Bloomin' Legends with Johnny Vaughan & Gavin Woods

She was 17, had never held a sword, and travelled 300 miles across France to find a king who was hiding among his own courtiers. She walked straight past the decoy, found him immediately, then told him something privately that apparently only he could have known. Within moments, the sceptical future king was visibly shaken, and Joan was given an army.
In this episode, Johnny Vaughan and Gavin "The Woodman" Woods take on Joan of Arc, the teenage peasant girl who claimed she was on a mission from God, lifted the Siege of Orléans, crowned a king, outsmarted France's most educated theologians and became one of history's most extraordinary saints.
What You'll Hear in This Episode:
👑 The secret meeting – how Joan spotted the real Charles among a crowd of courtiers and told him something that apparently turned him from sceptic into believer. But what did she actually say?
🐎 300 miles on horseback – how a 17-year-old girl travelled across France to find the future King after claiming she'd been ordered to drive the English out.
📚 Joan vs the professors – how an uneducated teenager went head-to-head with France's top theologians and left them struggling for answers.
⚔️ The teenage general – how Joan helped lift the Siege of Orléans, led French armies into battle, took a cannonball to the helmet and carried only a banner rather than a weapon.
👑 Crowning a king – how Joan marched Charles to Reims and helped turn the supposedly illegitimate Dauphin into the crowned King of France.
🔥 The trial – how Joan was interrogated, accused of heresy and condemned at just 19, with wearing men's clothes becoming part of the case against her.
👻 The fake Joan – how, five years after her death, another woman appeared claiming to be Joan of Arc — and somehow even Joan's own brothers went along with it.
If you love history, saints, medieval warfare, unbelievable true stories and comedy, this episode of Bloomin' Legends is for you.
Got a legend you want us to cover?
📩 Send it to: bloominlegends@global.com
📲 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @BloominLegends
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube.
Listen to all episodes on Global Player, download the app, or visit www.globalplayer.com
Bloomin' Legends is a Global production
Produced by Ben Fairclough
New episodes are released every Wednesday & Sunday. Subscribe to never miss an episode!

Johnny has gone full barking mad this week, realising that all three of the world's top guard dogs are German, you can imagine every one of them in a helmet, and that Alsatians are only called Alsatians because nobody in Britain would buy a German dog after World War I.
The Extra Legendary Bit is where Johnny Vaughan and Gavin "The Woodman" Woods dive into your messages and uncover the gloriously unhinged tales sent in by the Bloomin' Legends nation.
What You'll Hear in This Episode:
🐕 Johnny's German dog theory – Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds: all guards, all German, all looking like they should be wearing a helmet. Plus the true story of why Alsatians are called Alsatians (only in Britain) 🐟 The Doberman who saved a koi carp – one listener's dog bangs on the back door "like the Gestapo demanding entry" while gently holding a 14-inch fish in her mouth 🏛️ The pharaoh's curse update – Tertius returns to Egypt with a fedora and a stolen pyramid shard, hoping to undo a curse, and ends up bribing his way into sealed tombs 🦈 The naked shark swim – four drunk Australian teenagers strip off to swim across Sydney Harbor in the dark, nearly get hit by a speedboat, and later discover bull sharks had moved in
If you love funny true stories, listener tales, dog nonsense, Australian chaos and comedy podcasts, this bonus episode of Bloomin' Legends is for you.
Got a story that can top this week's madness?
📩 Send it to: bloominlegends@global.com
📲 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @BloominLegends
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bloominlegends
Listen to all episodes on Global Player, download the app, or visit www.globalplayer.com
Bloomin' Legends is a Global production
Produced by Ben Fairclough
New episodes are released every Wednesday & Sunday. Subscribe to never miss an episode!

She spoke four languages, owned more land than the King of Hungary, and may have tortured and murdered up to 650 young women over 25 years. When they finally caught her, she was so powerful they couldn't even put her on trial - so they bricked her up inside her own castle and left her there until she died.
In this episode, Johnny Vaughan and Gavin "The Woodman" Woods tackle Elizabeth Báthory - the 16th century Hungarian countess considered the most prolific female serial killer in recorded history, and the first true villain Bloomin' Legends has ever covered.
What You'll Hear in This Episode:
🏰 The Blood Countess – how one of Europe's most powerful noblewomen allegedly used her wealth, land, and total impunity to torture and kill for over two decades
🐴 The most horrific execution ever? – as a child, Báthory witnessed a man sewn alive into a dying horse with his head left poking out, and it may have shaped everything that followed
🩸 The blood-bathing myth – did she really bathe in the blood of virgins? Almost certainly not — that detail was invented by a Jesuit writer over 100 years later
🤴 Too powerful to punish – why the King of Hungary wanted her gone, how her downfall was probably motivated by debt, and why she never stood trial
🧱 Bricked up alive – her final punishment: walled into a room in her own castle with no doors, no windows, and no sunlight for three and a half years until she died
If you love true crime, dark history, serial killers, medieval horror and comedy, this episode of Bloomin' Legends is for you.
Got a legend you want us to cover?
📩 Send it to: bloominlegends@global.com
📲 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @BloominLegends
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bloominlegends
Listen to all episodes on Global Player, download the app, or visit www.globalplayer.com
Bloomin' Legends is a Global production
Produced by Ben Fairclough
New episodes are released every Wednesday & Sunday. Subscribe to never miss an episode!

A night out turns into a beachside evacuation. Thirty Royal Marines charge into the dark wearing boots, body armour and ballistic helmets, armed with whatever they could find in the galley, including a two-handled boiling pot.
The Extra Legendary Bit is the bonus episode where Johnny Vaughan and Gavin “The Woodman” Woods leave the history books behind and dive into the unhinged, moving and brilliant stories sent in by you, the listeners.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode:
The Royal Navy Run Ashore That Got Out of Hand – Gareth remembers his late dad Sean: a teenage Navy recruit, a police-car-light heist in Pensacola, and the Caribbean night a beach bar bust-up required a full Marine rescue mission.
Can a Dickhead Still Be a Legend? – Mary asks the big question: can one heroic act outweigh years of being difficult? Johnny answers with a surprisingly profound passage from Tolstoy about why human beings are like rivers.
Uncle Dave, the Christmas Plumber – Jason nominates the man who has spent 40 years keeping elderly customers warm, fixing boilers for free and quietly being a bloomin legend.

🎥 Watch the full episode now on the Bloomin' Legends YouTube channel!
Got a legend you want us to cover? 📩 Send it to: bloominlegends@global.com 📲 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @BloominLegends 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bloominlegends
Listen to all episodes on Global Player, download the app, or visit www.globalplayer.com
Bloomin' Legends is a Global production
Produced by Cassie Merritt
New episodes are released every Wednesday & Sunday. Subscribe to never miss an episode!

He was 4 foot 11, weighed eight stone, came from a mountain village with no electricity, no roads, and no running water… and then held off 200 Japanese soldiers in a Burmese jungle trench after a grenade blew his hand off.
In this episode, Johnny Vaughan and Gavin “The Woodman” Woods take on take on Lachhiman Gurung, the Gurkha rifleman who became one of the most decorated soldiers of the Second World War. Four days after VE Day, while Britain was celebrating in the streets, Gurung was still fighting in the Burmese jungle. Half blind, badly wounded, and down to one usable hand, he spent four hours holding off wave after wave of Japanese attackers with a bolt-action rifle, a kukri, and pure bloody-minded courage.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode:
The trench stand - the astonishing night Gurung threw back grenades, lost his right hand, and still refused to give an inch
“Come and fight a Gurkha” – the battle cry he reportedly shouted into the dark as 200 enemy troops closed in
The quiet hero – how one of the bravest men of the war went home, farmed in silence, and barely spoke about what he’d done...bloomin legend.

🎥 Watch the full episode now on the Bloomin' Legends YouTube channel!
Got a legend you want us to cover? 📩 Send it to: bloominlegends@global.com 📲 Follow us on TikTok & Instagram: @BloominLegends 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@bloominlegends
Listen to all episodes on Global Player, download the app, or visit www.globalplayer.com
Bloomin' Legends is a Global production
Produced by Cassie Merritt
New episodes are released every Wednesday & Sunday. Subscribe to never miss an episode!