‘I’m a massive, massive music nerd,’ says filmmaker and podcaster Chris Atkins, whose latest series, Music, Money & Mayhem, traces the spectacular collapse of one of Britain’s coolest record labels, home to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Blur. That red logo was on almost every CD you bought in the 90s. And the cute little dog with the gramophone. EMI: remember?

Apparently, it’s all too easy for some of us to forget. Atkins sounds genuinely astonished that the company’s demise passed without much mourning. ‘Lots of people don’t realise that it’s gone. It was so iconic… it was our cultural identity; a British label pushing British artists around the world. For that to have gone and no one really comment on it… I thought it was really strange.’

So here he is, with a six-part podcast about EMI and the people who worked there. ‘The story of its downfall is just an absolute epic car crash,’ says Atkins. At the centre of this wreckage is Guy Hands, the private-equity mogul who bought EMI in 2007, a move not exactly welcomed by industry heavyweights of the time. ‘You just couldn’t make this guy up,’ Atkins laughs. ‘He was a fish out of water; your sort of city banker nerd thrust into the same pool as the ultra-cool musos. They were never gonna get on.’

Hands and his methods were met with utter disbelief. ‘He brought in guys who had sold kitchen cleaner and put them in charge of The Beatles catalogue,’ Atkins explains. ‘It’s insane when you think of it but they were actually very good at it.’ Thankfully for the podcast, some of these wild ideas were pure comedy gold. ‘They said to Radiohead: “Do you wanna do a brand deal with Next?” It never happened but it was a real idea,’ he grins. A line of High & Dry raincoats, perhaps?

Across the series, Atkins chats to the likes of Ed O’Brien, Neil Tennant and Johnny Marr, all of whom had front-row seats to EMI’s slow-motion implosion. ‘No one had really asked the artists about it,’ Atkins says. ‘People assume they just write songs and let the grown-ups sort out the money. But these guys are incredibly astute; they understand it better than the finance guys.’ For Atkins, the story of EMI isn’t just about one company’s collapse, it’s about the world it reflected. ‘I basically spend my life these days making music documentaries. I’m always on the lookout for stories that tell you something bigger about the world. And EMI gives that in spades.’

New episodes of Music Money & Mayhem are available every Monday on all the usual platforms.