Square Roots
Square roots: Stewart Darkin
iGaming, Cycling and Spurs! Find out what our Director Stewart Darkin, gets up to in his spare time...
04/12/2024
First question
Who are you and what is your role?
I am Stewart Darkin. I live in Sale, in south Manchester, and I am a Director at Square in the Air. Although I am involved in a handful of B2B accounts, my main job is overseeing our in-house video and podcast production, and supporting the delivery of industry-leading multimedia content across the company. I launched the SITA video team shortly after I joined the agency in April 2021.
Second question
Back in the day, you worked and studied in Civil Engineering. What led you to iGaming?
Pure chance. I retrained as a journalist in 2010 and for the first two or three years after that, wrote a lot about music and entertainment, mostly as a freelancer. Freelancing can be tough, and after my latest bit of (frankly brilliant) writing went largely unnoticed, I decided I wanted a staff role with regular pay, pretty much anywhere in journalism. InterGame, a long-standing and well respected publisher of magazines in the sector - and also based in Greater Manchester - ran an ad on a local jobs site, advising that they needed an editor for their iGaming title. We met and fell in love, and I edited iNTERGAMINGi magazine for the next five years, before moving to SBC in 2018 and launching CasinoBeats.
Third question
You’re coming up to completing your second year as the face behind iGaming FM (for those who don’t know, it’s Square in the Air’s very own podcast) - what’s been your favourite moment and why?
The episode I am most proud of is when we spoke to Anna Dobrovolska. Anna, a Ukrainian, is CMO of Internet Vikings and fled her hometown of Ostrava in eastern Ukraine the day the country was invaded, in February 2022. Anna spoke to me about those moments and how she and her husband left their home with her parents, their two children and dog - and how her husband left the family at the Polish border to return to the frontline and fight. It is a remarkable, humbling story of courage and determination; and of a wonderfully supportive response from her employer and the gaming sector generally. And of course it is a fight that goes on.
Fourth question
You’re a keen cyclist, clocking up serious kilometres in the past few months. Tell us, why cycling?
Like a lot of people, I have always had to balance the urge to be healthy with a strong and apparently undefeatable desire to eat biscuits. So exercise was always a bit of a chore and usually only undertaken in order to grant me licence to consume more crisps. But when lockdown came, in March 2020, in the UK we were ‘permitted’ an hour out of the house each day to exercise, and so I found myself riding my bike most days. And I know it sounds like a cop-out answer, but I just really enjoyed it. It gave me some headspace away from the confines of the house and I began to look forward to the escape more and more. Once I’d racked up 5,000km or so on my old mountain bike, I got a new, better bike, which was stolen. So then I got another one. But throughout, and still, I just love the sense of freedom that going for a bike ride brings.
Fifth question
You’ve recently upgraded your garden at home ready for the summer, tell us about the project and if there are any upcoming final touches…
As with cycling, the garden is mostly just another opportunity for me to be outside. But I don’t have ‘green fingers’, I don’t plant or have a desire to grow anything. Veg comes from shops, as far as I am concerned. So the garden revamp has meant a new deck, a lot of gravel and some paving, as well as a small patch of grass I can pay a child to mow, while I explain helpfully from the hammock that they’ve missed a bit. The finishing touches will likely be some small trees. These will probably be in pots as we have a labrador called Poppy who likes to helpfully recover things from the garden and bring them into the house when we’re not looking.
Sixth question
Poppy makes frequent appearances on your Teams calls, what’s your favourite thing to do together and does she approve of the new garden set-up?
Poppy does not approve of the new set-up one bit, since there are fewer areas for her to dig up and the raised beds and big pots make it harder for her to helpfully disassemble the valuable plants. She does however love the beach and that’s undoubtedly when Poppy is at her happiest, that is as long as the other great love of her life is present - a tennis ball. She is not quite seven years old but I estimate that to date she has probably loved and lost upwards of 300 tennis balls.
Seventh question
You are a lifelong Tottenham supporter and even held a season ticket until recently, despite living in Manchester. What’s it like being a Spurs fan ‘up north’?
Well, for a while, it was brilliant, as we were close to being the best team in the country for a couple of years… less so in 2023. I live about two miles from Old Trafford too, deep in Manchester United heartland. The key, I think, is to show balance and restraint in defeat but then, when you beat United, wear your old Gareth Bale shirt to Caffe Nero and loudly order coffee-and-croissant so everyone notices. We won 6-1 away at Old Trafford a couple of seasons ago and I must have spent £100 in the following week or so, showcasing my collection of Tottenham shirts to the coffee-drinkers of Sale. Although Spurs still seem to beat Man City with baffling regularity, these days I genuinely get greater enjoyment from watching my 16-year-old youngest son play in goal for Sale United. Go Eagles.
Final Question
Your other son is an up and coming chef, what’s your favourite dish he’s presented to you and why?
My eldest is 17 and studying culinary skills in college. He also works part-time in a local restaurant run by the celebrity chef Simon Rimmer. It is a vegetarian (near vegan) restaurant, which means that many of the skills he has learned are, well, in the preparation of veg dishes. When he makes a meat or fish dish, it’s a little bit out of his comfort zone. He recently came home with a whole mackerel, which he’d bought out of his wages, and later served to us having skilfully filleted the fish and cooked it on the barbecue. Yum.
First question
Who are you and what is your role?
I am Stewart Darkin. I live in Sale, in south Manchester, and I am a Director at Square in the Air. Although I am involved in a handful of B2B accounts, my main job is overseeing our in-house video and podcast production, and supporting the delivery of industry-leading multimedia content across the company. I launched the SITA video team shortly after I joined the agency in April 2021.
Third question
You’re coming up to completing your second year as the face behind iGaming FM (for those who don’t know, it’s Square in the Air’s very own podcast) - what’s been your favourite moment and why?
The episode I am most proud of is when we spoke to Anna Dobrovolska. Anna, a Ukrainian, is CMO of Internet Vikings and fled her hometown of Ostrava in eastern Ukraine the day the country was invaded, in February 2022. Anna spoke to me about those moments and how she and her husband left their home with her parents, their two children and dog - and how her husband left the family at the Polish border to return to the frontline and fight. It is a remarkable, humbling story of courage and determination; and of a wonderfully supportive response from her employer and the gaming sector generally. And of course it is a fight that goes on.
Fifth question
You’ve recently upgraded your garden at home ready for the summer, tell us about the project and if there are any upcoming final touches…
As with cycling, the garden is mostly just another opportunity for me to be outside. But I don’t have ‘green fingers’, I don’t plant or have a desire to grow anything. Veg comes from shops, as far as I am concerned. So the garden revamp has meant a new deck, a lot of gravel and some paving, as well as a small patch of grass I can pay a child to mow, while I explain helpfully from the hammock that they’ve missed a bit. The finishing touches will likely be some small trees. These will probably be in pots as we have a labrador called Poppy who likes to helpfully recover things from the garden and bring them into the house when we’re not looking.
Seventh question
You are a lifelong Tottenham supporter and even held a season ticket until recently, despite living in Manchester. What’s it like being a Spurs fan ‘up north’?
Well, for a while, it was brilliant, as we were close to being the best team in the country for a couple of years… less so in 2023. I live about two miles from Old Trafford too, deep in Manchester United heartland. The key, I think, is to show balance and restraint in defeat but then, when you beat United, wear your old Gareth Bale shirt to Caffe Nero and loudly order coffee-and-croissant so everyone notices. We won 6-1 away at Old Trafford a couple of seasons ago and I must have spent £100 in the following week or so, showcasing my collection of Tottenham shirts to the coffee-drinkers of Sale. Although Spurs still seem to beat Man City with baffling regularity, these days I genuinely get greater enjoyment from watching my 16-year-old youngest son play in goal for Sale United. Go Eagles.
Second question
Back in the day, you worked and studied in Civil Engineering. What led you to iGaming?
Pure chance. I retrained as a journalist in 2010 and for the first two or three years after that, wrote a lot about music and entertainment, mostly as a freelancer. Freelancing can be tough, and after my latest bit of (frankly brilliant) writing went largely unnoticed, I decided I wanted a staff role with regular pay, pretty much anywhere in journalism. InterGame, a long-standing and well respected publisher of magazines in the sector - and also based in Greater Manchester - ran an ad on a local jobs site, advising that they needed an editor for their iGaming title. We met and fell in love, and I edited iNTERGAMINGi magazine for the next five years, before moving to SBC in 2018 and launching CasinoBeats.
Fourth question
You’re a keen cyclist, clocking up serious kilometres in the past few months. Tell us, why cycling?
Like a lot of people, I have always had to balance the urge to be healthy with a strong and apparently undefeatable desire to eat biscuits. So exercise was always a bit of a chore and usually only undertaken in order to grant me licence to consume more crisps. But when lockdown came, in March 2020, in the UK we were ‘permitted’ an hour out of the house each day to exercise, and so I found myself riding my bike most days. And I know it sounds like a cop-out answer, but I just really enjoyed it. It gave me some headspace away from the confines of the house and I began to look forward to the escape more and more. Once I’d racked up 5,000km or so on my old mountain bike, I got a new, better bike, which was stolen. So then I got another one. But throughout, and still, I just love the sense of freedom that going for a bike ride brings.
Sixth question
Poppy makes frequent appearances on your Teams calls, what’s your favourite thing to do together and does she approve of the new garden set-up?
Poppy does not approve of the new set-up one bit, since there are fewer areas for her to dig up and the raised beds and big pots make it harder for her to helpfully disassemble the valuable plants. She does however love the beach and that’s undoubtedly when Poppy is at her happiest, that is as long as the other great love of her life is present - a tennis ball. She is not quite seven years old but I estimate that to date she has probably loved and lost upwards of 300 tennis balls.
Final Question
Your other son is an up and coming chef, what’s your favourite dish he’s presented to you and why?
My eldest is 17 and studying culinary skills in college. He also works part-time in a local restaurant run by the celebrity chef Simon Rimmer. It is a vegetarian (near vegan) restaurant, which means that many of the skills he has learned are, well, in the preparation of veg dishes. When he makes a meat or fish dish, it’s a little bit out of his comfort zone. He recently came home with a whole mackerel, which he’d bought out of his wages, and later served to us having skilfully filleted the fish and cooked it on the barbecue. Yum.
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