’ I’ve had a thick skin all the way through my adolescence because kids at school could be horrible. When I do wonder if I should have told my story, I usually come down on the side of yes. It has given me some fantastic opportunities. You do get a reminder every day or two that there are people who would rather poke fun than take you for the abilities that you have.

The primary reason was I had reached a glass ceiling in terms of having disability within the media. I am not fame hungry at all. I do go to Palace and people will recognise me and those people are always happy to talk. It is still not something I am overly comfortable with. It feels weird to me. I never did it to help people who were in the same position as me. I’ve had lots of uplifting and heart-warming messages from people though. Those who have brothers, sisters or children who have cerebral palsy. They don’t know how it is going to affect them or they might have a question about it. I never wanted my disability to define me. I think it would have if I hadn’t kept it until I had been doing the job for three or four years.”

Laura Woods

Although I have followed HLTCO on X/Twitter for many years, the YouTube channel had passed me by. The first I heard about Dan and his story was listening to the radio. Laura Woods talked about it on her Talksport show and when she mentioned HLTCO I thought ‘I know that guy.’ Dan described how that came about and how surprised he was that Woods spoke about him for so long.

“Laura Woods had been on my podcast before to do an interview. She had saw me on the Zoom call when we did the interview. After I told my story she had got in touch to say that she had no idea. She said it made sense to her why I had waited so long to put myself out there. Laura asked me for permission to speak about it on Talksport the next day which wasn’t a problem for me. I assumed it would be a throwaway couple of minutes.

In the end I think she spoke for about four or five minutes and it was lovely to hear her say it. I asked if she could get it clipped up for me. I think that helped me get seen by a wider audience. That was a huge boost. I think it came from a genuine place of wanting to help and shine a light on it from a positive sense. It certainly put me on the map for a lot of people, I think.”

Positive representation

Cook is not comfortable with being called an inspiration. He undoubtedly is for what he has achieved with HLTCO and how he has positively represented those suffering with cerebral palsy.

“I understand why people might think that. But, I’m just a normal guy who is lucky to have amassed the audience that I have. This isn’t to say I don’t think my opinions deserve air time. I only make comments that I believe or I’m passionate about. I don’t say things for attention. I’m lucky that the means are there in this day and age because in years gone by my only option would have been the local paper. If that avenue was closed there would have been no other way to spread your wings. Anyone can do what I’ve done. There is no magic beans to it, just hard graft. It took me nine years, which is a long period of time to be grafting away at it. I would never suggest that I am anything other than extremely lucky to do what I do as a living.”

Dan’s HLTCO Podcast can be found at this link: Hopkin Looking To Curl One… | Creating daily features, opinion and insight into the world of C | Patreon