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[Music]
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there are very few people maybe just the five of them on planet earth
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that have gone through what my next guest has gone through over the last decade very very few people on planet earth
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that can tell you the stories he can tell you and talk to you about the lessons he's learned liam payne is a
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miraculous inspiring complex very honest very vulnerable very open
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book today he's going to tell you about things that he probably shouldn't say and topics that he probably shouldn't
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talk about but just imagine imagine being catapulted into stardom at 14 years old and becoming
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what many consider to be the modern day beatles he toured the world with one direction
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they had their ups their downs their mental health crises their scandals their relationships and
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everything in between you know if i was 16 years old and you asked me what i wanted to be if i could
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you know dream up my life i'd probably say professional football player or being in a boy band and traveling the
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world seems like a life that we'd all give everything to have but what you're going to hear today is very different
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and it might just change your mind it certainly changed mine so without further ado i'm stephen
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bartlett and this is the driver ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are
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then please keep this to yourself [Music]
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liam crazy crazy year society all of us have had with this whole lockdown situation place wanted to start
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it's just to ask how it's been for you it has been interesting i feel like i
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got the lock down the first depressive part of lockdown a lot later than everybody else because
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our work went through the roof and basically it was interesting because i had to learn
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styling makeup hair all these things that i wouldn't usually do when i'm with my team and i lost
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everyone because you couldn't have anyone close contact so i just had me and a camera guy that was staying with me so every job was like i mean we even had
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one day where we set up our own green screen and we set the green screen up from 1pm until
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10 and then record it till 5 o'clock in the morning so it was like a whole day so we were busier than ever and then we started doing these online shows which
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weren't really great um with a company called veeps which was good and then i stopped working which i
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thought was going to be really good for me because i was tired and it was actually the worst thing in the world for me when you say you stopped working
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describe your day at that point um i mean i was just finding myself on the sofa
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for the whole day just watching randomness i've seen everything on netflix on your own uh no my partner's there at
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the time okay yeah it was it was it was wild and it was
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dark because you can't really go anywhere you don't really know what you're doing and and and and i felt like my career was
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kind of in a funny place at that point as well and how i was agreeable with it at that time as well if that makes sense are you the
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type of person that needs to be kept busy i think so i think i've had a
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crash course this last year in learning to have my own time because i mean you imagine from from about the age of
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16 17 we were daishi every day so when you don't have a day sheet it's like what the hell do i
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do and then the other part of it's like you don't really learn what you enjoy from that point either so it was that that was quite difficult in lockdown
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because you have so much time to yourself and then it was like i saw something the other day about toxic
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productivity did you see this i've seen this obviously they got a new ism yeah for everything but it actually made sense to me if i'm not doing something
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that's that's productive i feel like i'm going backwards so that i'm trying to make i'm trying to force moves and i suppose that
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was one of the things i think i learned most about myself i don't have to be doing something every day to feel good about myself where does that come
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from do you think that need to feel like you're moving forward or it feels like backward motion i have
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no idea i think i'm just quite driven in that sense have you always been like that since before one direction
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you know i think we we just always worked like i started i was first on tv at 14. so that's young
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it was tweaking an audience specs which i think that point was like 20 million people which was wild so i was like 14 years old so from then
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on my life's just been like doing the same thing over and over and over again until this point so i don't know
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at times you fall out of love with it and i think that that trying to find you know and also you're not under any
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impression this isn't going to stop at some point like a a life span for a average pop
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star i've been i've outlived most lifespans with that sort of thing which has been amazing really really cool and i think part of
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that's probably from starting so young but you know it's going to end at some point so you always want to find something else that you're good at
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so it's kind of safety cushioning this is what investing has been my
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god-sending that because i started that really young as well and trying to think about how i would do this or how i do that asking like
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you know like our old managers and and people like that what they invest in and stuff like that which kind of makes me feel safer and does
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that that comes from a plate like mild paranoia that this might go someday right 400 it's like doomsday profit like probably
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you know do you worry a lot generally uh i think i did
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up until the last few months i mean having a lot of time i think a lot of
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people had this same sort of thing alcohol it was just really it was getting earlier and earlier
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yes easier and easier to go to and for me i don't know i it's i think there's there's a slight
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little bit of social anxiety as well in it that you know it was already hard sometimes to go out places for the thought that
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you might like packed or whatever you know there's always that extra level of stress so for me i've always been quite
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withdrawn so talking about lockdown so you go through that sort of depressive period i think we all went through that and i
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think um for me what i kept thinking about is like if you just um go with the lockdown
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you're like someone like me would just probably like hang around bed on my lap you know my laptop what i had to do was
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like proactively steve get up and do something today go put your shoes on [ __ ] you know what i mean but then the thing what i found about
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that was sometimes you ain't superman and you're gonna have a bad day and my thing is if i don't set
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out with my aiming to do that day then i become more depressive that makes sense
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but it's just like i think the main thing for me i mean i've always called it like a small victories thing and that's why i love the gym
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because if i've at least been to the gym that day then i've done something but then i started to like branch that out more that it was called a family
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member you know i spend some time with my son make sure i get face timing because it was the first point of it we couldn't see each other it was the longest i haven't seen my son in a long
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time um which was difficult but then it was like as long as i've done one of those things in the day then it doesn't matter
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if i didn't do anything else and it's like what i found more than
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anything at least with alcohol with all the stuff it's like boundaries there were no boundaries so you know if you're on zoom you can
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quite easily hide that you might be a little bit tipsy at the point you shouldn't be so it was like creating your own
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boundaries creating your own routines and that's where i think everybody struggled the most without routine and i noticed
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you had a dog here yeah which at the moment that's one of my things i think i'm definitely going to get a dog because i need
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routine i need it so you start you start drinking more and more during the
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lockdown you realize you get you're aware i put on so much weight i was eating badly and kind of described describing it as a
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bulking period it was a dirty bulk don't worry about intentional i'm doing it for a movie role
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yeah that's the best new new excuse if anyone asks you put weight yes for a roll it's coming out you know 20 20 too um
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yeah and i put a lot of weight on and what got me i did one performance on tv it was with the baftas actually
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and i was disappointed myself but like i was always a fairly sporty kid and kept moving and like i didn't look how i wanted to look you
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know what i mean there's anything wrong with that but just in your own self you know how you feel about it and obviously they say the camera adds 10 pounds it
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definitely did um and i saw myself for the first time i was like oh my god like i've completely let myself go in this
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and it was fine i kind of needed it and actually it's been the best outcome for me because i feel so much more
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secure in myself now and i feel like i know where i'm at again which is good have you struggled to maintain
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consistency with the gym i know i have if you look like i did i did i mean
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training partners is the best one for that you know and and each of you put putting a session together and throwing in different moves
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because then you're doing something that's a bit different you know i mean we recently my training partner i got to like a point where we're like a stalemate with
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the stuff that we're doing so then we we started like branching out to different gyms and they have different kit and then you know um but i'm fair i'm fairly good
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with keeping myself on the go with it um i mean like i said the only problem for me was
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just alcohol you can't train and drink and anything you can't do it all at once you're gonna be a rock star are you gonna be a star industry yeah that's
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your choice and do you think you've gotten a bit of a sort of addicted personality in that regard where you'll get into something
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and just go all the way i mean as an as an addict i want to say no but i know i definitely do um yeah 100 i i think but
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there's a lot worse things to be addicted to than then look after yourself so yeah what's been the the upside for
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you a lot of people listening to this well especially coming out of lockdown now there's a lot of people that weren't able to go to the gyms because they were closed
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and now that you know some people just need that little bit of a push to understand what the value is of the
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gym um and what's it what's the value of the gym been in your life i think because you're
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going twice tonight the value of the gym yeah yeah i mean i wouldn't call the first one the first one's more of like a wake up
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let's call it a vinyasa like a yoga type i the first day i went to the gym in lockdown i went and looked at the gym
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because i was like if i go in there and start moving around and throwing stuff and whatever else then i'm i'm not going to want to go the
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next day and you have to slowly build it up but don't go in and think you need to do 45 minutes because they're running the
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magazine that they said this there's no quick route for me it's three you need three months for any significant change that you have and then it's like
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start 20 minutes 15 minutes just go and feel it out and then you'll find after a while the exercises you're like
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oh my god i only have five more minutes in here and i need another five minutes and guess what you can have them so then it's slowly like we've got we're
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up to you know an hour an hour and 10 minutes now so it's like from starting at 15 20 minutes but for me
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it's just like i say it's been able to get into bed at night and have that small victory to know at least i did this and it was for me it
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wasn't for anybody else that's i think that's important and you're not doing it to try and
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get a sick i mean everyone's doing it low key to try and get six-pack but you're doing it because it's a lifestyle decision for your yeah
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i mean i recently started jiu jitsu and it's for me i want to be able to do
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what a lot of these guys are doing like the funny thing jiu-jitsu is super humbling because you just get thrown around like
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it's like a tiger eating a gazelle or something i mean it's wild so it's like as soon as it happens and i was always quite a small
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dude i've never been like a big guy um i mean even when i did my underwear commercial i was still like
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80 i think i was 75 kilos which is super light right super life so when i'm in the gym people are like
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throwing me over here and i'm like i'm going that way today am i then i'm over here and it's like so i put i didn't want to put some weight and i put too much weight on at
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one point i was like right i went alpha leather but it's more for the the fitness side and the jujitsu side that
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i'm training as hard as i am if you want to come in and meet guests like liam and myself we've now had two
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subscribers come in and watch from behind the scenes we're going to start picking more so all you've got to do if you want that to be
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you is hit the subscribe button i wanted to ask you some advice i've been announced as a dragon on
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dragon's den and how do you feel about that by the way it's pretty cool it's cool because
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you're a dragon like when some kids want to grow up being a dragon yeah yeah i know i i watched it when i was
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12. so it came out when i was 12. i used to watch it and i've never missed an episode wow that doesn't matter i said to the team i used to pretend i
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was a dragon sit there pause the tv give my verdict at 13 years old
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all this stuff um the bit i wanted to ask your advice on is when it was announced you know i had
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my little moment 15 seconds where like all of the press talk about you your twitter blows up
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lots of attention what advice would you give to me about dealing with this kind of noise
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because you i mean there's not many people on planet earth that have dealt with noise like that right
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i think don't it's a really fine line between getting too wrapped up in what's going on and
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not being wrapped up enough in it if you know what i mean really i think i think you know the things that hurt you the most because you know they're honest
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so when someone says something new like if they hurt you then you hurt you a lot then you know there's some truth in it
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because it hurt you if it's ridiculous you just go that was funny as if they said that you know what i mean really so i think there's a there's
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a fine line to tread with it and i mean i've gone through eras where i was just like a little clap back attitude driven you responding where as
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soon as someone would say something i'd be like right well then let's go with you and then i was i mean i was a bit mean and nasty at points
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actually it was a bit bad but when you're a teen growing up in it and people are like basically bullying you
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and they get paid for it it's like that's a bit outrageous so i'm gonna have my say who's got the biggest mountain you know what i mean but then it's like someone
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said to me over time it's like you know if someone says something about me in the press in this country and then i say something about them
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it ends up on e news and then they've made america i didn't get anywhere so it's like don't bring people up to
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your level if you don't think you unless you absolutely have to and one thing i would say don't lose your phone doing this notes
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if someone pisses you off write a note about it as if you were writing them a letter and then let it go
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just don't send it and then it gets all your well you would tweet out but you don't
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say it that was the best thing i ever did it was the best thing i ever did really yeah so pop open your notes then
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i just remembered one imagine [ __ ] out no it's crazy because you read stuff and i was saying to you
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before we start filming like i've got a baby apparently and a wife and then you know yourself i know you're doing
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really well yeah and i just thought you know it's crazy that um there's not a high regard for truth
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you know what i was actually on the way into this i wanted to speak about this because obviously there's a lot in the in the
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world at the moment about freedom of speech and the press freedom of speech which i agree with right we should we don't need to dictate laws
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my only problem is and my biggest problem around corona was the fact that the media were allowed
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to twist our thinking about corona as much as they wanted to and they're still doing it now
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but the fear mongering isn't helping anyone you know and these people aren't sat there i know i've just written a great article my boss is going to promote me
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oh yeah but you just decrease the value of the pound so your wages that you think are worth more are now worth less
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well it's a struggling industry right i just don't get it i'm like if it's a medical thing and it's the world that is in trouble
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maybe there should have to be something in place that says this is true or not that they have to put a
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disclaimer and say you should take advice from your local government [ __ ] like we all read you for advice
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and you are offering us a disservice by telling us non-truths about stuff it should be regulated
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yeah i get that there's a hairdresser's account for me for people going oh my god i can't believe what that liam payne's done this week
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what's he done now you know i get that but for corona yeah yeah we don't need to be going oh yeah have you read the thing about this
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new variant that's come from over the border yeah i can't believe it like someone from america phoned me the other night like oh you're gonna be able
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to come here soon i'm like no i ain't no chance but we don't none of us know we're all confused because we're being
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spouted fear which i just think is terrible social media doesn't help either because there's screenshots knocking around
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whatsapp group saying all sorts of yeah i mean that as much as this technology advancing on us
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it's like this slow road i mean it's almost like the coins thing at the moment with the the
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bitcoins like there's some coins they're actually seriously there to do a job in the ship and then there's like the [ __ ] elon musk coin yeah there's nothing
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but just disrespect to love like five billion like a bunch of like it's
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actually nuts um you said earlier you made a comment you said that um your partner at the time in referring to
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lockdown does that mean you are i am indeed you're single yep me and you both
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where are we going no i'm saying to myself i feel like i feel like more than
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anything at this point i'm more disappointed in myself for the keep on hurting people
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that annoys me i've just been not been very good at relationships and i know what my pattern of things is with relationships i feel at this
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point i'm just not very good at them so i just need to like work on myself before i put myself onto somebody else
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and i feel that's what you know that's why i got to my last relationship i just wasn't given a very good version of me anymore that i
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didn't appreciate and i didn't like being and i can honestly say that i feel better out of it i didn't feel good for
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doing what what i did but it had to happen i mean that's the corniest way of saying that was the best
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for both of us whatever cool story bro but it just feels like that very self-aware for you to know that
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you were oh yeah no i know it was a problem so i need to sort myself out and i already
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feel good so it's got me more concentrated you know and i hope she's happy what is it you've discovered about
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yourself in relationships that you're trying to work on you know what i mean
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one of our old managers went to therapy from being a manager of one direction so we can imagine how that feels like the
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rest of us definitely need some and for me most part i was really regressing from therapy because everyone was pushing me
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into it which is the worst thing you can do like it's almost like becoming sober for instance you have to want to be sober
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to start with not people taking your toys away and you're going oh my god so it kind of felt like that whereas this
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time i kind of threw myself into it even though i didn't want didn't really want to inside i threw myself into it
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made my own choices and i think for me my life's been so controlled to a point day sheets security guards you know
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anything and it's all everybody else is dictating puppet master crap over the top of your life then you just get to point where it's
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like you have to take some control by yourself and until i started to do that with my life then i was living for everybody else
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and i'm a complete people pleaser anyway so it was like nothing in my life was about serving myself which then that just put
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me in a bad place and finding enjoyment from other stuff that i don't need what did because i've always considered
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therapy for a bunch of reasons and the thing is it's still such like a
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taboo kind of crazy thing and i get it i do get it i was i mean i was on the phone to louis from my band talking about it today and it's like
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there was one moment last week and i mean my manager's my best friend he's been saying to me for a long time you'll have that one awakening in the middle of
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it where you'll think about stuff tonight i mean i hate words like awakening and i hate this like hollywood perception of
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like reflective work what the [ __ ] is that you know what i mean but i get it but at
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the same point i'm like i don't know you keep it for you but it's like i had this one moment that
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that i found and i was like oh my god that's just unlocked so many truths about me and it was so insignificant for something that happened when i was
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younger and it was so to me it was like a family joke but now i'm like oh my god i've been living my whole life as that character
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and yeah wild wild you'll love it scary really scary you don't know what you're gonna find it's like no that's it it's
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wild but i'm i'm so glad that i one went through what i went through this year and two that you know i think this
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year's forced something out of all of us and for me it forced me to really look at my life and go
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what the f are you doing like grow up and that was the point and you say don't try to work on that but did you regressed from therapy
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yeah i always turned away from it and i was always like oh i don't i don't need therapy i'll sort myself out you know your own worst enemy at that
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point i'm really keen to understand what makes you a difficult you know
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specifically what makes you a difficult person today i ask this question because i'm difficult to put a few
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people in it coming on down his best friend oh my god every ex-girlfriend we've got a behind
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the curtain now that would be a weird room imagine that drops down in there oh my god
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what would be the the consistent theme as to why you're difficult today if i think i i think my problem i struggle
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to be on my own sometimes really yeah struggle be on my own and i think i'd dive in and out of
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relationships too quickly and i've not had to spend enough time on my own to really learn
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about myself if that makes sense i honestly just need a minute i need to check myself but i'm really
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i'm really keen so you needed to spend some time on your own to kind of understand yourself because in a relationship context you find
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that you kind of you're in and you're out a little bit too much is that what you're saying yeah and i i i don't know i think the
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biggest problem we have i'm proper perfectionist terrible terrible terrible
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so when it comes down to relationships i'm always trying to star the relationship as we all do you put out this complete false character yes like i
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might as well go in costume that's why i'm like putting out something that he's not there
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is the person is absent from the room it's like they tag teamed on the way in on oh it's you for this bit yeah i'll join in later on and uh i just yeah
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i just need to stop doing that and then kind of like one encompassing someone else's life with
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your crap rather than like just doing your thing and laying out your store from day one that's my
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biggest problem and i feel for my for myself i don't lay out my store i'm like willing to bend to someone else's store and then i'm annoyed at why
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they don't like what i like amen so then i'm like oh okay but if i just laid out the stall early on and like yeah i go up at 5am and go for a run
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well how are we going to deal with that so he's either in or it's not you know what i mean it's not not to not compromise because some things you'll be like okay
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that annoys you fine but yeah for me i don't i don't do that i lay out a completely different
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it's like a war worth when you wanted an artist or you know that's i've really debated that i'm
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gonna personally especially recently because the girl i was into is very into everything that i'm not
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into like like she's into like horoscopes and like i don't know what's wrong with us whatever i don't know so i'm there like
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[ __ ] looking at horoscopes being like no yeah because you're trying to make spiritual people scare me
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but at the start of a relationship you become more like them they become more like you and then there's a couple of weeks months pass you just regress to actually who you
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actually are well you almost like i feel like i hide resentments from people sometimes and i'm like
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something annoys me and i'm like oh no it's fine but instead i'm thinking jesus christ i wish she didn't do that and then so then it's like then over
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time i'm like every little thing starts creeping in and i did this in my job really badly because i would bend to my
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job and let my job overtake things that i didn't like doing steve will vaccinate like videos for stuff
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and rather than going no until one day i just was like i hate everything and now it's almost gone back the other
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way now i've had to still reset that like i'm starting to call people in to do what i want to do rather than bending to everybody else's stuff
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you know and this cr you'll probably experience the same in this you're pulled every which way you know and it's always about
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impressing whoever's behind the lens whoever's in the audience so i find i feel conversations with crap that i'm
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saying that doesn't really help me because i'll go home thinking why the hell did i say that what now i'm that guy oh my god you know
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and then and then it's like but i was saying it because i thought it would entertain the other person it wasn't about me stupid
00:23:03
it's really fascinating that you're so self-aware of all these forces at play because it feels like you've spent a
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long time really analyzing and looking at your behavior i think that that can that can have its benefits and it can have its problems as well i think
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i'm like over critical at points but you know you can't win everything being a
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perfectionist yep it's an issue yeah what how to talk to me about what that means
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specifically in your life in work in relationships steve in everything steve's manager who sat behind the
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camera um i feel like we should publish i know what i love about this is that
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but steve my fans think that like steve's like doing something to me so they're always like oh liberty fellaini he always looks for steve but it's only
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because i like him because not because he's like harming me as a person but then there's like a hashtag liberty for liam like they think
00:23:48
i'm like sort of like prison child there's going to be all these other people who are just listening on the audio and think
00:23:53
you're calling my name steve
00:24:00
so my one thing i really got into over over lockdown was art and drawing oh interesting something i've done since i was younger and
00:24:08
the point was find something to do that doesn't make you money was the whole point of the exercise i
00:24:14
was like okay cool draw it i said to the person who gave me the advice at the time i was like i
00:24:19
guarantee this turns into something hold for later on in the conversation um so i started drawing but then what i
00:24:25
found was i was so bad at starting the task blank sheet of paper and all that because i was so worried about what
00:24:31
might come out that i was like i'd sit there like if something's not quite right i like it can ruin my day in a drawing if
00:24:37
something goes wrong and it's not quite right i'm like oh my god like i hate it that's the kind of thing
00:24:44
and how did that go okay i mean the thing is once i got started and got onto some stuff but then it was like
00:24:50
sometimes in that respect then i was drinking to draw pictures because i was so in my own freaking way and it's the same
00:24:56
writing songs as well you can do the same thing with everything you can trade out all that crap and it's like that's why you know people
00:25:02
might smoke a bit or do whatever when they when they make a track but it's all about getting out your own way and i
00:25:08
feel like now i feel much more like i know who i am and i know what i want to do so i don't need to be in my own way i'm going
00:25:13
to go you know i don't need these additives they only make me worse anyway in the long run right oh my god yeah
00:25:19
tonight today it might help but tomorrow it's going to it's probably true and are you still drinking reviews
00:25:26
no not some no no i've been sober just over a month now i think it is hey my business partner he um when we
00:25:32
started the business became an alcoholic about three four years in because it was just too tough and then he had like
00:25:37
severe suicidal ideation he actually didn't tell me at the time and this is why i was reading about your story i could relate to so much of it because
00:25:44
he i didn't say what i was going through to him he didn't say it to me and then it was like after we'd solved the business that he
00:25:49
was like i used to stand on the train platforms and think about jumping in front of the train and i was like and he never told me and
00:25:55
but there was and you i didn't know what alcoholism or really mental health was at the time but i'd go downstairs 3am in the morning
00:26:01
and i'd open up the laundry room and he's in there with a bottle of wine at 3am the lights are off and he's just drinking it sat on the clothes i'm like get off my
00:26:08
[ __ ] clothes i was like what the hell is going on but you know and i read similar things
00:26:14
similar sort of story or narratives in your story where you know you were having moments of that
00:26:20
that kind of like ideation you were having moments of suicidal ideation and yeah i mean
00:26:26
there's there's some stuff that i've definitely like never never spoken about to do with it it was really really
00:26:31
really severe and it was a problem and and and it was only until i saw myself after that i was
00:26:36
alright i need to fix myself there's a few pictures of me on a boat and i'm all like blowing out and i call it pills and boo's face
00:26:42
and i was like this like my face was just like 10 times more than it is now and i just didn't like myself very much
00:26:48
then i made a change and the same thing happened this year with with that sort of thing as well but the problem we had in the band and i
00:26:54
don't blame anybody for this i don't want to seem like i'm whining or moaning oh my god look at my life whatever but it feels to me like when we were in
00:27:00
the band the best way to secure us because of how big it got was just lock us in our rooms and of course what's in the room minibar
00:27:07
so at a certain point i thought well i'm going to have a party for one and that just seemed to carry on throughout many years of my life and then you look
00:27:13
back how long you've been drinking and stuff you're like jesus christ that's a long time even for someone who's you know as young
00:27:18
as i was um it was wild but it was like the only way you could get frustration out in the day
00:27:24
or being like trapped and you know i spoke about to somebody about this and in child development you know as a teen
00:27:31
the one thing you need is is freedom to make choices and freedom to do stuff and it was the one thing that although we could do anything we wanted
00:27:37
it seemed from the outside that we were always locked in a room at night and then it would be car hotel room stage
00:27:43
sing blocked so it was like they pulled the dust cloth off let us out for a minute and then
00:27:48
and then he's like back underneath here and i'm like so crazy because you're right the public will think the absolute opposite we think uh
00:27:55
one direction those guys have got total freedom all the money and what they can do anything everyone's you know in their
00:28:02
nine-to-five jobs just thinking i'd love to have that level of freedom that liam payne has to do anything but you can't do anything
00:28:08
right it's the opposite no i mean because we were young i mean i actually wanted to speak to you about this then as well
00:28:14
so obviously you've reached stratospheric heights young age it's like what i found was i didn't know i was the
00:28:19
boss until a long until like a few months ago i still don't even feel like i am now like i'm such a child
00:28:25
and everyone i work with is like don't be right older than me and wiser than me and i'm like what the hell am i doing
00:28:31
here with these people so it's like you you you know when we were 17 i thought the security guard was like in charge of me like i was like oh
00:28:37
can we leave the room no okay then not to worry i'll just stay here that's what it was like so i didn't know what the hell i was doing
00:28:42
you know what i mean it's like and no one there's no guidebook they don't give you a little dvd on the way and saying here you're a
00:28:48
pop star this is what you got to do so i'm like in the room like what are we allowed to leave and then eventually
00:28:53
that becomes like an angry person and i was because there was points where it was toxic and
00:28:58
it was difficult don't get me wrong we had the best time ever we did but there was moments where
00:29:05
through you know i mean there's a there's a big movement on it at the moment and people overworking and
00:29:11
like you don't realize you have a choice at that point but in those shows sometimes they don't
00:29:17
give you the choice because you want the dream but you have to realize there is a sacrifice for that you know
00:29:23
rather than it just and like i say i never want to come on on these things and whine about stuff like i made my own choices in life
00:29:28
you know being an alcoholic doing whatever else that weren't my choice so you know it it doesn't have to be
00:29:34
whiny but it's just like there was a sacrifice and i know what i did sacrifice to be here you know everything what i've come to
00:29:42
learn everything in life all the good [ __ ] comes with a cost oh and i've i've learned just from my
00:29:48
own experience like my success my sex is very different from yours we went very different paths
00:29:53
but came with a clear cost because you can't go from being uh 18 year old kid that's like nick in
00:29:58
chicago town pizzas to feed himself to being to building a company by 300 million within six seven years
00:30:05
what a great sentence that was by the way like i was a [ __ ] loser like loner like i was in my room
00:30:11
first summers upon summers on my own for just you know because i couldn't my parents weren't talking to
00:30:17
me they said don't call us and to go back to university years on my so he wasn't speaking to my family no friends because i couldn't even
00:30:22
afford to see him that was the cost for me and what that made is someone who again isn't very social on the weekends
00:30:28
i spend 99 of my time alone and people are like oh my god i'd love to be i'm like well
00:30:33
and then and then i have the same thing you have which is my brain is always has a thousand tabs open and i can't just go
00:30:39
and sit on a sun lounge during tan like tan tiny nights what's my brain
00:30:45
gonna do then sitting in the bathtub as well but that's it you're right and you know what like think about someone as simple as
00:30:50
someone who like plays guitar the amount of time you have to spend alone with that instrument you're gonna be missing a couple of other things that
00:30:56
happen in life exactly and that's what it's like exactly and that's for us for us as teams growing up you know i think people like i said i
00:31:02
started at 14. that's nuts like i was in my school i remember very clearly the moment that
00:31:08
that that x factor like moment happened when i was when i was younger and i was playing football on a field and we had an all-girls school right
00:31:14
next door to us so i'm just playing football like it's a normal day i've had a few like people like shout me out on the street where i was like oh i'm you know
00:31:20
14 years old the whole school from the other school is on the fence i'm like banned from
00:31:26
that field for life at first how does it feel it was wild
00:31:32
but what their people dialed yeah it was it was amazing i was like i went from like zero to like i was the you know it was i
00:31:39
think i always say it's people i wasn't world famous when i was 14 but i was famous within my world so it's like well i didn't leave
00:31:45
wolverhampton and everybody in wolverhampton knew the hell i was so i couldn't go anywhere so you know and at that point i can't
00:31:51
afford a security guard i'm not special enough to have any of these like additives i'm still on the 7948 to
00:31:57
you know my little my little christian school and then what happened over time is and
00:32:04
you know people are people they they do what they do but there was there was one significant moment for me where i knew that i lost it and i wasn't
00:32:11
gonna go back on x factor to be in the band which would have been wild by the way i would not have been here right now um
00:32:17
but there was a moment i was in a mcdonald's with like a new girlfriend i had at the time and it had been two years since the show and i noticed my
00:32:24
shows decreased in number decreased in capacity and decreased in wages so i was like
00:32:30
down and out at this point so i've had fame and lost it and i'm like nearly 16 years old so that's difficult
00:32:37
to deal with anyway at that age and then i'm in mcdonald's because everyone still knows who i am i'm sat there and i literally remember
00:32:42
about take a bite this nice juicy burger someone on the stairs goes x factor reject and the whole restaurant
00:32:47
looks at me right i'm 15 years old and it was just horrible what a scumbag thing to say
00:32:53
i know but it was like that's that's the thing it's like it was almost like a shout out to say oh you think
00:32:58
you're special but you're still here in the most wolverhampton i guess you've
00:33:03
got to understand where that comes from though from that person what's going on well someone said something to me today it's not what you do it's what's happened to you
00:33:10
which i thought was quite i like that quick interjection as you know you'll sponsor this podcast
00:33:15
and i've been the biggest evangelist and customer of the brand for for many many years i drink cure for a set of very clear reasons if i
00:33:23
don't drink heal i skip meals because i'm very very busy and the meals that i end up skipping it for um don't tend to be the most sort of
00:33:30
nutritionally complete fuel is nutritionally complete it means that in sometimes in 20 seconds
00:33:35
i can get a meal in a bottle that tastes great that's going to take care of my health and for me
00:33:41
as you would have known if you've listened to this podcast for some time my health is my first foundation today you'll have released a new product
00:33:47
it's the huel protein powder 20 grams of protein in a hundred
00:33:52
calories roughly tasty as [ __ ] and it's vegan highly highly recommend trying it i've
00:33:58
tried it i love it and i'm going to evangelize it for about it from now on so tell me what happens from there so
00:34:03
you i don't want to go too much into it because i know you get asked this stuff all the time so we don't want to go over old tracks but that was your first sort of
00:34:09
experience with fame you then kind of you feel it declining ice cube says some stuff to you in the mcdonald's
00:34:15
live life carries on and then uh yeah on the point because i really want to get to this i know you're working on this nft project
00:34:21
yeah and it's based around this feeling of being it's based around the idea of this it was it was like a i want to call it a
00:34:28
syndrome i don't know what it was someone told me something about fame you enter fame the age
00:34:36
you you leave fame the age you entered it so for me that was 14 right so i'm screwed like i'm the 14 year old forever child
00:34:42
so that was always a big fear of mine that i have to grow properly now from what one direction gave me i grew
00:34:48
massively in some respects to the point that yeah i mean you all have experiences when you have conversations about business deals and i'm the director of
00:34:55
like i was a director of a half a billion dollar industry at 22. and i'm like what the hell does that mean all it meant was i got to sign 10 times more forms than
00:35:01
anybody else wild right so but then in other things like if i'm trying to pay car insurance
00:35:06
i'm useless so that you don't grow in other aspects of your life because you have other people do crap for you like picking up my post
00:35:12
i'm the worst person in the world i just forget about it you know that must lead you open to be to be taken advantage of
00:35:17
right because they know that there's some things you don't know like you're saying oh yeah yeah that's it and you're you're
00:35:24
deluded in your growth of whatever but this is where the nft idea kind of came from and it but it first started as this
00:35:30
this little drawing that i did and now i wanted to make my own character because i was like i'm really good at drawing
00:35:35
but we have printers for that i don't need to be a printer so then i was like i need to make something so i made this like ethereal creature that was i wanted to
00:35:44
3d print and stick in a uh like crystal glass box and the idea is that he's depressed
00:35:50
that he's it's like a wasp in a beer glass type thing ah okay magical creature can't get out sort of thing so then we kind of came up
00:35:56
with this peritoneus idea around fame and what does that lead to and for me the way it speaks to me and
00:36:01
the way the art speaks to me is that i was afraid of the idea of losing
00:36:07
you know having keeping the child with me i was trying to it was like a monkey on my back trying to get rid of him whereas for now the idea for me is more
00:36:14
based around you know how do i enjoy that because what i love when i see my son
00:36:22
is that he can be whatever he wants in that moment you know i'll be over the house and he's like you're a bad guy i'm a good guy
00:36:27
and i'm like that's great and then the next day he's one of them girls from frozen no no i'm
00:36:33
doing this it's magic powers today and i'm like wow like we lose that and that's a lot of my problem when i'm sitting doing a task or
00:36:40
whatever the belief system in me has been trodden on through life that much that now i've forgotten about that
00:36:46
they have the ability to do whatever the hell they want so why would you ever want to lose the child within you in that sense
00:36:52
wow and that's coming out as an nft soon coming out as an nfc uh in like two weeks i think it's quite
00:36:58
scary it's wild because i just made it i made it one day in lockdown and then sent it to my manager and we enjoyed the
00:37:05
pieces it was but then it just kind of grew into this thing at the same time that nfts were growing right that's the thing i mean have you
00:37:12
how many people ask you what nfts are by the way um so many of them a lot of people like
00:37:17
i'll get dms all the time and you know i'll try and describe what it is but i think if you say something with enough conviction people just believe it anyway
00:37:24
so i'm like you know broccoli yeah i'm like no i'm just saying anything yeah i know what it is i've studied it i'm working on a few projects at the
00:37:29
moment with nfts but um i'm just you know with all these emerging technologies and whenever something's new
00:37:35
i'm kind of like probably a little bit like you and christian i know you're very very entrepreneurial and investing a lot now um i just want to
00:37:42
be in there like a sponge so i want like a a flag in there just so i can learn so
00:37:48
yeah well i mean i think that's a common misconception about this sort of thing as well is that you always come up with the idea
00:37:56
that's coming to you rather than like you say being that sponge in the middle of the room if you're not part of the million dollar conversation you were never part of the
00:38:02
[ __ ] conversation and that's literally it's like be in the moment like rather than trying to make decisions or
00:38:07
you just have to learn about that stuff and you don't have to know everything you just have to know someone that does know something you know what i mean yeah
00:38:14
the thing is you get older i think the wildest thing is that people those phrases that they used to say to
00:38:19
you as kids like when i had my child my mom's saying to me oh like you're growing up so quickly like blinking
00:38:24
you'll miss it and like you're a kid you're like yeah i'm sick so i chill out but then as you get older you're like watching it and i watch my song i'm like oh my god
00:38:31
yeah he's telling me off now they grew up so fast my niece i mean
00:38:36
i've got a child of mine according to the daily mail but you know just like this where did you get those legs from
00:38:42
um i've been teaching mine to swim i mean we had a really good conversation today and it's like it's a whole new
00:38:49
learning experience once again there's no handbook and you're just like out there on your own i still feel like a child in so many
00:38:54
ways as you've learned from my nfc yeah yeah but i'm watching him and like i played him a trailer a movie trailer it was
00:38:59
this simple i played him trailer for a thing and we watched it and we both like i like that let's stick that on it was just disney's
00:39:05
rayo and the dragon thing it was about you you and your newfound friend and uh
00:39:13
so we sat there and then i turned the film on and the first shot of the film was from the trailer he's going why are you playing this
00:39:18
again i'm going no no it was we watched a trailer no but why is it on
00:39:24
the tv again and it kept like bits get flashing and i'm like oh my god this is not helping me so then i'm like okay let me how do i
00:39:30
explain this i was like you know like if we like have a plate food and like i feed you a little bit and then you go oh and you don't want it then i take it away or if i feed someone
00:39:36
you go oh yeah and i give you the whole thing i was like that's like this and then he's going yeah but why are we watching it again
00:39:44
you must do you get scared as a dad about doing the wrong thing or the right thing because you say there's no handbook so you're like
00:39:49
if you feed him this or if you say this he's going to start saying the c word at school like i do oh when he did swear
00:39:55
once i was happy i wasn't around for it because i couldn't be blamed and there's a way to root out find out whose swear word it is
00:40:02
because it wasn't a combination i would use oh really so i knew it wasn't me mummy who was it who was it we won't go
00:40:10
into that you said i don't normally loop back but there was something you said which which again my mind thought oh that's
00:40:15
really intriguing is you said that you weren't going to reapply for the x factor potentially where do you think you would
00:40:22
be and i'm going to ask you various iterations of these questions where do you think you'd be in your life now
00:40:27
if you hadn't have applied for the x factor so you won the business plan that's what yeah yeah that's what you really want to hear do you want to hear this yeah you know hey i'll lay out for you
00:40:34
this is this is my this is actually my like plan b systems range child okay
00:40:40
so i got a job at the same time this is really wild work experience week at school my dad
00:40:45
worked at a factory and i was always obsessed i was like this is adult lego and he built aeroplanes i was like this is amazing i'm gonna do that
00:40:51
so i went and i built airplanes and they had like a little collection for me different i did like 400 quid and everyone i was like what did you get
00:40:56
paid for your work experience so i was like nothing i was like oh i got like 500 quid but in the middle of my work experience i went on x factor so it was
00:41:02
almost like i was trialing my two lives almost like uh what's that sliding doors film or whatever it's
00:41:07
called a butterfly effect or oh yeah yeah so my thing was i got a job and
00:41:12
secured one there for an apprenticeship which was like 22 000 a year or something and then i was like right i know my
00:41:18
sister paid 60 pound board at the house so if i just like board at my parents house it's 60 pound in fees
00:41:24
then i can save up the other money enough to buy my first house and then rent it out all right so i was gonna collect the
00:41:29
rent buy another one and then move into that one and then it was almost like a conveyor belt system nice you had it all
00:41:35
planned out i had it ready to go and then x factor room i mean you say your your favorite tv program was dragons then mine
00:41:41
was i watched help my house is falling down and location location location and stuff like that when i was a kid i was like
00:41:46
obsessed yeah and then for enough my manager does loads of properties are you in the odds
00:41:51
are you into property i love property really i i wasn't very good at it at the start but i'm getting better
00:41:57
you need to teach me some stuff because i have zero properties i'm renting this place um i was going to say to you um with them
00:42:03
when you do a show like x factor what a lot of the sort of people that come out the other end of these shows
00:42:08
often say especially i mean very few have had the success that you've had right but i can imagine and i think i've i
00:42:15
think i might have read this somewhere before maybe from little mix is you you feel somewhere in you that
00:42:22
you still have something to prove because talk to me about that i mean because
00:42:29
your success was is just stratospheric it's like in a league of its own it's wild so to hear that you feel like
00:42:35
you still have something to prove is surprising well i mean i think there's a problem that
00:42:40
us as people we all want something that we feel like we made but the older i get and the more things
00:42:46
i'm like privy to you don't really make anything on your own ever like i think it's just about ed
00:42:52
sheeran the rights on his own even he doesn't write music on his own so it's like for one that feels a little bit like that because you were in the band and i
00:42:57
suppose for each of us as members we wanted to see what we could do and i you know i'm really happy with my success
00:43:03
as well what i don't know is how how much of this idea was was mine
00:43:09
to go with as to be in the music career you know you worry about like the life that you might have missed over i was gonna do this whatever
00:43:15
i always quite like the idea of the army as a kid that's something i definitely wanted to do sas yeah i love the idea of the army and
00:43:22
boxing's another one i mean i've been i've been fortunate to have a bunch of fun stuff um but yeah i think you
00:43:29
always feel like you have something to prove and i think the end of the day you're just you're only really proving it to yourself because no one else really cares everyone else just looks at
00:43:36
you as what it is and it's not that you want to beat your brand because no one will beat our one direction not one of us in our
00:43:42
lifetimes in another lifetime somebody might might crack something i mean bts have had a really good go at it they've done
00:43:48
really really well um but we were like the new wave of the beatles and even still people just didn't say we
00:43:54
beat the beatles you know what i mean you're never gonna yeah it's different different era exactly and that's that's what happened
00:43:59
with our fame as well we were just that of this era same with justin bieber right who the hell has beaten that run come on they
00:44:04
won't they'll someone will be different exactly exactly so it's just like i think in the end it's you're only like
00:44:10
fighting against yourself i sound like rocky barbara now i'm really intrigued by all of that
00:44:15
because you you also have these five so you have five band members they all go off and do their own solo careers
00:44:21
and i always are you do you compete against each other do you try and stay out of each other's lanes are you thinking about oh my god i don't want to
00:44:27
be seen as doing you know what this person's doing i think we did compete with each other at a point
00:44:33
but i think it's all fairly like it's laid out as it is now and we've all had our success in completely different
00:44:38
areas and also musically we didn't really go down the same route i think harry harry's done amazing you
00:44:45
know i mean first album he had the one song off which is really really well and then his second album he found himself and that's that is your
00:44:52
awakening his eyes that's when it really clicks i don't feel like i've had that moment within me yet i've written some songs recently i'm
00:44:58
really proud of and happy with but i don't feel like i've had that moment yet stripped that down came out and it was we did a billion
00:45:05
streams and i could have never asked the town i could have never asked for that in a million years but when i was making strip that down i was
00:45:10
a box of frogs i was nuts it was wild i didn't know what the hell was going on and also i didn't know what the
00:45:16
what the you know the hot potato i just landed on me are we just a billion streams it's like it literally is like hot potato one
00:45:21
minute's here the next minute it's gone so you know i'm excited to see what the next
00:45:26
the next six months of this brings you know um i'm excited to see to see we have
00:45:32
some a really cool song in the pipeline um which is really exciting wow really exciting
00:45:38
then the song one of the first ones i've actually written myself um
00:45:43
with some other people i didn't write by myself um but it's yeah the first one i've really liked and i think i got so used to carting
00:45:50
around other people's songs and not embedding myself creatively in what i do because i was scared to find out who i was
00:45:58
so it's almost like that's the thing when you're selling yourself you have to know what the hell you're selling and i'm you know i'm sure
00:46:03
most people wake up every day going i don't know what the [ __ ] is going on and you have to fail to find that out right yeah
00:46:08
because you're gonna have to try some [ __ ] experiment oh my god and it's like so say like you're like geeky kind of
00:46:14
growing phase between say 16 to 21 if you're lucky it might
00:46:20
last a bit longer if you're [ __ ] you i did that in front of everyone and there's some terrible outfits
00:46:25
there's some terrible haircuts you know and that's some great that stuff is there forever i've gotten away with a few heck yeah
00:46:31
i feel like you've had some great ones the short haircut i think not a lot of people can pull that out i gotta have like a melon head thing at the back so i
00:46:37
can't i can't do that people think i'm an alien but um no you've had some good haircuts i've gotta be honest when i read something about um strip
00:46:43
that down you said that you were almost scared of the success just as much as scared of
00:46:49
the failure oh man i mean no one trains you for the moment it goes right right so you leave one direction you've got
00:46:55
your big sort of debut single coming up and you're scared of the success i was really worried because i know what that can
00:47:02
bring to you what can i bring well i've never i i finished a day one of the one days
00:47:08
that stuck out for me the last few years where i did a whole day's promo in new york and on the night time i was on i think
00:47:16
it's an andy cohen show or something and they had a drinking game and someone asked me a question about one of my
00:47:21
ex-girlfriends and i did not want to divulge what the hell went down and it was a drinking game so i i was like they were
00:47:27
like we can fill it with water but me being me was like no if i'm playing i'm playing for real so i'm like necking tequila oh gosh boom
00:47:34
and i'm wasted i get home at half past one bear in mind i started at like i want to say eight o'clock in the morning i was then asleep and i woke up
00:47:42
at half past three for vocal training to be in central park at seven for grooming at five and in
00:47:47
central park for seven o'clock bear in mind i've been to bed at half past one so i know what it can bring in that
00:47:52
that crap will send you insane i don't remember some days i was here like that will send you round the bend
00:47:58
but it's the you if you want it if you want it it's out there for you you can go ahead and take it but it's like you have to be
00:48:04
a workhorse to want to to do this and i think a lot of artists would say that coming out of it but i don't think it's
00:48:10
you know it's unfortunate the demand in our industry and also the demand of how quickly people receive information now
00:48:16
you know our 30-second time like goldfish time span that we've got now
00:48:22
i mean i definitely have that i'm the worst and it went really really [ __ ] well
00:48:28
it went really well and then it was like you know the problem we had was it was like having a baby the thing
00:48:34
was nine months to get the number one in america so it took nine months to work the record just to get the number one
00:48:39
so if you can imagine singing the same song every day for nine months and having like one or
00:48:44
two songs to back it up with it was like pretty like
00:48:50
i'm sure somewhere that must be like put down as a method of torture yeah i can imagine you must but this is the
00:48:55
job man and it's like it's listen the first few shows of anything are amazing and then after a while it's like you'll find bits that will like great on
00:49:01
you and whatever else but you know i've been so lucky to have the career that i've had and and
00:49:06
you know let's hope for more of that that's that's what i think at this point but it's learning how to deal and
00:49:12
channel that and what's your relationship like with the rest of the boys i'm sure you get asked this all the time
00:49:18
great with most of them um i think everyone's settling into themselves at this point i
00:49:23
know i am for sure um uh i had a lovely phone call from harry the other day was checking in on me and
00:49:30
and it's almost like some people got sixth sense for you right that you're going through something so they'll check in and he's very much like that he's a lovely lovely
00:49:35
boy i i love him to pieces and then um louis i speak to a lot um and we've always had a really
00:49:43
really close connection and the funny thing for us and i've said this a lot but we we hated each other at the start but
00:49:50
it's almost the people that you grow closest to you know i mean i'll say it because he bought it
00:49:55
quite recently but you know the whole thing gonna talk about the reunion like for me i'd rather be talked about it sooner
00:50:01
rather than later because i don't want to it's tough touring touring that that
00:50:06
sort of record and then and i enjoyed touring for what i enjoyed it for but there's parts of it that really really [ __ ] me up man in a sense i'll be
00:50:13
honest with you um but none of us talk about it it's like his taboo subject like oh we can't get back together what do you mean oh my
00:50:18
god like us in the same room what the [ __ ] is that about what [ __ ] you up about touring uh
00:50:24
my dad said it from day one lonely hotel rooms man getting locked in that room is not fun when you've been exposed i mean i've come off gigs before
00:50:30
i did a gig in in dubai i was really worried no one was gonna show up it was one of my first
00:50:36
solo gigs by myself and i suppose i'm uber self-critical i'm always like i don't know what the hell is going on
00:50:41
so i get to this park and the capacity for the park is like you've never seen i'm looking at like a
00:50:47
park i'm like the hell and i'm thinking we're getting paid a lot of money to be here this is gonna be really embarrassing if nobody shows up
00:50:52
and i don't know anybody in dubai i can't even call 10 friends to be here so i'm like at dinner i'm not eating my
00:50:57
food and whatever else then i get back to the gig and there's people chanting and kind of liam
00:51:02
and i'm like okay there's people here oh my god i can chill i get out there and i'm like awash with these sea of people
00:51:08
and i noticed the sound systems hella quiet behind me this make any sense i'd get through the gig and you autopilot
00:51:13
the hell out of it when i got off stage they're like oh you broke a record you're on a list with michael jackson there's 110 000 people i'm like
00:51:20
and i was like i i sh you know i got back to my hotel room and i was sat in my room on a chair like this
00:51:26
and i was about to go to the maldives with uh with cheryl and bear and i'm like i don't think i can go to the maldives
00:51:32
right now i can't move off this chair how did you feel on that chair shocked why like for to go from like i don't
00:51:38
know who's going to be here to then i looked on the thing and it's like oasis robbie williams
00:51:44
all these amazing you know ac dc all these outdoor gigs amazing outdoor gigs and then just me and michael jackson and
00:51:50
he's in there like three or four times he's you know he is the list but i was on the same list i'm like what the
00:51:57
it can't be easy like go with a white hotel room it's almost like you know like in that
00:52:03
in a movie where they throw a grenade and he goes and then everyone's like and you still feel like you're like oh my god like
00:52:09
yeah because i've done 9 000 50 15 000 in sao paulo i mean i did a talk with obama that's me name-dropping oh wow
00:52:15
but um but it it they're not chanting they're all very quiet i mean they clap
00:52:21
at the end but but how did it make you feel you just feel like a diff i can completely relate because i i was
00:52:28
thinking last year i lived in new york city but i was i was speaking around the world 50 weeks of the year so i was home four weeks
00:52:33
and yeah i go back to the hotel room sometime you know i haven't eaten because of the adrenaline um and yeah it's very lonely and you're
00:52:39
like were youtube and what do i do now yeah but 110 000 people screaming your name
00:52:45
and you're performing i had the prince or the king or the something to buy dancing to strip that down oh wow i need
00:52:52
to get that one country conveniently you can't strip it down which i thought he was up dancing yeah we were talking about the touring
00:52:58
here the touring park really messed up so the hotel rooms yeah a return of one yeah you know i i
00:53:03
saw like a thing of people being like angry at x factor these last few weeks and i wanted to say something about it i don't really know what to say on my
00:53:10
terms because i feel like there's obviously going to be some people in there who are bitter
00:53:15
and you sign up for this show you don't really know what the hell you're getting yourself into but i would agree and i we've actually gone out of our way as a
00:53:21
team to make this possible for me and i think a record label just bought
00:53:26
into the idea of what we've made and i was the guinea pig right so pick the craziest person in the
00:53:32
room to start with that's a good place to start and uh we made this this thing to like
00:53:37
care for people in the industry because we don't have unions we don't have people to look after us
00:53:42
and i was a kid you know i was a child when this happened to me and i'm very fortunate to still be here today to be
00:53:48
able to tell this story but for most people they feel abused or or something in some
00:53:53
sense so i just think that there needs to there needs to be a self-care
00:53:58
a care system within these shows because if they're gonna move people through these shows and use
00:54:04
them to make television they can't just like let them off afterwards and i could never watch x-factor because i was always
00:54:09
heartbroken because i'd been the guy who made it really far and then got let go and it ruined me when i was 14 i
00:54:15
was crap at school depressed like it ruined me at one point but i've also
00:54:20
then been the guy who i think my dad actually came out and said it in in the thing we were filming once he was like
00:54:25
you've been told no more than any winning x factor contestant or like any successful exercise thanks
00:54:31
dad it's great to know what an unusual experience wild
00:54:36
if you were to tour again would you do it differently would you have i don't actually even know how i would tour again i i really want to and and
00:54:43
like i want to put i i always said throughout this solo career i'd let my song book speak to me
00:54:49
and i don't think my songbook has necessarily spoke to me enough to get me off my ass to go somewhere yet i only became a solo artist because i
00:54:55
had to strip that down i wasn't gonna do it i was gonna leave it alone music yeah i was gonna leave it hell alone i was
00:55:02
like survive once thank you very much but now i'm back in why
00:55:07
because the song i knew it was right it felt right with the song whereas i haven't had that and this this year the song that we have i feel really
00:55:14
right about so i would rather let the music do the talking than me come out and try to force him i mean
00:55:20
he's such a fast-moving industry these days it's one of the biggest races in the world right if we had a start line for how many musicians there are
00:55:25
trying to make it right now and who's going to outwork the other one we'd need a very big track um so it's just kind of got to that
00:55:30
place that we don't need any more useless music in the world in my eyes it needs to mean something
00:55:36
said there's something you know in the previous answer that you've said online which is that you're lucky to be here one of the
00:55:43
most moving things i've ever seen which honestly disturbed me and stayed with me my entire life was that
00:55:49
avicii documentary and the way that his management were pushing him and he had social anxiety
00:55:54
and oh god it just haunts me you know what with those things
00:56:00
i mean i've spoken to managers who have lost people in different and and you know i've definitely put strain on a lot of people in my life in the back you see
00:56:07
it let's be like a basically different person i don't like talking about it um you know i i think it's hard
00:56:14
it's just as hard for the team around you at points as it is for you because we didn't all know how the hell
00:56:21
we got here everyone's kind of looking around like we don't really know how the hell we got
00:56:26
here so where's the next move and there's always someone who will pull you through i've been very very fortunate now with the people that
00:56:33
i had to pull me through my my bits um and it's you know and that's why i say this care system is so
00:56:39
important right we music is the lifeblood of a lot of our things it's the background to our movie scenes when
00:56:44
we're sat in the back of the car looking long fully out the window but then we don't want to look after the thing that's kind of feeding us that
00:56:49
much you know what i mean so i think for artists in the sense they do need that i feel that it doesn't need to get lost
00:56:55
in translation in other things it genuinely needs to be a care system but then everyone's over therapy these
00:57:01
days in that sense anyway but it's like if you want it it should be available you know is that was that is there a
00:57:07
moment where you look back and say that was the lowest moment for me that was the pivotal moment a few of them i was worried how far my rock bottom was going
00:57:13
to be where's rock bottom for me and you would never have seen it i'm very good at hiding it no one would have ever seen it
00:57:18
but rock bottom i mean i don't even know if i hit it yet you know what i mean i feel like it's
00:57:24
like one of those little graphs you see when it's like oh we hit the the uh you know my biggest support the
00:57:30
market support yeah it'll be there at least a support level oh my god you know it's the same thing
00:57:35
so it feels like i can even make that choice now and and pick my last moment as my rock
00:57:40
at the bottom or i can make a new one and make a whole new low that's my choice you you said online that you were
00:57:47
you had previously been masking your emotions and feelings and this was something that you were trying to trying to get over
00:57:54
um said you you tried to learn to deal with your emotions instead of masking them
00:58:00
how important has that been this is something i really struggle with because anyway because i was ceo of a company you know 27 years
00:58:06
26 27 years old 700 employees and that's wild wild is it all around
00:58:11
the world these adults are double my age and i have to be right my business partner
00:58:16
he'll tell you yeah he fell away right alcoholic upon all this weight depressive anxiety
00:58:23
fell away so i'm carrying him because i need because we're we co-founders we're seen as a unit so
00:58:31
when he's out in the street and i don't he won't mind me saying this because he's been drinking all day with the team and he's stealing bottles of wine off
00:58:37
other people's tables just total strangers and he's doing things in public which you get arrested for
00:58:43
with parts of his body that i'm not going to talk about when he's doing those things i'm getting a phone call i'm 26 and i
00:58:49
have to not only manage him in my business partner but then i'm having to manage all the impact that's had on all of our employees
00:58:55
and i felt that i could never talk or be vulnerable you are the thing
00:59:02
i find so that's why i said it's not people don't realize it's not just you know and what happened to
00:59:08
avicii is terrible by the way and i haven't seen the documentary i didn't watch i actually knew someone who knew who worked with him he wrote with me as
00:59:13
well and he said that what he saw was going on was not good but for the most part for a lot of these people
00:59:19
there's usually somebody in there that's not very good but everyone else is trying to help and you
00:59:24
don't see the effect it's having on them as well you live and die by the sword i live and die by myself that's it but the person
00:59:31
who's behind trying to pick up the shield to help me they haven't even got the [ __ ] sword they're just diving into battle for you and that's
00:59:37
the difference you know what i mean it's like people miss out on that bit so it's never just on that person you know what i mean
00:59:43
a lot of my stuff first you know if i hadn't had the help i had i don't know where the hell i'd be right now so that's a credit to you in a sense
00:59:50
it's um it's super super tough i think with the um the bit that i i really respect you for
00:59:55
though is you're very open about it you talk about it you talk about going to therapy you talk
01:00:01
about your lows you talk about being unsure if you would even be here and that's going to do a lot good for a
01:00:07
lot of people i hope so i mean like the worst bit for me is i think it
01:00:12
seems so much as a tool these days to hide behind the points and for me it's never about that situation i'm just telling you as
01:00:19
what it is and it's that's the bit where i think like i say i don't want any of this to get lost in translation i am not
01:00:25
one percent moaning about my life i i love my life at the minute my life's great it's had it's upside it downs but it's
01:00:30
you know yeah i think i'd rather talk about it and it's therapeutic for me and it's been a really good chat by
01:00:37
the way this is a cool chat i like this chat a lot there's been some [ __ ] ones i mean yeah because i'm genuinely asking you
01:00:44
questions that i give a [ __ ] about yeah that's it that's the point though and i'm telling you to think this if it matters to me not trying to hide behind
01:00:50
some sort of [ __ ] thing you know and like i say i think there's
01:00:55
many people who have this effect on on on therapy and all those things and sobriety and i ain't saying everyone at home by
01:01:02
the way should go sober i ain't telling them to go vegan i ain't telling him to do whatever i'm saying this is what i did and it worked pretty
01:01:07
okay for me so far so you know you're making you made a movie you wrote
01:01:13
a movie right i've been working on something for a while and me and christian spoke about a few weeks ago and it's funny that it's based around
01:01:21
aaa but i had a really weird aaa experience the first time that i went into well for anybody that doesn't know uh
01:01:27
alcoholics anonymous right um and i my first experience was with russell brand
01:01:32
which if you've seen game to the greek or any of those other movies i went to his house and i love
01:01:39
russell there's something about that sentence which i can't get over my first experience was with russell brandon okay i mean yeah exactly all right so i'm in
01:01:45
his house i'm in this dude's house and i've only seen him on the movies and
01:01:51
as a comic and i you know my bookie wookie i love that stuff and like so i know a lot of things about him but i'm not i'm a really shy person when i first
01:01:58
i'm like oh my god like so he makes me a coffee and we sit talking about our experiences and i've never seen someone look at me
01:02:05
the way he looked to me like find you a man who looks at you like russell brad looks at you when he's listening to your stories because he like
01:02:10
looks into your soul i was like i was born again and then we went to this meeting it was
01:02:16
an all male meeting and there was everything in the meeting from prison guards to ex-soldiers to ex-cons to post-men to
01:02:23
bin men to everything and then me and russell brand so i'm like this is the weirdest room i've ever been in my life
01:02:29
we're in like some old like community like church room or whatever and then he's he's taking the chair in the room
01:02:35
so my first experience with aaa was like the best experience ever because it was like he was just doing stand up it was unbelievable he was
01:02:41
doing stand-up and then they aimed no it's like they they have one who chairs them the idea is that if they say like oh can
01:02:47
you talk about uh relationships now as affected by alcohol then he'll tell the story of his alcoholism or or you know narcotics
01:02:55
thing and then you're linking from his experience to god oh my god i'm the same as you and that's how it works um i'm gonna give the whole
01:03:02
script away because otherwise i'll tell you the whole film but i i kind of came up with this film and i actually i haven't spoken to russell
01:03:07
which is the first thing i have to do because it was from him that this obviously i'm in a movie right now like
01:03:13
and i'm one of the characters and i'm sat here going i don't know what the hell i'm doing here but apparently i'm alcoholic and i've got a problem oh my
01:03:18
god what's going on um the walls are closing in yeah exactly the wolf wall street was in
01:03:24
the corner over there i don't know it was wild so it's i'm excited about it and i think it's really funny i showed
01:03:30
it one of my friends um and she was she really liked it she left a lot of it so we'll see quick one as a serial
01:03:38
entrepreneur that's currently building multiple projects across multiple industries everything from the marketing industry to blockchain
01:03:44
to consumer goods everything one of the things that has been a lifesaver for me and again a company that i reached out
01:03:50
to to evangelize about on this podcast because i'm a loyal customer and they ultimately ended up sponsoring this podcast is fiverr.com
01:03:57
f-i-v-e-r-r what that site allows me to do is extend my capacity across all of my
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01:04:35
ceo and send me a screenshot if you end up using the service one of you is going to win something very amazing what else is um
01:04:42
what else is going on in your life in terms of like business and investing and projects and stuff like that when
01:04:48
you think about the direction of travel that you want to take over the next 10 years which direction do you want to focus on
01:04:53
and go in you're investing tons you've got your own businesses now everyone's going to say the same thing to you every time you have an interview
01:04:59
they're going to say when is the reunion i mean i've had wild my business learning curve from the day i first got
01:05:07
my like first check and i went to the manager i'm like what do you invest your money in because he had the biggest garden in london i
01:05:12
was like he's a good place to start he had the biggest home garden which you don't think he does anymore steve do you
01:05:18
okay apparently he doesn't do more but apparently he did when i was younger he did so i'm like trying to ask him like what
01:05:23
are you investing he's like on about gold and whatever else then you learn about safe haven currencies and all these other things then i started to branch out a little bit more a little
01:05:29
bit more um then i went on to properties which was always the one i wanted to do and then when i was 19 i nearly bought
01:05:37
a fighting agency which was fun a fighting agency bammer i got bought into by bama when i
01:05:44
was 19. so i roll up to this in like my like burberry coat thinking i'm an absolute bad man because i'm about to buy like
01:05:50
england's ufc oh okay okay fine right so i go to this arena in manchester i'm
01:05:55
looking capacity he's not great everything else but i'm looking at all the stuff and you're a kid so i'm a kid
01:06:01
and i mean i remember being in front row of the fight and some guy behind me obviously doesn't like the band very much like sit down shut up whatever else
01:06:07
every fighter then after got out the ring and shook my hand and i just kept looking behind thinking are you still got to say
01:06:14
do you know the guy with a scary clown mask you just need that other guy's nose off like he's my friend he's myself i was like yeah exactly and
01:06:20
then and then i went met everybody afterwards and i got into his company but unfortunately the deal wasn't great i
01:06:25
put it through one of my investors that i have and then it's like people try to catch you out and this was always my biggest problem i
01:06:32
very fortunate to live in some lovely places and every time someone would show up at my door to do something and the job would cost 500
01:06:39
pounds they would try and charge me 50 grand because the house was big and i'm like learning early on like and
01:06:44
but don't get me wrong i've spent some money on some stuff i shouldn't have spent money on you and me both um
01:06:50
uh yeah i mean i'm going to go into detail today lots of money like my thing i always say to people is like i will tell you
01:06:56
where i lost as much as i tell you where i win you can't make mistakes though right yeah hundred percent and like my point is i'm not i'm gonna do
01:07:03
better than whatever my last mistake wasn't sure that's the point if i trust myself enough it won't matter in the long run
01:07:09
when you think about money though you know you didn't come from money you didn't come back
01:07:14
when you started i read that your dad had tons of debts and stuff like that and so you your relationship with money will
01:07:20
be very very different as you've gone over the last decade um than a lot of other people because to
01:07:25
you it's probably something that you thought was you built up more when you're younger right yeah and i think as a kid growing and especially if you like rap
01:07:32
music as well it becomes a computer rap music made me spend a hell of a lot of money um i would say yeah i mean i have one of my
01:07:39
friends over recently and my family my dad made decisions in our house of what was going on and stuff and
01:07:45
he did them for the right reasons so i stand by that and he doesn't need to feel any pain in that whatsoever because
01:07:50
he wanted us to go on holiday and go to america and he would bury himself and he was so stressed he said at one point in his life
01:07:56
he woke up and he couldn't remember his own name because he was so far in debt that he was only covering the interest which i can't imagine how that feels
01:08:02
i mean it probably feels exactly same how i feel some days with the other side of it which is wild and we won't get into that but at one point in my life i mean my
01:08:08
friend um professional poker player now but he was quite a rich kid at school because he was like playing poker
01:08:14
since he was like 13. so when we would go down to to get breakfast i couldn't afford it
01:08:20
and he'd buy me like 20 p's worth of toast and i couldn't afford it
01:08:25
nice which is wild so then when you get money i didn't know my family were poor but they were [ __ ] you know we were not in the good place
01:08:32
so how did that impact your relationship with money when you finally got it um were you a splurger would you
01:08:39
points yes on certain stuff i would but not i'm more of a warrior than i was a splurger i was like because of where i lived and
01:08:46
where i was from i knew it could disappear so i was always really cautious about protecting what i have and only spending
01:08:51
what i earn that's money and happiness talk to me about the link a lot of people there isn't one yeah so
01:08:57
it's a myth so i think money i think the way to think about money and i mean there's a beautiful thing i had as a kid
01:09:03
and when we used to go to church the woman got a five pound note out and she said uh have you ever read a
01:09:08
five pound note and i was like no i haven't i was like five like now and she's like uh if you read it it says
01:09:13
i promise to pay the bearer of this note five pounds some money as promises which i thought was great but if you develop on that
01:09:19
and conversations i've had with people money is is care and the ability to relax on certain
01:09:24
things life's going to kick you in that nut sometimes and you're going to need something to help those around you
01:09:31
so it's never so much been for me about spending money on me and sometimes i have to remind myself to shop because i'm terrible and i'm
01:09:37
one of those people who like will go on a shop fill a basket and then just not do the rest of it i leave it there and i'm like oh yeah i
01:09:43
feel like i bought something now that's good at least i did something fun with what i'm working my ass off for but i'm not like that so it's like in terms of with
01:09:50
things with my family and different things that happen like my dad's debt for all those sorts of different reasons i'd rather have it on hand and if
01:09:56
something god forbid happens to any of us you know my family are the last people that ever asked me for anything i'm the first one
01:10:01
to go this is why we do what we do you know you have a son beautiful child
01:10:10
um he tells you that he's gonna apply for axe factor someday this is a
01:10:15
tricky one this is a trick i think his mom's hoping he's going to become some like yoga person
01:10:21
his mom's very chill these days um he says i'm getting instagram and i'm going to do x factor what'd you say to him i mean
01:10:28
he's got the best advice from the parents around him for the long run i guess but i don't know i i think is that one
01:10:34
obviously we protected his identity to start off with and that's not being pretentious or anything other than the fact that
01:10:40
i want to give him a chance to be bare first before he has to be oh your mum and dad are so-and-so you know
01:10:46
and i made my choice to be where i was at 14 15. so i figure he can make his own choice then too we'll have a good
01:10:51
discussion about it a long discussion because i know what effects that can have as well um
01:10:57
but i would never stop him doing something he wanted to do i'd let him know the risks and i'd tell him what was going to happen
01:11:02
you know and and and better that than you know my parents didn't really ever experience
01:11:08
any of the things i've experienced before i got this they had no idea what i was signing up for would they change it probably not
01:11:14
but they would change some things that happened in between across the way i bet 100
01:11:19
so he says he's going to do the show you give him the disclaimer and the warning um what would you rather he did if you
01:11:27
could as a dad you could be that authoritarian you could choose would it be to walk in
01:11:32
your face something that he enjoys do enjoys doing every day and i mean that's i say that lightly because i think
01:11:38
everything that you do depending on what kind of person you are becomes annoying at a point doesn't matter what
01:11:44
job you do it's not how i really got to do that again you know like my dad i used to think my dad's job was the best job ever like build an airplane
01:11:49
adult lego like i said as my dad's like do not end up in that bloody factory that's the last thing you're going to do
01:11:55
um would you want him to follow in your footsteps though uh i hope we did it better than i did
01:12:01
really yeah i don't know i think um sometimes you can get lost in the connection part of
01:12:06
this game and i think that's always been a difficult thing for me to connect with people because i put so many barriers up before you get to actually what's going
01:12:13
on that you you know it's almost like hurdling them in a way why do you think those barriers are up
01:12:18
protection i think it's protecting people from what's you know if you turn up in the disguise every time then you can always blame it on the disguise the
01:12:24
moment you're not wearing one you've got nothing to blame it on and what what is it that your your
01:12:31
manager over there stephen would know about you that you probably i know in terms of
01:12:36
like in a box in terms of like what you know someone who knows you very well would um say about you that we wouldn't
01:12:44
expect just from what we see online you talk because you talk a lot about this wearing this mask and you know being
01:12:50
wearing a disguise even in your relationships i'm really trying to understand because we've been we've been here maybe now for two hours whatever and as time goes on
01:12:57
and on and on you get to know someone a bit better you know and like my barrier goes down a bit yours goes down a bit we get more
01:13:02
comfortable and i'm like who is that person behind there that people don't know because
01:13:07
i don't know i mean i think in certain part for me having to translate it for music is difficult and i am opinionated to an
01:13:16
extent sometimes they can get me in trouble with some [ __ ] and i hate that that really does annoy me because it's like everyone's into hard to so they want to
01:13:22
say about something right you can disagree on you know yeah but i think for me i hide behind humor a lot
01:13:28
i make everything i can funny and then that will leave it to not be as offensive okay interesting
01:13:37
i really want to i really want to get an idea of when you you look towards the future professionally what are the what what is the
01:13:43
positioning that liam payne is is hoping for you i guess you know from what you've described for bear
01:13:49
you just want to be doing things you enjoy yeah i think so and i think that's you know there's been a slow road up to that point and it's just doing things for the right
01:13:56
reasons i mean we're in a beautiful age right now you are your own press which is actually great for artists if
01:14:03
we learn to do it the right way this whole thing i used to hate was going on and off
01:14:08
talk shows going on and off and doing this doing everything else that seemed to be for everybody else and it was promo in your record but then the record bites and you get
01:14:15
nothing out of it and it's like everybody else got there five minutes but the record just didn't do what it wanted so it's like
01:14:20
you know i want to experiment with the way i promo my records so make sure that the record is taken before i go and
01:14:25
halfway around the world it's going oh look this is this great song and then no one hears it oh great well you know what i mean but it's
01:14:31
like almost you know i think the music industry and listen up people i think the music industry is in a place where people
01:14:37
need to throw out the old the old you know marketing format for these
01:14:42
things and it's almost like when you see companies that try and do tick tocks don't do it like that because we can see
01:14:48
right through what you're doing you've made a tick tock and haha we're supposed to laugh but it's not funny and it's the same for the music industry
01:14:54
it's like there's a new way that people are promoting things now you know billy eilish came from a bedroom and did this and did it
01:15:00
and it worked out really well but it wasn't the same format that you used back in 2010 even i mean
01:15:07
the way the industry's changed while i've been in it it's been wild and i've only been here i've been here a decade just over a decade now but it's insane but i just
01:15:13
think record labels and and sometimes people spend budget on stuff that they don't
01:15:19
need to do you have your format you have your fan base grow it organically properly
01:15:24
not not through you know i don't know the way we're doing things
01:15:30
at the moment because sometimes it's just i don't know why the hell we're doing this social media your relationship with it
01:15:36
that's been my industry for the last decade um good thing bad thing what's your relationship with at the
01:15:42
moment i think it's good i think it's a difficult thing to manage
01:15:47
i love the idea of what tik tok does but for me i don't get sucked into my
01:15:52
phone with like watching stuff constantly and you do and you need to be on your on your like learning stuff and and you
01:15:58
know it's start funny video whatever else but if you're for you page it's just like funny dogs and
01:16:03
yeah it's [ __ ] then you're in a what the hell's going on you know that's what that's what it does to me i'm like god really so i i don't know it's um
01:16:12
i've seen a lot of different technology coming in and go out of my industry from the time from twitter and you know i honestly
01:16:17
think there's a strong case for saying that we owe a little bit of our success to the way twitter was because worldwide trends weren't a thing
01:16:24
before one direction before one direction one x factor whereas on that night we could trend everywhere
01:16:29
and then people would go oh my god what's this so you know magically oh the biggest band on xbox was the same time twitter came out it doesn't it's perfect
01:16:35
storm stuff you know um so i think it's great i think we have a funny way
01:16:40
like i say with the coins that you know the markets just had the most weird few
01:16:46
months of people making hoe coin hog ho coin plus ho coin extra ho koi in this and there's 90 of them and i'm hearing all of my
01:16:53
friends going oh did you buy doggy doo doos 21 no no no i bought star
01:16:58
star porn over there you know i mean i'm like what the hell have we do we doing we're talking in code
01:17:04
you know and it's like that but rather than the technology that works ripple ethereum you know things that have
01:17:11
real world application rather than coins that are hey everyone i made a coin that's about you know tripods for cameras
01:17:18
this tends to happen at this i think at the start of these like exponential bubbles you get this and then it weeds out the crap weeds aren't the crowd
01:17:24
that's what's happened recently to me like the markets took a big dip because they're trying to weed out some of the
01:17:29
the stupid stuff and because it's an unregulated thing it's like but i find that that's with the same
01:17:34
with social media we need to weed out the bad stuff and focus on the good there's a lot of debate at the moment because of the racism that some
01:17:40
footballers footballers have experienced marcus rashford did a big post the other day that uh you know how do we how do we
01:17:46
stop people putting monkey emojis or any kinds of like abuse on you know because what happened what i
01:17:51
think is happening from a psychological standpoint is they see liam payne they think he is up there on that mountain that is not a
01:17:57
human being if i throw a rock and i hit i might get a little bit of attention from him
01:18:03
so they they pick up a rock that's why i'm saying to you to start about bringing people up to your level in a way but it's not so much for them that they
01:18:09
could they can get away from from from not saying something about that you know and i mean they have to speak up
01:18:14
about it and it's difficult and we are going through a really fast
01:18:19
moving area with everything in the moment i mean you wish there was an algorithm that would just beat that right but they will find some way of
01:18:24
spelling it differently and it will just you know verify i think they verify everybody's idea i think that would kill 99 percent of it yeah
01:18:30
i actually thought of a thing for this for voting because voting for me was always a really difficult thing we all have our
01:18:37
iphones we have our thumbprint that goes on why can't we verify fire thumbprint to get accounts and then that's on your
01:18:42
record there's that great black mirror episode where that woman's going through life trying to get these likes and she's like
01:18:47
desperate oh i got a please i need to be in this neighborhood but i know i was a five star this morning like oh my god
01:18:54
you need a horrible crap on the way darling i'm sorry but that's what life will eventually be policed by i
01:19:00
imagine in a way speaking of black mirror um i guess this is a strange tangent but um i
01:19:07
i when i had johan hari on the podcast last week one of the key themes here is that all this technology and social media has
01:19:13
like taken the meaning out of our lives because like dating now happens on these screens people order their food by like tap tap
01:19:20
tap and it shows up at the door um even now with covid um we're now working from screens we used to have an office
01:19:26
or you know offices we could go to now it's all screens and it feels like the world is getting more and more so what's amazing is we we
01:19:32
were all so worried about technology pushing us away from each other when kobe hit right yeah it was the only thing that saved us
01:19:38
thank god when kobe did hit which i thought said a lot more about technology's good sides
01:19:43
than they did about the bad sides i mean it's up to you how you use your platform in the end and what you let it do to you like i say i enjoy tik tok but i watch a
01:19:50
few videos and i watch things that people send me i don't really have a for you page i don't really go through it constantly
01:19:56
because there's you know i mean it's difficult with kids and screens man i i have one and i watch him
01:20:02
and i'm like i really want to like you know we go i make him go out and do stuff and sometimes we fall out
01:20:07
big we have rows about really yeah yeah it's not sometimes it's not good um but he's learning with it you know
01:20:13
and it's that it's like you say for all of us we are the guinea pig generation for these things we're learning you know we're the first
01:20:21
yeah we're the kind of civilization to be affected by an algorithm and to be connected what about the people who first experienced hay fever they figured out
01:20:27
their way around that you know what i mean it's like for me it seems like we will figure out the right things of it but it's weeding
01:20:33
out the bad sides of it and what it does like i think if your tick tock screen is advice
01:20:39
and videos about learning stuff or like stuff that you're actually really interested in you enjoy not just random funny crap because
01:20:46
that's what you've been framed was right you want to find yourself watching you've been framed all day really because that's what you're doing
01:20:51
or even worse on instagram keeping up with the kardashians oh look she's amazing she's 10 out of 10. oh and
01:20:57
she's rich well her life's perfect and look at my live site here in my box you should see this pot noodle with my cellulite yeah but that's
01:21:03
actually the illusion because i i bet you of course it's an illusion but it's an asian design to destroy your self-esteem
01:21:08
isn't it it's like yeah but i also think there's i think there's a fine line between these these these things and and accepting and
01:21:16
accepting everybody and all this stuff is is a given but i don't think that in the process of
01:21:21
that we want to lose the thing to settle for ourselves you know there was a big debate about me on
01:21:27
on loose swimming at one point uh i was all right with it was okay i understood what they were saying but i
01:21:32
worked really hard for for what i did in my underwear commercial you know and it was my it did overtake my life in
01:21:38
certain respects yeah for sure it did but it was actually an aim of mine it's one of the only things i've ever aimed for was to try and do an underwear commercial so
01:21:44
i remember i went to my meeting with the company i was working with and they were like no no we don't want to do that with you and i was like no trust me just trust me and they gave they
01:21:50
preferred them they put their trust in me i went and trained my ass off and i got myself where i wanted to be but then it was like people worrying about people's
01:21:57
self-esteem looking at the picture and whatever else i get that but i quite enjoyed the idea of looking at someone and being like wow he's
01:22:02
that's cool man like i'm gonna go and get that why did you want an underwear commercial i just thought i could do it i thought i
01:22:08
could and i wanted to challenge myself in the gym to it was you know it's hard to be
01:22:13
strictly about look in the gym sure not function which that was the bit i battled with myself a little bit but it's like
01:22:19
yeah i i think you know you want to go out and get it going and get it it's it but i don't think we should like i say in accepting everybody let's
01:22:25
not lose the idea of striving for something as well though because it's alright to say yeah i'm i'm perfect was that an advert i saw
01:22:32
somewhere the other day and i thought are we really that narcissistic do we have to call ourselves perfect for everyone to be okay with each other like
01:22:38
and like i might get in trouble for saying some of this stuff but it's just like my thought is like i want to teach the next generation to
01:22:44
strive for things as much as i wanted for them to feel confident in themselves but it's like it's almost like being a
01:22:49
parent right you're gonna mess them up somehow like if we start saying we're perfect i guarantee next we'll be like well that's not worked out well so let's
01:22:55
rewrite the plan on that one you know and it's i just think everyone's you know give each other a break and just
01:23:01
go do what you like have you have you figure it's taken me some time um to try and
01:23:06
understand what it is that actually makes me happy yeah i used to once upon a time when i was broke this is a big one yeah
01:23:12
i used to i was gonna end on this big question but i used to think it was like oh i'll get a lamborghini and then i'll be happy
01:23:17
and like that's why my book is called happy sexy millionaire because i i thought that i wrote in the first page of my daughter at 18.
01:23:22
i wrote range rovers bear in mind i didn't have a drama listen and i was stealing chicago time pizzas at the time um range rover sport will be my first
01:23:29
car i'll make a million before i'm 25. i'll get a really hot girlfriend and i'll work on my body image what i
01:23:34
meant is i'll get a six-pack i just don't want to write that and i thought that is the goal of life i
01:23:39
get those things range rover was my first car i made a mini profit five and i'm like where is the confetti and
01:23:44
if that's not it then what the [ __ ] is life i mean what happens when you wake up and every day is a dream
01:23:50
i mean i don't mess you up i often have looked for the moment in life where i bang my head and i might be in some sort of commerce
01:23:56
dream that i've invented for myself like that i was that messed up as somebody i was like i'm sure this is the simulation guys
01:24:01
like i must have made this wall because i can't be here because of where i was yesterday yeah so it was you know there's those
01:24:07
wild things that if you let them creep in they will f you up bad someone says something to
01:24:12
be quite interesting the other day our view of what we hunt for as humans
01:24:17
has changed we don't hunt for food anymore we hunt for success it's almost like the target went from
01:24:22
animals and corn and food to friggin lamborghinis and
01:24:28
and that sort of stuff but that's what we strive for now at like even point like you were saying earlier about you're you're so glad you're here
01:24:33
because that supplements your food sometimes you're that driven by your drive that you forget you're gonna
01:24:38
eat sometimes and i was the same at work oh my god i'm terrible like i'm known for skipping lunch breaks and working through the day to get home
01:24:44
quicker because i can go without i'll just muster on through but think about that you've gone past your basic survival
01:24:49
instinct to you're writing against your health for like yeah coins yeah exactly but i might
01:24:56
miss this thing good that i'm exactly the same it's something i think that we struggle with in in this respect and it's like
01:25:02
priorities i don't know anything about what makes me happy at this point i really don't really no i really i've i've found a
01:25:08
couple of things that i think i'm interested in but like the thing is once you start making money on these scales and things
01:25:14
that happen it only becomes the drive that's interesting to you if it's gonna fast-forward you somehow and that's not
01:25:20
that toxic thing that we've funny enough we've come full circle but that's it's the same sort of thing and i think
01:25:25
i think it's a big problem for me because if it's not i'm thinking why am i and that's why drawing for me was the biggest one of the time
01:25:32
because i was like this is what children do why should i do this and then funny that i drew something that was about being a child was that
01:25:38
it's weird how things go full circle in that respect but yeah it's i often struggle to get on
01:25:43
with something if i don't think it's forwarding me in life somehow rather than just enjoying the moment or going out and watching the sunset one of
01:25:49
my one of my biggest things made me happy while i was training was 4am getting up in the dark and this sounds like
01:25:54
i am some sort of psychopath and i was but you're like go into the park run for a
01:26:00
little bit and then stand another thing and watch the sunrise was the best thing and you know why it's [ __ ] free
01:26:05
you can stand and watch your sunrise and go wow thanks for another day sort of thing i know that sounds really woosar and like really far out spiritual but i
01:26:11
didn't for me it wasn't like that i just enjoyed seeing how beautiful this moment was and i was the only person in hyde
01:26:16
park running at 4am every single day and it was some of the best time i've had in life
01:26:22
they've done studies kind of linking to what you're saying there where if they give someone a game and i wrote
01:26:27
about this a little bit if they give someone a game that they enjoy people will do it and they'll have high motivation to do it
01:26:33
if you then pay the same person to do the same game their motivation will decrease i have a
01:26:40
big problem with this so you can love doing something and then the minute you the reward starts to become extrinsic which is
01:26:46
external which is money your motivation decreases and this is why it's it's very very important even
01:26:52
for me with this podcast i started it because i love doing it love meeting people when it starts becoming a commercial
01:26:57
thing it moves into being a job and then the science says my motivation will decrease so it's interesting though because you talked
01:27:02
about your drawing you started drawing because it was a and then it becomes this and it becomes an nfc and then it becomes a business and then you know
01:27:08
what to do and then you're like oh my god i don't want to do this i'm here again yeah exactly yeah exactly you said you've not figured out what
01:27:14
makes you happy definitely not yet now that's me in a few years and i i think
01:27:20
i mean so what have what's my conclusive point been for what makes me happy
01:27:26
professionally it's super clear for me now having a and these are keywords so a worthwhile um challenge
01:27:33
that i'm doing with people that i love and i've i i've come i've come up with that based on a ton of things some of the things you've said
01:27:40
fit perfectly into it when you look at tyson fury when he's not in the gym depressed when you look at goal um olympians
01:27:46
whether they win or lose at the olympics they get depression because they've
01:27:52
reached the mountaintop and there's nothing else to strive for and so when i was going through my notes i was thinking the day that someone offered me 50 odd million to buy my
01:27:58
business was one of the worst days of my life and gary vaynerchuk i know you're doing some stuff with him he says the same thing when i spoke to
01:28:03
him on the podcast he was like the day when i buy the new york jets will be the worst day of my life he's
01:28:09
like i hope it happens on my deathbed because not having something to strive for
01:28:14
and this has been a big struggle of mine for men you lose orientation yeah right when you're training for the
01:28:19
olympics we're going this way this is our purpose in life when the olympics is over you ain't got
01:28:24
no [ __ ] direction you're like well i mean look at this and talking about direction my that whole thing for me and that mountain for
01:28:30
me was 1d and music after that like i said you're never going to keep up with what we did
01:28:36
like we sold so many records and we did some we broke so many records we did so many things you know i mean we were in stadiums
01:28:41
every day 94 000 people every day like i was in like i used to break into wembley stadium
01:28:46
on the night time because it was fun and i was smashed and i thought these people aren't going to recognize me i've broken into every major stadium in
01:28:53
america honestly and people used to chase us on these like police like little squad bikes being like hey sir you're not supposed to be
01:28:58
in here and we'd run because it's like a game attack i swear to god it was this one time we we opened up a door and found a zamboni
01:29:04
you know the thing that squashes the eyes and we accidentally emptied the like two tonne of water on the floor i
01:29:10
don't know i might have to pay for that night um yeah so once you reach that height
01:29:15
i suppose one of the reasons i struggled the most out of it is because you're never really going to reach that height again and then it's almost like a limbo and also not knowing
01:29:23
whether or not we're going to come back are we going to come back everyone's asking i don't know and it feels like pressure to come back it's almost like your your parents going
01:29:29
when's baby two are coming you know what i mean now we gotta have another one so that's that's wild to me and
01:29:35
and and having to deal with that at a young age i was i was always going to mess it up somewhere is what i would say about myself because
01:29:41
that's like he says the worst day ever you know the day the band ended i was like thank lord for that and i know a
01:29:47
lot of people are gonna be mad at me for saying that but i needed to stop or it would kill me um and i was like thank the lord and then after that
01:29:54
trying to like funnel your way back into society be like hey guys i'm still here turning up at tesco's in a lamborghini
01:30:00
like an idiot you know i'm like what the [ __ ] am i doing and and for a lot of that yeah i agree with
01:30:07
a lot of that that statement it's you need to have something to strive for and i feel like
01:30:12
i'm finding that a little bit more now and learning to relax yeah you've talked a lot about this
01:30:17
learning to relax learning to just be you know a lot of people be part of the moment man be in the
01:30:23
moment and like i'm like this is [ __ ] but it's true if you can just sit you know and enjoy something for what it is for
01:30:29
five minutes have you tried meditation my ex uh cheryl is very big on meditation
01:30:37
um she sent me one the other day and i got told off for not doing it again meditation gets me in trouble these days um no i need to i i
01:30:44
did a couple of things in meditation with my old personal trainer that were quite good but i just my mind's so [ __ ] busy
01:30:52
i can't shut it up like the moment i'm trying to not think about so i'm like oh yeah but what about if we just did this next week and
01:30:57
i know you'll be exactly the same that's what i'm saying i'm like trying so [ __ ] hard with this meditation let's do it together every morning and
01:31:04
i'm like steve close the tabs and every morning i'm sat there and i love that on the [ __ ] floor of my shower because it's like it's like it
01:31:09
looks like it's from thailand and the water's pouring and i'm like just don't think about anything and then i'm like i'm planning all my schedule in my head
01:31:16
i'm like liam's coming for the podcast man what should i speak to him about and then you know john will be doing the two senses thing where you like
01:31:22
think of like what you can hear what you can smell i've tried all of them i've tried this one with beads where you like hold the beads and you just
01:31:28
like the simulation not bad he's good in the shower as well
01:31:34
if you like close your eyes then pick two senses which you can choose like feel oh interesting so your mind can only
01:31:40
do two senses at once so once you shut some of them off that's technically meditation because you're in the moment
01:31:46
but i still don't feel like i've had that you know i'm not a monk at this point i wish i was i think it's important though
01:31:51
i do i get it i do understand it but i also think imagine if you could get your mind just to be in the present moment fully
01:31:58
and just be if i could have done that at school i hadn't been i've been top of the class but my mind's
01:32:03
going oh yeah what are we going to do lunch time i'm not going to give up so i'm going to keep trying every morning naked on my bathroom floor that's what i want to
01:32:10
keep doing worthwhile challenge with people you
01:32:15
love so worthwhile you define it yourself right challenge means it can't be easy because then your
01:32:21
motivation won't be high and then surrounded by people you love for me that is where i've figured out my
01:32:27
happiness lives and so upon leaving my company that i'd founded for ten years now i'm like learning to dj doing a big theatrical
01:32:34
play at the albert hall which we've directed and produced i'm just trying i'm throwing my hand at everything biotech no i'm the same you know and that's what
01:32:40
i was thinking with you from what you were saying like you're never gonna top that mountain so where's what is the mountain i mean we've done
01:32:46
so many random you know the trip to namibia without was one of the things and we jumped we did a
01:32:52
world first of the canyon swing in namibia which was really crazy and wild and i thought i
01:32:58
might die on national television but that is okay um what else did we do are doing this nft things really interesting
01:33:05
um doing the online shows because we were one of the first people to really like pioneer with the company
01:33:10
you know my team were massive massive behind that um but it was almost like making a tv show every week with new
01:33:17
songs and songs i hadn't sang since whatever songs i'd never heard before and i just would turn up and do it we
01:33:22
did really really well and i loved that um i don't know i've had i think i've had many many many jobs i've got like a
01:33:28
laundry list to the point where when the sensors came i didn't know what the hell to write i didn't want to write performer because i think it just sounds like such a badge
01:33:34
off job of like it doesn't it doesn't encapsulate anything that i actually do i mean we design clothes for hugo
01:33:40
underwear modeling loads of stuff so um do you think maybe you just need a really big
01:33:46
[ __ ] scary terrifying goal that you really care about well i mean someone had asked me to go and do
01:33:51
everest at one point and i was like i don't know i might die on that one but does that not make you a little bit like
01:33:57
right now we've got something to aim for get in the gym yeah i mean in a way i'm already there's something i'm cooking up in my brain i'm not gonna
01:34:02
i'm not going to talk about here okay doesn't come off but i'm cooking something up at the moment it's very dim orientated i'm definitely going to give
01:34:08
it a big big go some things piss me off um interesting um and i thought i just had to do it um the
01:34:15
one thing i say what the one thing i'll say about success and about these things if i'm honest about happiness i think it's learning to have
01:34:21
respect for yourself i mean there's a lot of things people say about don't base yourself on others and never look at other people in that
01:34:27
way which i actually think you need to throw out the window because there's when i was like it's almost weird i learned it from my
01:34:32
character design when i was designing coats i didn't start from nowhere and how i learned to design characters was like
01:34:38
how do you make a dragon have you never seen one i don't know why dragon anyone so they mix it with a with uh exactly
01:34:44
this is funny so they mix it with a lion mixed with a snake mixed with a crocodile mixed with a dinosaur
01:34:50
because they're the ones that we have so they base them off of stuff so i like look at people who are my heroes and i think what is it that i love about them
01:34:57
that i don't think i possess yet and then that's how you know you can respect yourself and i think
01:35:03
that's the most important thing for me is if i get up in the morning i respect myself i go to bed on night time i respect myself i'm happy
01:35:09
but certain things are about my life and even this moment i want to change but it's like christian bale for example i
01:35:15
love his acting girl like go-to and i mean some things he's done his career have been really unhealthy when he did the machinists and
01:35:21
stuff like that but i like that drive and i like the fact that he like buries himself into a role and stuff and i've never learned that
01:35:26
quite yet so that might be one of the things i want to steal exactly if it's almost yeah it's like taking people's stuff but
01:35:32
you're molding it into your own character we were talking today about avatars which is obviously a huge
01:35:37
market at the moment people spend so much time on their avatars on their games when they've started something but in life you are your
01:35:43
avatar you do whatever you want and it's like if you're making your avatar and you've got to go and do 10 free kicks to earn
01:35:49
the next ronaldo but you're like oh i'll get in there and do them the moment someone asks you to do something in life to earn something you're like oh i don't want to do it
01:35:54
but it's like that's why i was trying to think how we explain that to kids but that's the most basic analogy i can come up with you know
01:36:02
children's book children's book i had an idea for children's book actually but we didn't finish it that's a lot of the real things about
01:36:08
look at why he's smiling at me well we've talked about so much today um
01:36:14
so much so much inspiration and you know a lot of the questions i asked are based on so it's amazing amazing conversation and um
01:36:21
i really really respect and appreciate your willingness to be open and honest about all these things because you're helping so many people you don't even
01:36:26
realize it i i do hope so you know and um i think you're just a tremendously inspirational guy you're
01:36:32
you know an incredible entrepreneur which i don't think people are fully um appreciated yet because you're very you're not you've not sort of disclosed
01:36:38
all of the investments and businesses you're involved in but i think that's certainly coming i think we might have a bit of a
01:36:44
a european action culture on our hands if i say so myself um but yeah thank you mate honestly you
01:36:50
know you've been through what is a unique just tremendously unique
01:36:55
experience over the last decade nobody can understand it other than probably the boys you did it with and uh from that you know there's ups
01:37:02
there's downs but this is life right and um you sharing it has brought tremendous value for me so i know it will
01:37:08
definitely bring huge value for our audience so i just want to say thank you no i think mate thank honest this has been one of the
01:37:13
best chats i've ever done thank you i'm excited to see what you bring to the table on dragon's den i can't wait to watch it
01:37:19
i'm buzzing i'm buzzing maybe you can come in with uh some of your ideas though i know i'll come and pitch something can you imagine you should be a dragon
01:37:25
ball style i was actually maybe not coming in disguise we'll do one week where i'll like deck the [ __ ] out of here i'll just come on
01:37:30
and be like right i've got this idea for swimming pools on roofs would you ever be a dragon um oh i think i'd be a terrible dragon
01:37:37
i don't know i feel bad for people and i wanna like oh no just like i'll buy it
01:37:43
i'll take it thank you brother appreciate you i appreciate thank you
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you
