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you'd wake up just with those first thoughts of the day would just oh God I did have a
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fear that I was gonna [Music]
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be one of the most recognizable broadcasters she's become synonymous with the Olympics football and rugby
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I was very male dominated environment and there certainly were people who exhibited kind of machismo and there
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were times where I felt like I was trying to conform but it didn't make me feel very good I wasn't happy
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my dad was an assistant manager of Bradford City when the fire there took 56 lives and we were all there at the
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game that day
00:00:44
all day of my life really because there is a before and there's an after and that day is that day that really defined
00:00:50
not so many things for me can you still remember that you get a phone call from your mother about your brother it's a
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day that I have relived so many times in my mind I can't express how shocking
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that is because he was fine you know in my mind immediately created a narrative that he had been run over or he had been
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in a car accident and then very quickly my mum started to tell me actually what had happened
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before this episode begins I just want to say a huge thank you to all of our new subscribers 74 of you that watch
00:01:27
this channel didn't subscribe before and we're now down to about 71 so that helps
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us in a number of ways that are quite hard to explain but simply the bigger the channel gets the bigger the guests get so if you haven't yet subscribed to
00:01:39
the Diary of a CEO if I can have any favors from you if you've ever watched the show and enjoyed it it's just to please hit the Subscribe button without
00:01:46
further Ado I'm Stephen Butler and this is the Diary of a CEO I hope nobody's
00:01:51
listening but if you are then please keep this yourself [Music]
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foreign [Music] to understand you and to understand the
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trajectory of your life and how you've ended up to be where you are today and the passions you pursued the person you
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became what do I need to understand about your earliest context
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I hope I've gone into that in my book and I've tried to understand that myself
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and one of the biggest compliments somebody has paid me who's read the book is somebody I work with really closely
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and she just said to me I get so much about you from some of the stories you've told as as a child even and we
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can all point to Big incidents that happen in life but actually sometimes it's just the small things that create
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in your mind and urgency or they create a desire or a passion that you know um
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still Burns inside you and you wonder where it came from um so I think you probably would need to
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understand a bit about the parenting that I received and the context of our family life and where when we moved
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around and how our lives were predicated by my dad's job and what he did and the
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background that he had as well he was a professional football player he was a professional football player so that
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means potentially moving house moving City at the drop of a hat this was in
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the 70s and 80s the days where you could be transferred midweek you know it wasn't the transfer window that we have
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now so he would often upsticks and move on and then a few months later we'd follow what does that what does that do
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to a child never really asked somebody that question before when you're constantly moving around as a kid is
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there in hindsight any sort of character change or psychological impact of for
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better off or For Worse I think it has uh there's a double-edged sword to it my
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mum and it depends I guess on the other person in the relationship my mum has always been a very positive person so
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she looked at these things for us as Adventures you know she would say to me and my siblings I'm going to move to
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this place and it's going to be very exciting and you've got to go to a new school and it's a chance to meet new people and so her sense of adventure
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gave us a confidence and a sense that you know it was going to be okay so that
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was great but then what I realized writing the book was that it probably made me a bit flighty when it came to
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friends when I was younger and I look back at I was writing about a really close friend I had when I was 13. I've
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got no idea where she is now and I think because the next time I had to move on somewhere and at that point I was
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actually staying within Leeds but I probably was moving schools I'd got used to going bye-bye and kind of moving on
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to the next place so I was probably experiencing a bit of self-preservation you know not wanting to get too close
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because we might be off soon so we'll have a good time for now were you a confident person when you
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were you know let's say before your 18th birthday would you describe yourself as a confident person self-esteem and yeah
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I would I think that is something that as well that my husband and I talk about this a lot the the greatest gift you can
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give children is self-esteem I think and he left school without self-esteem because he was dyslexic and left without
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any qualifications and it is his big passion that kids should always have the
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star within them found before they leave school whatever that is you know somebody needs to tell you you are good at something before you're on your way
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and um I I feel like I was incredibly lucky because I left school with really
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good self-esteem and I had a childhood that was that gave me good self-esteem you know and I believed that I could
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achieve things and I could I could get on in life and I think a lot of that was my mum's positivity certainly but also
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my dad's example of really hard work and seeing him really graft and really
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believe that you know what you put in you got out and I think that's really rewarding you know that is really that
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makes you feel so good when you work hard and that's the example that he he said to us and I think that all creates
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a confidence because and when I say confidence is not misplaced in the sense that you think everything you do is
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going to be brilliant because you really need to know that you're going to fail at things obviously and that things are going to go wrong and I could see that
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with with both of them but I think a belief that if it does go wrong it's okay because you can move on so I feel
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one of the biggest blessings I had as a child was leaving school with confidence
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thinking then about you saying your dad it's still hard work um kind of into by example I guess because he was clearly someone that was
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incredibly focused and um focused on his career it made me made me think about how we
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often don't get to learn how to take care of
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ourselves from our parents in terms of we learn how to to work hard and strive but the sort of counterbalance to that
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would be learning how to slow down and learning how to um make sure you're okay and I think
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specifically when I talk to people when you know on this show when they talk about their fathers and their and the generations that I've come before
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there's often little understanding of mental health or um burnout or balance or all of these
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kinds of things did you did you see the symptoms of
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that in your father did you see a lack of sort of self-preservation or self-care absolutely
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um he he came from a generation of men he came from a well first let's go back he came
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from a really tough working class estate in Cardiff he was 15 years old when he
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was plucked out of that and given an opportunity to go to Leeds United and be a footballer 15 years old he'd left his
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home and he was living in digs with a with a family who kind of put footballers up and he was you know that
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was a way out for him his dad had been a Docker and he'd owned working Men's Clubs and when I say owned he'd kind of
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run a working man's club his mum had four or five different jobs she was doing night shift cleaning and he had siblings who left school without
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qualifications and did working class Blue Collar jobs and so this was a big opportunity and this wasn't the day
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these weren't the days when the Premier League was in existence but this was still a you know a glamorous route potentially and also a financially
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secure as secure as she can be being a sports person way out of the life that he had and so that was an enormous
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responsibility I think for him and he this was a very a renowned hard odd kind
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of team lead United was this team that you know these players would renounced being very hard on the pitch they were you know kind of very brutal the way the
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style of play and he's in that environment as this little boy you know I look at my son now who's 17 and I
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think about what he would have been like at 15 moving a few hundred miles away from home and so already you're in you
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know at that age you're having to build up defenses and then he was you know totally wasn't good enough and you know
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had to keep working harder and and eventually played there for 10 years and was an international Captain for his country so he did achieve incredible
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things in his career but never stopped you know it was relentless being a
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footballer is Relentless being a sports person is Relentless you're never going to achieve Perfection you're always looking for it so how do you feel
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satisfied you know when do you actually sit down and go that was really good and I suppose there was a sense of him
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always wanting you know keep going keep going and then when you turn to management which he did straight away
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without a break and then he went through he huge huge tragedy he was the
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assistant manager of Bradford City when the fire there took 56 lives and we were all there at the game that day and he
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went to almost every funeral in the space of six weeks after that you know he did all of this and never sat down
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with anybody and took stock or had a counselor or took a break from you know
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from that relentlessness and so I think I understand him a lot better now
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through looking at his life through that prism almost of seeing that and you understand you know I talk in the book
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about him drinking too much and using that to self-medicate through his life and to the point where it became you
00:09:50
know it's been a problem and he's been hospitalized but of course now if he was
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that Sports person now they'll be a sports psychologist at the club you know there'd be somebody saying let's have a
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chat let's talk about what's what's going on why you're feeling these these levels of anxiety so
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um it's it's definitely something that I'm much better at and um but I think
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that's also a product of the age that we live in that we're all so much more aware of the need to stop and the need
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to process when you when you look at his life you've described a few of them there but what what in hindsight now what are the
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needs that you think were unmet in his life and I asked that question because I'm
00:10:30
I'm wondering how one avoids such an outcome you talked about the importance of connection not going home to a bunch
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of strangers being closer to your family are there any needs that you think went unmet that you are making sure that your
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son's life and your life are um full of he was very my dad was always a very
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emotional person so I don't feel like he kept his emotions locked up you know he would in front of us he was he would cry
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you know he would watch something on TV um a usually sport that would make him teary so it wasn't as if he was this
00:11:02
hard person who didn't tell you he loved you he told us he loved us but I feel like as a professional in his job I feel
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like it was it was probably very hard for him to show any weakness outside of the home and show any and when I say
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weakness such a pejorative term because actually it's not a weakness to say I
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think I could be better if I just had this bit of time here or I could speak to somebody or I could you know
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communicate better about how I'm feeling about this and we are talking about a very different era and um when it was
00:11:33
that it's not manly you know it's not it's not manly to behave in that way and we just wouldn't hear those terms now
00:11:40
even though some people still Harbor those feelings perhaps they wouldn't say that in public so I think if he had had
00:11:48
and he did have the opportunity when my brother died and after Bradford to talk to people but he resisted that you know
00:11:54
he didn't want to sit down and speak to a counselor and I think that was probably because of the historic kind of
00:12:00
experiences that he'd had you know it just wasn't something that he felt talking to people outside of the home he
00:12:06
was not comfortable it's that easy to to teach to your kids that idea of sort of expressing yourself and
00:12:13
turning to others for support emotionally is it is it something that you think about when you when you're raising your children yeah we talk about
00:12:20
specifically we talk about it a lot and we hope we lead by example as parents but I'm more mindful of it with my son
00:12:27
because of the male kind of resistance almost to to have that um open dialogue
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but he is a very much a kind of he let's wears his heartlessly likes to tell you stuff and I think that's probably
00:12:38
because his dad is very much like that so he sees his father being like that and feels confident that he can he can
00:12:44
do that and I think once you do that as a child and you realize the reception is
00:12:50
good and you're not going to be judged or anybody think any less of you you're more likely to come back and and do it
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again so I think it is a lot about the home and you know having the example of
00:13:02
somebody doing that in front of you is really powerful and you're never with your kids it's never a finished job
00:13:08
where you feel like oh yeah he's somebody but I really do feel like he knows he can talk to us about anything
00:13:14
and you can talk to other people and he does you know bring his anxieties and troubles home I think the key thing I'm
00:13:21
I find as a parent that you have to remember especially when they kind of turn 13 that age sometimes those things
00:13:27
to you seem quite trivial and you think why are you bothering about that and then you've got to remember what it's like to be 13 and 14 and how huge those
00:13:33
things are and how big they were for you and not just go that really doesn't matter you know and actually it's really
00:13:41
important that you don't minimalize their issues and their problems it's okay for you because you've been through
00:13:47
so many different things and you know it's going to be all right but they don't know that right now so it's
00:13:53
important I think to to just always try and take yourself back to that teenager you've been through so many things and
00:14:00
many of those things I mean so many of those things are in this book the first
00:14:06
half one of the most uh heart-wrenching stories you tell us when you were 19 years old and you get a phone call from
00:14:12
your mother about your brother Daniel
00:14:17
can you still remember that day clearly oh absolutely and when I wrote that
00:14:23
chapter which turned out to be the first chapter in the book because it was I wrote it because I wanted to practice
00:14:28
writing to get myself into the rhythm of writing the book not knowing where that chapter would be and when I wrote it I
00:14:34
realized it had to be the start of the book because it was the seminal day of my life really because there is a before
00:14:40
and there's an after and that day is that day that really defined so many things for me and when I sat down to
00:14:46
write I took myself kind of right back into that day I could I could almost smell the air you know because it was a
00:14:53
bank holiday Monday I was living in a small flat in earlsfield in London and everybody's windows were open because it
00:14:59
was a lovely day and people were barbecuing in their little Gardens and I could smell the coals and I could feel the the air coming through the windows
00:15:05
almost and I was just taken right back into that moment the light everything
00:15:10
that came through the window when I sat on the bed I can see the duvet cover I can you know I really was it was very
00:15:16
visceral when I when I was there uh writing um probably because it's a day that I
00:15:22
have relived so many times in my mind your mum calls you and says from what I
00:15:29
read in the book she's very to the point about what's happened she says Daniel is dead she
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called me and the phone rang and I sat on the bed and said hello in the kind of
00:15:41
you know normal cheery way and she said Daniel's dead and that was you know I
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can't express how shocking that is because you he was fine you know so
00:15:52
there was nothing wrong with Daniel he wasn't ill he'd never been ill you know he'd never had anything wrong with him so it was so just mind-blowing to hear
00:16:01
you know I I my in my mind immediately created a narrative that he had been run
00:16:07
over or he had been in a car accident I decided quickly that he was in a car because he was 16 nearly he was 15 going
00:16:13
on 16. maybe one of the older boys that he knew had just passed his test maybe he'd been taken and I had him driving
00:16:18
down this road that I knew in Leeds and this is where it happened and and then very quickly my mom started to tell me
00:16:24
actually what had happened that was not what happened at all he'd he collapsed in the garden he was playing football
00:16:30
um with my dad and my little brother and my little brother was six sure Jordan and he'd just gone over to get football
00:16:37
and he collapsed and died and that was it that was like that was as much as my
00:16:43
mum knew at that point because by this point she'd been to hospital and she had
00:16:49
um already kind of got home which sounds really bizarre saying that in 2022
00:16:55
because now we would have been on the phone the minute he collapsed you know she would have rung me and said but they
00:17:01
didn't have mobile phones and or if they had a mobile phone it was very you know basic I don't even know if they had a
00:17:06
car phone and so the immediate thing was to get him to hospital and to get an ambulance and so to not include
00:17:13
everybody in that process so I was in London she was in Leeds and then they were at the hospital and then they came
00:17:18
home and it was hours later that I found out which again seemed strange you know
00:17:24
that I I didn't know that this was all happening I wasn't being given a blow-by-blow account of of what was happening so I all I had was at that
00:17:31
point her information which was very scant that something had happened to his heart his
00:17:37
heart just stopped and the Doctor Who was at a e or the emergency section of
00:17:42
the hospital when they arrived happened to be the Doctor Who give him birth to me who to help my mum deliver me and he
00:17:48
was the old lead United doctor and so he'd known the family for a very long time it was a complete coincidence he
00:17:54
was doing a shift on a bank holiday and he just walked out of theater an hour
00:18:00
after my brother had gone in and you know shook his head and and it's that kind of nightmare nightmare scenario for
00:18:07
any any family any parent that you know they just didn't they believed he was going into hospital because he got a
00:18:13
heat stroke or something and they you know in their heads they created what it was a hot day he must have been dehydrated they did not expect that as
00:18:21
the outcome and my mum had phoned her mum who lived in Leeds and and so a
00:18:28
couple of the family members were at the hospital which was also strange you know that they would be there and so it was a
00:18:33
a completely just it sounded fanciful to me I couldn't I couldn't get my head around
00:18:38
the idea that this very fit young man would just collapse and I I want you know I wanted to immediately wanted to
00:18:44
know kind of more but there was nothing you know and that's a really frustrating and and there was no internet to go and
00:18:51
go okay what how could how can a young person die you know how does this happen and we now know of course so much more
00:18:57
about um cardiac arrest and the young and there's a you know uh hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is what
00:19:02
he was diagnosed with and that means basically the heart just stops without warning and we've seen very famous
00:19:09
incidents in in football um Christian Eriksen the Danish footballer at the last Euros collapsed
00:19:15
on the pitch and his life was saved because he was in the perfect place for that to happen there was medical
00:19:20
resource around you know people knew what they were doing and Daniel was in the garden you know there was nothing there so he was he was never going to
00:19:28
survive that but if you you know if you he'd been somewhere where there was a
00:19:34
defibrillator or he was in a hospital when it happened you know he may well have survived but at the time obviously
00:19:40
we just couldn't get our heads around it I read in the book that the neighbor tried to resuscitate him so we had a
00:19:46
neighbor who was a he'd worked on oil rigs offshore and he had paramedic qualifications he wasn't actually a
00:19:51
paramedic but he'd done some quality so my mum thought oh Morris next door he'll know what to do and my mom was when she
00:19:58
was telling me like later and then you years later when we discussed it she was she said she was so relaxed about it
00:20:03
because because he wasn't to her he wasn't dead he just collapsed and you know nobody could think of him as being an unfit
00:20:09
person so she wasn't relaxed and said she wasn't urgent but she just thought Morris will sort this out you know Morris came around and he couldn't get
00:20:16
him back he couldn't get his heart going and but they still didn't use the word I don't think they said his heart stopped
00:20:22
because nobody wants to say that to her parent so Morris obviously put him in the in the ambulance I think knowing
00:20:28
that his heart stopped but my parents didn't know his heart stopped they thought he was collapsed or he was in
00:20:33
some kind of like you know heat induced coma or something had happened to him that that meant he just wasn't
00:20:38
responsive I think that was they thought he wasn't responsive as opposed to he was actually dead and then my dad said
00:20:44
that my dad went with him in the ambulance and my dad said at one point the ambulance went round and bend really
00:20:49
quickly and his arm flew out and landed in my dad's lap and my dad said that
00:20:54
when the arm when his arm landed that's when he knew he was dead because he said he just felt that there was no life
00:21:00
there was nothing that showed any response and so his his Hope was
00:21:07
crushed you you look at your life as before and
00:21:13
after that moment what was life like after that moment
00:21:19
the immediate aftermath like the weeks after something that is is a strange mix of
00:21:26
um activity and energy you know because you're organizing funerals people are kind of
00:21:33
coming hundreds of people descending on the house constantly people coming and and actually there was a kind of
00:21:40
um an energy in the house that it just kept you you just kept going and doing things my mom didn't she very much
00:21:46
stopped and she went into almost a kind of after the funeral she was almost catatonic and just kind of almost sat
00:21:52
and did nothing for about a month but I think I was the eldest child my sister at the time was modeling in Japan she'd
00:21:58
flown home for the funeral but then went off quite quickly afterwards my Dad decided to go on tour with Wales who was
00:22:04
managing so I decided my life in London was over and I was going to stay home and try and help and my mum had a
00:22:11
fledgling property business so I was kind of running around doing errands for her and trying to kind of like keep this
00:22:17
energy going that we'd experienced during the week leading up to the funeral and then suddenly it all starts
00:22:22
to quieten down and people stopped coming round people stopped bringing food around people stopped ringing to
00:22:28
see if you're okay and and then this kind of quietness descends on on the
00:22:34
house and the home and the and everybody in it and and that's when you really start facing grief because grief
00:22:40
um I didn't have room to come in you know in those first few weeks there was no there was no space for it it was all
00:22:45
about energy and activity and trying to do your best for everybody and then the
00:22:51
reality you know just on a daily basis of kind of I mean every day even when the
00:22:57
energy was there you'd wake up just with those first thoughts of the day would just oh God
00:23:02
you know it really is it's happened it's real it's not it's not a dream and getting yourself mobilized but then
00:23:09
after the energy left those oh God this is real those feelings have just despair
00:23:15
and kind of sadness it just took longer to get yourself going and you know you do feel kind of
00:23:20
just sometimes or you did feel immobilized with that sadness and um as a family it just kind of pushes
00:23:28
everybody off into kind of different Corners if you like it you know it's like a sledgehammer coming down and just shattering something that had been a
00:23:34
very tight unit so um it then takes a long long time I think
00:23:40
for things to get back to any kind of normalcy or what you can now call your
00:23:45
new normal are there certain days or certain memories of when things were
00:23:52
hardest for the family do you have like um I was speaking here yesterday to um Whitney from who's the founding CEO of
00:23:59
Bumble and she went through her own version of grief sort of more it's a Professional Grief that she she refers
00:24:05
to and she says there's kind there was kind of a day there was a day when I remember it being the hardest day in
00:24:11
that period and that that represented the bottom and from there on it was the kind of sort of the climb out of that
00:24:16
moment did was there a bottom moment for you was there a day where you think that was the hardest day of all
00:24:22
I don't remember there being one day in particular because even years afterwards
00:24:29
you know a few years afterwards I could find myself sobbing you know over something that had
00:24:35
seen or I'd read or when I started working in Telly I remember I used to be
00:24:40
obsessed when I started working in football with the dates of players births because they would be his age and
00:24:47
I knew that he might be playing in that match or he could have you know and so there would be something that would just
00:24:53
kind of throw me or I wouldn't I wasn't necessarily looking for it but then it would just occur to me that they were the same age and you do that thing where
00:25:00
you wonder well first of all would he be playing in this match what kind of play would he have been I wonder if he'd have
00:25:05
had a girlfriend by now I wonder if he'd have met somebody he wanted to marry oh now I wonder if he'd have children you
00:25:11
know and you do that through the life of the person that you know is no longer with you because you want
00:25:18
to keep their you know kind of their memory life but also I think um you wonder then if everything would
00:25:24
have been different in the family because ultimately my parents divorced and my dad was using alcohol to you know to
00:25:30
medicate himself and you know it's a lot to put on Daniel's shoulders but you think would if he hadn't died would
00:25:36
would we all still be together would this you know with the family unit have survived and so there are those days you
00:25:42
know where just years later you could be flawed so I don't think there was one day but what happens is you start to
00:25:48
notice oh a few weeks have gone by now and life's been quite good and I've been able to find joy in things and
00:25:55
um I've done something and not thought but would it have been better if Daniel had been here and you go through all those anniversaries you know so the
00:26:02
first year of the first Christmas the first birthdays all of those things that's that's the you know getting
00:26:08
through those anniversaries is always tough for anybody who loses any anybody of significance in their lives
00:26:14
um but with him it was things like the 16th birthday the 18th birthday the 20 you know there's all these big kind of
00:26:20
landmark occasions and and then you have your own children and you start to look
00:26:26
at his life differently because when he when my son got to 15 it was nearly 16
00:26:31
my kid's birthday is only a few days away from his birthday I realized when my son turned 16.
00:26:40
I realized that I'd been worried about him not being 16. because
00:26:50
because Daniel never got there so I you know I did I did have a fear that I was going to
00:26:57
repeat history
00:27:05
we never we never taught how to grieve nobody ever teaches us that and I and
00:27:11
it's is it's a shame because it going through your life and not experiencing grief in
00:27:18
some form is would be it's almost impossible to do that and I
00:27:23
think sometimes I I worry about grief because you haven't had enough because I haven't had enough
00:27:29
and I also have this sort of impending feeling that it's coming but when you look back at that moment
00:27:36
um post Daniel's passing what do you think what advice would you
00:27:41
give to someone on how to properly grieve um in hindsight with your wisdom now
00:27:47
about that situation and how it transpired and how it stayed with you is there anything you can say about how how
00:27:52
one Grieves properly it's such a personal thing grief isn't it because it
00:27:58
depends on your relation your own relationship with death you know what what you feel about mortality how you
00:28:06
feel about that person obviously is hugely significant also what they did in
00:28:12
their life you know I find myself I've had lots of relatives I think four who've lived to be a hundred four or
00:28:18
five so I've been to funerals of people at 105 and that was a joyous life you
00:28:24
know and that was a great celebration so I think it always depends on all those factors those relationships I think the
00:28:30
one thing that I would say from our experience with Daniel which was a life cut very short and very sudden I think
00:28:36
it's and it doesn't matter if it isn't sudden and I've wrestled with that as well we all did about Daniel like would
00:28:42
it have been better if we'd known what if he'd been ill and we had time to to get our heads around it would have made
00:28:47
any difference and there's no right or wrong way you know to lose a child there is no easy way to lose a child but I
00:28:54
think counseling and talking to people is really really helpful for me I found
00:28:59
having somebody to process what was going on was really helpful and finding
00:29:05
Kindred Spirits as well you know people who've been through similar experiences and you find them
00:29:10
without wanting to sound kind of too kind of woo-woo spiritual but I think those people come come into your life as
00:29:15
well at the time that you need them and then you've you've got to be open to them being there but when I met my
00:29:22
husband that was something we immediately connected on because he lost a cousin who was like a brother to him
00:29:29
who was um he was in his 30s but had two small children and my my husband was
00:29:34
only 19 when that happened and um that you know that was a tragic
00:29:39
accident and again a sudden death and that devastated his his young world and
00:29:44
I think if you have people in your world who you know you can talk to like that I think it's
00:29:51
really really helpful I was when you were talking about the week after Daniel's passing and the
00:29:56
energy in the house and how it almost hadn't set in because you had this almost distraction there was things to
00:30:02
do there was other things to keep the brain on so many of us I mean we distract ourselves after moments of trauma and grief in a number of
00:30:08
different ways but distraction um doesn't solve the problem does it just kind of kicks the can down the road
00:30:14
yeah and I think although um I did experience after that immediate kind of
00:30:19
Rush of energy there was a silence for you know time for sadness to come in I did default back into that kind of
00:30:26
frenetic energy when I went to University which was only a few months later I became the queen of joining in
00:30:31
you know so I would join every club that I could I was in the drama Society the Union society I would you know can I
00:30:37
join this netball team can I do this can I do that can I've got my degree I'm going to get a job you know I was working at weekends I I filled every
00:30:43
hour and I love being busy but there was definitely a sense of running away from from what was going on I think in the
00:30:50
background of my life on top of that sort of you know
00:30:55
workaholism um how did Daniel's passing change your perspective of Life generally and you
00:31:02
know one I'll be honest when I read um about the passing of Daniel there was this real moment of pause when I was
00:31:07
reading there alone there was this moment of pause at the prospect that he was half my age and he suddenly his suddenly
00:31:16
his heart stopped and it made me think honestly when I was really my brain went
00:31:23
so anyone's heart can stop at any time they can be perfectly healthy they can
00:31:29
be an athlete and their heart can just stop at any time and you sit there like feeling my own heart and I'm wearing
00:31:35
this band though where I've been wearing for the last couple of weeks checking your heartbeat she tells me everything about my heart and this morning it's
00:31:41
funny because it said my heart my H my heart variability scores like way way down typically means you've been doing
00:31:46
something stressful or exerting yourself too much and I as I saw it was like there was like a five minute difference
00:31:53
between This Heart warning that's flashing on my band and reading that in the book yeah how did how did the
00:31:58
fragility of life um and your experience of the fragility of life change your perspective on life
00:32:04
itself I think two things one and it took me a while to correct this I In My Head
00:32:11
Thought although I was busy getting you know getting busy and doing things and doing my degree and everything else
00:32:16
there was part of me that thought okay now terrible things can happen at any
00:32:21
time so my so tomorrow another terrible thing could happen and I was almost
00:32:27
waiting for that next thing because if if he can die and he's that healthy looking and he'd never complained about
00:32:34
any chest pains he was an athlete like a proper athlete you know he just he could
00:32:39
run and run and run if he can die like that well terrible things can happen all the time but I didn't Express this but
00:32:45
it was my kind of there was a feeling inside me that that was possible so so there was that that part of the kind of
00:32:50
the process you know was going on inside me even though I was busy I was expecting a terrible thing and I had this therapist a few years later who she
00:32:57
just looked at me one day and she because I was obviously manifesting this or talking about it again and she said your things happened
00:33:03
and now then she and um that was such a power thing to say because although another thing can happen of course
00:33:09
you know it just it stopped me it kind of really stopped me in my tracks and I
00:33:14
thought I've got to reframe this and stop thinking or stop believing that something else is coming down the tracks
00:33:21
that I'm gonna have to deal with and I'm not a natural Warrior so to be in that kind of state so it wasn't worry you
00:33:27
know it wasn't me sitting there thinking oh I'm not gonna cross the road because the car's gonna come it wasn't about taking risks it was just a self-defense
00:33:33
mechanism ready for it I'm ready for it something's gonna happen and I'm I'm ready I can see you know and so it
00:33:39
wasn't I wanted to stop my life so I didn't I didn't get hurt or you know people I loved didn't get hurt but I
00:33:44
wanted to be ready next time because I wasn't ready the last time what's this what are the symptoms of that of kind of
00:33:50
expecting a terrible thing to happen yeah what are the symptoms so not not
00:33:55
not hanging at the time I was single and I was definitely not attracting the
00:34:01
right people into my life you know and I was I was not going out with people who were enhancing me as a person or my life
00:34:08
because why would I want to have any kind of long-term commitment with anybody who'd treat me well or be nice to me because I was you know I wasn't
00:34:15
going to commit to something so I may as well be with somebody who wasn't that nice to me who didn't make me feel good about myself because because it was all
00:34:21
it was all very you know transient so um I wasn't I wasn't giving
00:34:27
um I wasn't giving myself any kind of chance of of that happening because of my kind of charging through you know and
00:34:35
um and actually okay if you're horrible to me that's fine I've dealt with this I can you know but that's not really good
00:34:42
for your kind of deep self-esteem you know we talk about earlier you talked about how I had good self-esteem leaving
00:34:48
leaving school and feeling good about myself um but that wasn't that wasn't very
00:34:56
um productive in terms of you know good self-esteem so I suppose that's that's how it kind of manifested itself and
00:35:01
again there's that commitment thing to to you know to people and things and
00:35:07
I suppose a feeling that um I was losing empathy and that's really important
00:35:13
thing to to hang on to and um and while I wouldn't have expressed
00:35:19
it as losing empathy at the time it was losing patience you know kind of oh that's that's so trivial but it's not
00:35:25
trivial to that person and having an understanding of that is really important and actually using what you've
00:35:32
learned about loss and grief in a more positive way and not such a destructive way
00:35:38
age 19 Metro FM that's your sort of first step into uh
00:35:44
broadcasting yeah very few people in this in this world will ever reach the
00:35:49
heights that you've reached in broadcasting but so many of them would want to I've met many many young people that want to to get to where you are in
00:35:56
your career um there's not a lot of seats at the table at the very top um so I'm trying to understand in
00:36:04
hindsight how you got to that table and I know nobody ever likes asking me
00:36:09
answering these questions because at some point you're gonna have to compliment yourself to some degree you're gonna have to highlight something that's a good characteristic in yourself
00:36:15
and people don't people feel uncomfortable with but with doing that for some reason but um because we're not American yeah yeah
00:36:21
oh my God Americans if I ask them that question not only do they they tell me but they the story sounds amazing it's
00:36:28
so like chance and they're a hero in the story everyone else British people they're
00:36:33
like well you know ask someone else yeah well how often do you say the word I was very lucky because I was very lucky and
00:36:38
we shrouded in this this luck you know luck happened to us and and there is always an element of timing with things
00:36:45
isn't there and I I got my break at Metro through meeting a guy at a New
00:36:51
Year's Eve party the the winter before I went to University and I said to him I really want to work in broadcasting and
00:36:57
he ran a radio station and he said when you come to Durham which was nine months later make sure you come and see me and
00:37:03
I'll give you some work experience and I'd already done work experience on radio stations and newspapers so so I
00:37:08
thought of that so I waited about 10 minutes after arriving in Durham and I went to a phone box because we didn't
00:37:14
have mobiles and filled it with my Temperance pieces and had to wait for the receptionist to put me through and I remember standing in the rain in Durham
00:37:20
kind of waiting for him and he said oh hello because he was quite surprised first of all I was calling before
00:37:25
freshers week it even started but secondly he was probably going hang on a minute where did I meet you what and he
00:37:31
said okay come and see me you know next week or the week after and we'll have a chat about what it is you want to do and
00:37:38
that was it that was my kind of the person I could just cling on to and get into somewhere that was a professional
00:37:43
outfit wasn't student radio this was a commercial radio station with real people living real lives you know and
00:37:48
and with mortgages so their work was important and um I got there and he he gave me a
00:37:55
chance he trained me up for about four or five months and then by the Christmas of my first term I got my first paid
00:38:01
shift on the radio station and that was the start eventually you've got the breakfast show right when I graduated when you
00:38:07
graduated soon you must have been at Metro for what three to four years by the time so I was three years yeah three
00:38:12
years even at that early stage in your broadcasting career what were you because we all know what
00:38:18
we're good at Often by like comparison of peers this is like where comparisons and can sometimes be quite helpful did
00:38:25
you have an indication of what you were good at as a broadcaster versus your peers what was your USP
00:38:30
um I wasn't necessarily comparing myself to anybody else but what I felt I was getting good at when I was doing the
00:38:35
breakfast show was being responsive and being able to ad-lib situations and find
00:38:41
the funny or find the quirking because on a breakfast show you know you're kind of you're you're riffing backwards and
00:38:47
forwards with your co-host you're responding to the day's news you're talking about things that are going on in people's lives and I realized that I
00:38:53
I could do that quite well without feeling self-conscious about what I was saying you know I was I was able to to kind of
00:39:00
match my co-host quite well on those things who's had a lot more experience than me um the other stuff there's a lot of
00:39:05
stuff that you can learn to be good at you know you can learn to read the news Well which I initially started out doing
00:39:11
the news and you can learn to um edit a story because I was technically having to do you know those kinds of things but
00:39:18
I think that was something that was a little bit more ethereal and difficult to nebulous and difficult to kind of you
00:39:23
know hone and train somebody to do so I I felt like that was something that I
00:39:28
wanted to expand on and that was something that I could certainly take forwards as a quality you
00:39:35
know and it certainly is something that is good in live broadcasting to be able to think on your feet and be you know
00:39:41
able to turn a story into something else and talk to somebody on the spot who's just walked on to set you know all and
00:39:47
fill five minutes of time all those things that live broadcasting needs you know those qualities that it needs and
00:39:54
then eventually Sky call and you end up going to work for Sky Sports yeah at 25
00:39:59
years old I was younger than that yeah because that was a year after I joined Metro which I would have been 22 so 23
00:40:06
so I was 23 when I joined Sky Sports so my dream had been to work in London I
00:40:12
wanted to leave you know the Northeast and find a job in London so when Sky Sports saw me doing touchline interviews
00:40:19
at St James's park because by this point I got a Saturday job because the boss at the stage you could see I loved sport
00:40:24
and he was like why don't you do touchline interviews at St James's park for us um on a Saturday then Skye had
00:40:29
seen me on the touchline and decided that they needed more women in front of camera and asked me if I'd be interested
00:40:35
in going down for a screen test so I had basically a month where my life just
00:40:41
turned because I had this sliding doors moment where I made the call straight away and as you've discovered with the call to jars I wasn't shy of picking up
00:40:47
the phone and making the call I made the call the next morning to the person I've been told to phone and then within a
00:40:52
couple of days I was on a flight to London to go and see the the boss at Sky and do the screen test and then within a
00:40:59
few hours I think of getting home that night I got a phone call asking me if I'd go and work there and
00:41:04
negotiating a package to go and work there so it was a really really exciting kind of period of my life that I you
00:41:10
know hadn't really planned I didn't know how I was going to get to London I was I was looking for
00:41:17
um adverts in kind of uh broadcast and various places you know trying to find something that could get me there and I
00:41:23
rang up an agency a talent agency I looked at people whose careers I liked and thought Oh I wonder who they're
00:41:29
managed by I'll ring them and they were very sweet and said oh well dude come back to us when you've got some experience because I had no experience I
00:41:35
had this little TV job in the Northeast and I just didn't know how I was gonna get there but I knew I had to for things
00:41:42
to progress for anyone that's listening to this that has big dreams of you know going into
00:41:47
certain industries especially Industries where there's seems to be quite um at the very top it seems to be quite
00:41:53
a small table when you look back at your own journey and the decisions you made the Small Things in hindsight the
00:41:59
moments of sort of serendipity um what advice would you give to someone
00:42:04
who is trying to get somewhere High we're at the very top of that tree is a is quite a small table what are the
00:42:10
things that you did right maybe accidentally or intentionally I think what I did through University
00:42:16
and that could be could have been Post University I worked so hard to I did
00:42:21
shifts that were very unsociable I was doing three o'clock four o'clock in the morning get UPS to go and do new shifts
00:42:26
and I did late night love shows I did all the kind of things that you know are the unglamorous end of that job because
00:42:33
I was being offered the shift and I took them and I had to juggle that with my law degree but I I innately felt that it
00:42:39
was almost like I was doing an apprenticeship in what I wanted to do at the same time and as well as earning me
00:42:46
you know some cash as a student is always handy but I was getting this experience and the hours and hours and
00:42:51
hours of doing that meant that when I did get the opportunity at Sky and I I was felt confident about picking the
00:42:58
phone up because I knew I'd had all these hours I wasn't just somebody who'd done a few shows and you know even if I
00:43:04
just had the one year working there at post-grad I don't think I would have felt as confident but I knew I'd put
00:43:10
those those hours in and I felt I wasn't going to be um I mean we've all got an element of
00:43:15
imposter syndrome but I didn't feel I was going to be out of place because I knew I'd had all that that experience
00:43:21
those hours so I think you've got to you've got to put the groundwork in you know and not expect things to happen too
00:43:27
quickly in the sense of you know don't don't over Force those those things that
00:43:33
you'll feel the times right you know you feel like okay I knew I was ready to move on about around that time but in
00:43:38
that year of post working full-time it wasn't towards the end until towards the
00:43:43
end that I really felt I was ready I knew that all that stuff I was doing was really important in building the the you
00:43:49
know the building blocks of your of your career so I think it's really important to to put those foundations down and
00:43:56
you'll always benefit from that you know it's never a waste of time taking an
00:44:01
opportunity from somebody saying yes to something I said yes to things I talk about them in the book that I was nowhere near in that year that I was
00:44:07
working in uh local radio I didn't know how to do it but I said yes to stuff because I knew it was going to give me experience and and then obviously when
00:44:15
you find yourself somewhere like Sky which is I was at the very much at the bottom of the wrong you know the ladder and I was learning again I was starting
00:44:22
to I knew a whole new set of experiences then you have to have that um hopefully
00:44:27
I had a little bit of kind of humility and such okay I need to learn I don't know what I'm doing here and and then
00:44:34
people will you'll find people who will be your teacher in that environment so I think it's really important to I always
00:44:40
like say to my kids about you know it's the expression your mum would have said to you kind of like you know don't run
00:44:45
before you can walk right and um and it sounds really boring because everybody wants to run everybody wants to get there quicker and and you can get there
00:44:53
quickly but you've just got to put some hours in first and I think you'll stay there longer this episode is brought to
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quick one from our longest standing sponsor hero I I can't tell you over the last I'd say over the last really it's
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00:46:17
can start to feel the things you're putting into your body more and more and more um and if I if I put something into my
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body especially things like gluten if I put those things in my body I feel them tremendously the next day my energy levels my sleep and everything in
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between huel has been probably the most important partner in my health Journey because
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consume it and get the benefits of it too so if you haven't already tried your do so
00:46:52
your next period of life was at Sky um which was as you write about it in the
00:46:57
book a very sort of male dominated egotistical environment
00:47:03
how did that shape you how did that impact you go walking into Sky back in those days I
00:47:09
mean everybody in football was a man right you say in the book I think you say 90 of the like people behind the camera were men
00:47:15
um it was a very male dominated environment and it was obviously very early in the infancy of sky sky was only
00:47:21
a few years old at that point the Premier League was only a few years old so a lot of Sky's early recruits if you
00:47:27
like were from Fleet Street the hard-nosed journalists who kind of done you know pounded the shifts and gone
00:47:33
kind of you know to all the matches over the years and from and again a very male-dominated environment but it was
00:47:39
tough and I've talked to a lot recently to people about the 90s not to do in my book but just about how it was there was
00:47:47
this thing happening in the 90s that you you've kind of went along with a bit and actually I don't really feel comfortable
00:47:53
with I'm not a ladder you know I'm not there was this ladder culture and there was a drinking culture and
00:47:59
um it was all about the music of the time and everything else and I think football was in this Center of all of
00:48:05
this as well because of the the newness of sky and the newness of the Premier League
00:48:10
um and it would have been easy I think to to lose yourself in that and there were times where I felt like I was
00:48:16
trying to conform and you know be the person that you know was able to banter
00:48:22
with the lads and have that kind of you know ripping and all of that but it didn't make me feel very good you know I
00:48:27
didn't really like that person so um I was I wasn't completely at ease
00:48:33
with myself I would say there you wrote In the book that you didn't like yourself very much during that period I
00:48:39
didn't like myself very much but I always seem to forget that the next time I was drinking the anger disappointment
00:48:45
and self-doubt that such destructive Behavior brings was coming home to roost
00:48:50
yeah I think um I wasn't very healthy I'd gone from being somebody who had run
00:48:58
half marathons when I was in Newcastle a really brilliant diet to suddenly I was doing late shifts eating badly drinking
00:49:06
more alcohol than I'd ever drunk when I was at University you know I wasn't massive Drinker and suddenly it was a
00:49:12
bar culture you know it was kind of after a shift to go for a drink shifts would finish at 10 you shouldn't start drinking at 10. you know it's not a good
00:49:19
time of day to start drinking weekends I knew nobody when I first arrived in in
00:49:25
London so it was um you know what what's what's everybody doing how do I get social life you know
00:49:31
where do I go what my you know so you'd be invited somewhere that would involve being in a bar or being involved in a
00:49:36
club and um and so I yeah I was slipping into kind of bad habits and um I think
00:49:43
there's part of me feeling like though although this this is what it is to be an adult you know is this how I you know is this how I behave now
00:49:51
um and I was there was a good 18 months really where I was putting on weight didn't feel good about myself at all and
00:49:57
then that it becomes a self-filling prophecy almost you know and you kind of go oh well I've I'll put on weight now I
00:50:03
may as well just carry on eating the Magnums I may as well carry on eating the um you know drinking the Chardonnay and
00:50:09
um I wasn't yeah I was I wasn't happy you know I didn't enjoy that but um but
00:50:15
it just it kind of became a habit I guess you know in the talk about the 90s it's quite
00:50:21
hard for us for someone like myself to imagine the culture in an office and in a working
00:50:28
environment at that time when I was reading some of the um the quotes from the book about how you would walk through the office and
00:50:34
someone would shout at you about who which football player you've been sleeping with or someone comes up to in
00:50:39
the office and makes a comment about your ass until he tells you that it's going to drop by the time you're 30. those things seem quite Unthinkable in
00:50:46
the modern I know especially somebody of your age and when I told my daughter who's 17 she's just you know it defies
00:50:53
belief for her and yet when I speak to people my age they reminisce almost
00:50:59
about I spoke to an actress the other day who's same age as me and she was talking about things that people would
00:51:04
say in auditions even and you know um and I think it's it's really positive that you think that
00:51:11
is so Unthinkable you know because that means things have changed and I think
00:51:17
it's um amazing actually kind of that for me it doesn't seem that long ago but actually you know it's a few decades ago
00:51:23
and Society has changed our expectation of each other has changed our expectation of how we're to be treated
00:51:28
in the workplace has changed and that comes through representation as as well because those offices were very male
00:51:35
dominated and I think they were very there were probably a lot of men in there that weren't comfortable with that but they didn't feel they could speak up
00:51:42
because of that culture that was there and that's not healthy for any business or any environment you know I always
00:51:49
quote um I made a documentary on women in football and I remember Karen Brady saying to me that who is the CEO of West
00:51:56
Ham and her saying to me I never invest my own money in a company that doesn't have a woman on the board this was about
00:52:01
14 years ago 13 years ago I made this documentary and she said not because I think that's gonna you know that I'm
00:52:07
trying to make a point but I know that that board is going to be more representative in terms of how it views its business how it views its future and
00:52:13
its budgets and everything else that is plans for the business so I always remember that because when I look at
00:52:18
that office I think well how could this how could that environment ever really have different voices and different
00:52:24
opinions and because the big loud ones the big loud kind of more misogynistic ones were dominating everybody else and
00:52:29
and people didn't feel they could speak up you know and didn't feel they could they could talk and it didn't look like Society it didn't look like a football
00:52:36
Terrace or it didn't look like um or how we perceive a football Terrace to look now which is people from different ethnicities and people from different
00:52:42
backgrounds and different um sexual orientation all those different things that um that that office didn't
00:52:48
represent and that office was as I say Not Unusual that would have been across
00:52:54
many Industries how things looked so I think it's it's really important that we
00:52:59
have now more representation diversity in everything that we do because of that but um at the time that was really
00:53:06
normal so you know that wasn't um I didn't feel like I was in an
00:53:11
unusual place I didn't feel like oh I wish I wish I went somewhere else where it was a bit you know people were a bit
00:53:16
kinder your podcast is called midpoint your book is called the first half
00:53:21
there's a theme going on yeah what why
00:53:27
um midpoint came about uh as a lockdown project something I've been intending to do for
00:53:33
ages and had the time and it felt like I was in the middle of my life and it happened while I was in a pandemic and
00:53:40
it felt very much like a time of introspection and you know asking yourself questions about what next what
00:53:46
does it mean to go through this period where a lot of people start to experience um you know the midlife crisis a lot of
00:53:52
people refer to which you know obviously in the sitcom that's where the bloke gets you know some leather jeans and a
00:53:57
Harley-Davidson and runs off into the sunset with somebody 25 years younger than him or you know or um Shirley
00:54:04
Valentine flies off to Greece and finds a lover you know so you get these kind of very caricatured ideas of what midlife is but for most people you know
00:54:10
they stay with their families and they you know they work through something that happens to them and what I discovered with women is uh menopause I
00:54:18
didn't really know anything about it going into lockdown and then I learned a lot about it and then I was having one and and that is a huge topic of
00:54:25
conversation that you know rightly has grown and become something that people are more aware of but also it's for me
00:54:31
it was more about the I started off wanting to talk to people who'd done something different in midlife so my first guest was John Bishop who at 39
00:54:38
was selling pharmaceutical drugs and at 40 was a stand-up comedian which was a massive career change and I like the idea of doing something really different
00:54:45
in the middle of your life and not feeling you have to keep going until the end with the thing that you've gone on
00:54:50
you know the path to do and it's it's obviously fanciful to say that anybody can change their trajectory in midlife
00:54:56
because circumstances will dictate that you have to keep paying your mortgage or you have to keep you know food on the
00:55:01
table so it's not possible just to stop and start something else but I do like the idea that you can you can make a
00:55:08
change because we're all going to work so much longer than our parents you know had to or our grandparents had to just
00:55:14
the way society's going and you may as well do something that you really love and feel nourished by so midpoint came
00:55:20
about really because of all those kind of things that I was thinking about it was a self-serving project you know it
00:55:25
was like I want to talk to people are doing interesting things um and it's been really a joy to do you
00:55:32
know and to to kind of you know what this environment's like it's a brilliant way to have a conversation and you get
00:55:37
to talk about things that you find interesting and then the person you're talking to Sparks interest in you as
00:55:43
well so um I'm about a six Series in so I'm nowhere near as you know prolific as you
00:55:49
Stephen but obviously it's um it's a kind of side hustle yeah well this side is a side hustle in my bedroom so it's
00:55:55
crazy it's crazy um you know now we've got these cameras which is mad yeah on that point of the midlife crisis thing
00:56:02
is there any truth in that are there regrets that show up in you know that you've seen from your conversations in
00:56:08
midlife that that were maybe not as obvious beforehand priorities change values become clearer
00:56:14
there is definitely something in it in in the midlife um change you know I think the physical
00:56:21
changes that all women go through it shouldn't underestimate kind of how that can affect them and their families and
00:56:27
and that's why a greater understanding of that is really important especially you know women who've worked so hard in
00:56:33
their careers and they you know the stories and the anecdotes you hear about women just pulling themselves away from it because of the physical effects of
00:56:40
menopause and I have a really high-powered friend who's that one of the top she's one of the top hedge
00:56:45
funders in the country sits on the board of one of the biggest and she said to me well I'm going on testosterone because
00:56:51
there's no way I'm working this hard and letting a bloke come and take my job so testosterone is one of the hormones that depletes in in um uh midlife and women
00:56:59
so if you go on HRT you could take progesterone estrogen and testosterone but people don't realize women have
00:57:05
testosterone you know that they they need it and I was laughing because she was like as if I'm going to kind of give
00:57:10
up this but actually a lot of women do give up that career because of the feelings that they have of anxiety and
00:57:16
low self-esteem and you get brain fog there's so many things physically that happen to women at that time so I think
00:57:22
that has an impact obviously on on lives but also um and then what I realized when I
00:57:28
started looking into how many relationships break up but not because actually those two people don't love
00:57:33
each other anymore but because if the woman's going through all of that and the man's feeling kind of like she doesn't love me anymore what's going on you know and they the relationship
00:57:39
breaks down because of a lack of understanding and communication but also I think because you've done the same
00:57:44
thing a lot of people have done the same thing for nearly 30 years you know if they've been on a traditional career trajectory and then they feel bored or
00:57:52
they need something to kind of you know give them a kick and then there's the mortality question as well because you
00:57:58
suddenly look at your parents and a lot of people in that age the parents are you know in their 70s or maybe 80s and
00:58:05
and looking like they're nearing the end of their lives and that makes you question you know the rest of your life so there are so many issues that come up
00:58:12
and time to think as well because your kids are getting to an age where they're
00:58:17
not the same kind of Demands on your time through them so they're they're flying you know they're doing their own
00:58:22
thing so you have time to think and space to think so it is definitely it's
00:58:27
a thing that's why I think think why I'm so intrigued by the topic is how do I design my life now at 30 to try and
00:58:35
um limit the effects of that mid midpoint um
00:58:40
confusion or dissatisfaction that people often experience and that you've kind of
00:58:46
accounted there one of the things that I suspect is going to help is for me to stay really in touch with the things
00:58:52
that I enjoy doing that I know um in no way pay me or provide for me professionally just like DJing and so
00:58:59
for your fulfillment yeah you know in life is not just from the things that
00:59:04
earn you cash you know and I think the older you get you realize how important
00:59:10
those other things are the Hobbies is that you know if that is a hobby or if it's volunteering you know and I don't mean
00:59:16
that just kind of working in a you know help the ages shop but giving your talents to other people mentoring people
00:59:22
and we do a lot of Kenny and I do a lot of stuff with various Charities that we feel you know very passionate about or
00:59:28
um giving your time up to people I think those things are really important because as you become more financially
00:59:33
secure it is your time isn't it that's the most valuable you know kind of thing that you have and um and if you can give
00:59:40
your time to other people like that it's it's very very rewarding and and then you find you know kind of passion
00:59:46
projects as well that things that you've felt in the past you haven't had time to commit to and I want to know Kenny my
00:59:51
husband is really into being outside you know he's he's loves making things and I'm like building things and doing
00:59:58
things so he will literally be on a zoom doing his business call and then you'll realize he's got half an hour and he'll go out and he'll be on his track to kind
01:00:03
of raking something and building something and you know that for him is how he is just loving his kind of midlife balance you know but he couldn't
01:00:09
have done that 10 years ago when he was first really building his business he wouldn't have you know he just wouldn't
01:00:15
have worked so I think you you get to a stage where you also give yourself that time to do those things and allow
01:00:21
yourself you know and you'll be you know you'll have so many other interests business interests and things that have along the way have you know kind of
01:00:28
given you great satisfaction so I'm not worried about you having any kind of mid-life uh crisis you said you
01:00:34
discovered you had you were going through menopause um at the age of 47 yeah I realized I had perimenopausal symptoms because I
01:00:40
didn't really know what it was I just felt this sense of like oh nothing feels as exciting anymore nothing feels as
01:00:46
joyous I'm not getting the same satisfaction out of stuff and and that was so not me and then I did one of my
01:00:53
podcasts I was with Mariela frostrop and she started talking about the menopause she's a bit older than me and I was like oh my God these things these things you
01:01:00
talk of I recognize them and afterwards she recommended you know a go speak to this doctor that she had seen and
01:01:06
um and sure enough I was bang in the middle of you know what what was the physical the physical manifestation obviously of the menopauses eventually
01:01:13
you stop menstruating but before then you have all these other things going on low self-esteem anxiety brain fog you
01:01:20
know and this is all to do with your hormones dropping off all the jobs that these hormones did before they no longer
01:01:25
can do and that includes also your immune system going down and you know and this is in the middle of a pandemic
01:01:31
so at that point my immune system's low I don't want my immune system to be you know any weaker than anybody else's so
01:01:38
it was a good time to find out and uh and I you know knowing that I could
01:01:43
rebalance my hormones as well and um I was so relieved when I did take HRT
01:01:49
to feel myself again because I had been feeling like I remember one day having this absolute kind of family meeting
01:01:56
crisis meeting putting everybody to the table saying right nobody around here is pulling their way and really reading the
01:02:02
right act to everybody and I was and the point where I got like I thought they're not taking me seriously so I said if this carries on I'm getting a flat in
01:02:09
Beaconsfield I know which is a little town near where we live and they all looked at me like I gone mad because
01:02:15
this has come from nowhere and of course the kids were like close to tears and I was like because I'm not going to be and I realized now I look back and I was I
01:02:22
was just totally you know sad about kind of how I was feeling and I just didn't feel I was you know as I
01:02:30
didn't have as much fight and tenacity and energy and you know and this was all menopausal symptoms really um I mean now
01:02:37
with the hindsight and the distance that's between it you know they laugh about that whole day that was that was
01:02:42
the day where we realized mum was having a menopause but thank God I found out right and I didn't actually go and look
01:02:49
at renting a flat in beckinsfield to serve them all right and you know it's a real perfect Confluence when you have a
01:02:55
woman in her late 40s and her kids are teenagers because their hormones are going crazy in the other direction and
01:03:01
they're going through puberty and everything's happening the other way you know and so Kenny was very really wanted
01:03:07
to know what was going on with me so he'd listen to my podcasts and he learned so much about the menopause from the female guest Davina McCall who's the
01:03:13
you know doing so much great work in this space and she was talking about it and he came in one day and he sat down
01:03:19
and he said to me I've just listened I've been out in a dog walk and I've just listened to Davina and he said okay
01:03:24
so if you start taking HRT and your hormones kind of start going back again you know and what happens to me are my
01:03:30
hormones dropping off a cliff how you know am I gonna I said no no men are different and and he kept going on about
01:03:35
it I said look just go and do a well-man test or something because you need to satisfy yourself that you're okay you
01:03:42
know and um it was through doing this well-man test that he found out he had prostate cancer so um his his kind of um
01:03:50
his motivation for doing it was to see if his testosterone was still kind of you know functioning at a high level and
01:03:56
they said to him listen don't worry about your hormones they're fine you've got to worry about your PSA to cut a long story short he ended up having his
01:04:02
prostate removed and um had prostate cancer so um yeah we we in terms of a mid-life a
01:04:10
midlife journey in a midlife experience there was a lot a lot going on there obviously with regard to my my journey
01:04:17
kind of bled into him finding out something that he otherwise wouldn't have known because unfortunately
01:04:23
prostate cancer is a cancer that you don't always get symptoms until it's too late and as his urologist said to him if
01:04:30
you'd had symptoms we might be having a very different conversation wow hmm
01:04:36
so I'm I'm forever grateful that I started my podcast I think because he
01:04:42
wouldn't have had we wouldn't have had that conversation it's a really scary thing to think about
01:04:47
in hindsight if those dots hadn't sort of connected because like most blokes this is the thing and he this is why he
01:04:53
did it he did a podcast episode talking about it like most blokes and especially one he played International Rugby right
01:04:58
you know he played 70 times for his country he was used to giving his body a battering and giving his body putting
01:05:04
his body through it and so he's living with some of the ramifications of that you know he has to really look after his back and his core he's very lucky he
01:05:11
didn't really break too many bones but you know he knows he has to look after his body because he put it through a lot so when he does have aches and pains and
01:05:18
things he often like a lot of men just ignores them because he thinks that's part of you know what he'd done to
01:05:24
himself before and that's part of you know his Sporting Life and this year he lost one of his very best friends who
01:05:30
played for Scotland with who'd who'd done just that who'd ignored a lot of those things thinking it was old
01:05:35
injuries and it turned out he had bowel cancer and he died and that was um for
01:05:40
him just you know huge a sense of gratitude that he he had
01:05:46
found out but also a reason for him wanting to talk about it because men can be really rubbish at that you know and
01:05:52
it's and it's something that I think we talked about masculine kind of identity and earlier on about you know my dad
01:05:58
when he was younger and how he um the self-preservation and wanting to you know keep things in in public and
01:06:04
actually that's a lot of that is is men not always sharing those things so and not having those conversations candidly
01:06:10
and when he did that on the pro on the podcast um the response from men has been amazing to him you know and I think it's
01:06:17
partly because he's perceived to be somebody who is a tough rugby player so if he can talk about it okay I can go to
01:06:24
the doctor and like I can ask them a few questions am I right in thinking prostate cancer is the cancer that takes
01:06:29
the life of most men yeah 12 000 men a year most it's the cancer the biggest cancer killer of men
01:06:35
he does that Wellness well man test he eventually goes and has a a test done
01:06:42
for prostate cancer I guess and then he gets the verdict back you've been through grief before you've
01:06:48
been through loss before in fact we when we talked about you know your earlier years you kind of had that sense of impending doom when he makes that phone
01:06:56
call to you when you have that conversation with him what what is that like what's going on in your head
01:07:01
so he had a zoom set up with his urologist because it was at the early
01:07:06
part of this year when we were still not really you know there was that covert surgeon and he said okay don't come in
01:07:12
I'll do a zoom with you and Gabby together and I had made an appointment uh or a meeting rather with a head of a
01:07:19
production company I was going to be working with to come to the house at 11. so Kenny said he's calling at 10 30. I
01:07:24
said yeah great fine 10 30. I was not expecting anything other than you're absolutely fine you know I did not
01:07:30
expect negative news didn't expect him to hear anything other than come back to me in a year we'll keep an eye on it you
01:07:36
know and um otherwise I wouldn't have made an appointment with somebody at 11 o'clock and
01:07:41
when his urologist told him I think we both were just I think Kenny was more
01:07:46
expecting it than me I I very much was like you're going to be absolutely fine you know you look at your picture of
01:07:51
health and you know you're on your what by pushing out massive Watts yesterday you know and you're You're great and
01:07:58
um we were shocked stunned because you then you don't know what that means you know how bad is it where is it gone all those
01:08:04
things and um and I think Kenny was really very sad you know he's just like a feel sadness
01:08:10
in him because he said I feel so well I I feel sad that inside me this is happening and I don't know about it and
01:08:16
he you know it was very confusing and also it's very tied in with your masculinity and you know kind of the prostate and so he was he was really
01:08:23
really upset and as you can imagine and I I just thought right no this is we're going to sort this this is going to be absolutely fine and you know how what do
01:08:29
we do you know I kind of what are the answers here and the urologist was very was brilliant he's a brilliant communicator and told us what the
01:08:35
options were and I said we just got to get a plan you've got to get a plan together because you need you need to know what you're doing and and then
01:08:41
we'll be positive and we'll just kind of keep being positive about it and um and that's what we did really you
01:08:47
know once he got over the initial shock we just really kind of focused on it as a project that we had to to deal with
01:08:55
and um it's a bloody awful operation you know you get in basically six stab
01:09:00
wounds in your torso and it is really invasive and it's a horrible thing to see him in you know the pain he was
01:09:07
afterwards it's a horrible thing to go through but he's doing really really well now and you know he's he just said
01:09:12
to me last night actually when we were about to go to sleep he said he said we've done really well haven't we because he said people keep saying to me
01:09:18
like how are you all how's it you know and he said we've done well I said we've done well you know because he's he's
01:09:23
good the kids have been great throughout it we've been through you know something that kind of unifies you I think as a
01:09:30
family you know can really solidify you as a family so um we're very lucky
01:09:36
he's your like you know for throughout this conversation I've really got a sense that this person is your rock
01:09:42
totally I was trying to think of a bigger superlative than Rock but um yeah he is
01:09:47
he's um I remember once years ago doing a podcast called walking the dog with um
01:09:52
Emily Dean and at the end of it she said to me you've got Kenny itis I said sorry she can't stop mentioning him and
01:10:04
he's just great I'm very lucky
01:10:16
I knew I wasn't gonna lose him but he's a great he's a great man and
01:10:24
I couldn't I couldn't ever I couldn't have ever wished for anybody to share my life with you know who's
01:10:32
better I used to
01:10:37
and then when I was having my kind of negative phase with men um and I perhaps didn't think I deserved
01:10:44
somebody like Kenny and I'm glad that I decided I did because
01:10:51
you know time is everything isn't it and when I met him if I'd been that person before
01:10:57
I wouldn't have called him you know because he would have been too too good for me too nice for me and
01:11:02
yeah he's he's been the most brilliant supporter
01:11:08
he's so positive he's so encouraging and you know he just really believes in me
01:11:14
and gives me such enormous strength and you know but he's also a vulnerable and sensitive person you know he's he's so
01:11:21
um as a role model for our son you know I feel like I've got this great person who's alongside me
01:11:29
what what advice could you give me because you know you've been in this relationship with with Kenny I'm gonna guess I'm gonna say 22 years 21 20 yeah
01:11:37
99 so yeah 20 coming up for um 24 years 24 when we met we met January 99.
01:11:43
[Music] if you were to give me a piece of advice on how my relationship could last for so
01:11:49
long what would that advice be I think it's and we always and we don't always but we
01:11:57
often will have those conversations with each other actually about why we are
01:12:02
still going strong and what it is that because we've been through like normal marriages you know we've been through
01:12:08
rough patches and periods where you're kind of you know not never before we got
01:12:13
married you know it was but marriage and children and the commitments they do test you and they do put you in
01:12:19
positions where you feel uncomfortable and this is not kind of what I expected things to be and how and I think the one
01:12:25
thing is communication we always talk those things through Kenny is very much like you don't go to bed on a
01:12:31
disagreement or an argument you know you sort sort sit down and discuss and that's metaphorically you know it
01:12:36
doesn't have to be at bedtime but you know you don't just let something Fester he always says that he nips it in the
01:12:41
bud before it's a bud you know so if he can see something's a problem and but also it's okay to have disagreements you
01:12:49
know we have robust disagreements about things we're not aligned on every single thing because that's not real either
01:12:54
that and I think it's it's important to know how to disagree
01:12:59
my parents sometimes had really screaming rows when I was little and that's really horrible to hear as a child because you don't want that you
01:13:05
know and screaming around is a one thing but actually being able to disagree is is really important having your shared
01:13:12
kind of passions and goals in life and things you want to do together is also but also having your differences and
01:13:18
having your like you know his his things that he likes to do separate to me is
01:13:23
really important because you can't live in each other's pockets all the time so I suppose those things I'm saying to you
01:13:29
through hindsight looking back I think you know I wouldn't have sat out at the beginning and said okay Kenny these are
01:13:34
the things that we have to and I was talking to um we have to do I was talking to somebody younger a lot younger the other day about
01:13:39
relationships and the kind of young people now and kind of how relationships you know start is so different and how
01:13:45
relationships even come to be and expectations of relationships and and the the worry for me is that it's all
01:13:52
about perfection and it it's never going to be perfect you know there are always going to be things that go wrong but I
01:13:58
think if you're if you're into and you're kind of aligned on on the really important things the values that you
01:14:03
have then you can overcome you know bumps in the road so and also you've got
01:14:09
to laugh you know having fun is really really important so yeah I've always I've always resisted talking too much
01:14:16
about Kenny because I've always felt like I'm going to jinx it you know if I say something but I feel now with nearly
01:14:22
a quarter of a century gone that we're okay we're definitely not going to break up tomorrow no yeah so I used to at the
01:14:28
beginning I always used to think I'm not going to talk about it because you know it's it feels too good I'm gonna you know I'm gonna make it go wrong if I
01:14:33
talk about it so do you schedule Kenny time I say this because I've been sort of dealing with this recently where I'm
01:14:40
so busy with work and workers all scheduled don't do anything that's not scheduled is time with my partner so
01:14:46
that can sometimes Fall by the wayside so and then you don't want it to feel too formulaic do you yeah which is it it's scheduling like what tab has she
01:14:52
got she read it's funny because I've sat here with someone who said you should be scheduling that time and then I can't
01:14:59
the prospect of going to my girlfriend be like let me put few into the schedule I think she would be very happy so I
01:15:05
wanted to figure out what what you do to make sure you know you told me you're doing the World Cup you've got all of these incredible things coming up how do
01:15:12
you make sure is there a practical way you make sure your relationship doesn't fall by the wayside I think we always have uh we're lucky
01:15:20
because most mornings you know we're having breakfast together we're kind of aware of what each other's days are we
01:15:26
have you know dinners and things schedules and we've got things we might do at the weekend so I think there are
01:15:32
weeks where we don't see a lot of each other you know if if our schedules aren't really aligning and but we know it's okay because we'll pick up you know
01:15:38
pick up some time at the weekend or something I think through our relationship early on Kenny was away a lot with his rugby and he'd be traveling
01:15:45
and then coming home and that was really hard when you had weeks away from each other um but it did make I think you know
01:15:51
absence makes the heart grow fonder and you really kind of want to be with that person you know you want to be with that person but I wouldn't so much schedule
01:15:57
it as just make sure that you've got something nice coming up or you've got something you're going to do together or
01:16:02
you know you've got an afternoon yesterday I took a break for about half an hour's back-to-back recording podcast and it was a gorgeous day and I knew he
01:16:09
was outside he'd done something outside so I just went out in the garden just walked around with them for half an hour because I knew he wanted to show me
01:16:14
things that he'd been doing and that made didn't feel good showing me these things so and it made me feel good as well because I was getting a bit of
01:16:20
vitamin D and I was kind of having a nice chat with him and I think spontaneity actually is really important
01:16:25
in a relationship and not always you know planning trying to be more spontaneous in your personal life to
01:16:31
your yay business life you know you've got to be you've got to be on it but I think yeah the spontaneity is quite good
01:16:37
and he gets you know like he'll be like oh are you coming to that you know if he was doing something a charity event or something or business sort of thing and
01:16:42
I said I'm going to come along to that you know oh great it's great that you're there and I really love it when he says that because he wants me to be there you
01:16:48
know so um I'll make the effort then to go along to something or you know maybe even I've even picked up golf again because he
01:16:54
loves golf I think right we're heading into a period of our life we're gonna have more time I can play golf again so
01:16:59
I've started playing golf again oh wow you could teach me we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last
01:17:06
guest asks a question to the next guest they don't know who they're asking it for they just write it in this book and
01:17:11
I don't get to see the question until open the book so the question that's been left for you not knowing that it was for you is
01:17:18
or interesting what would you do
01:17:24
if you absolutely weren't afraid
01:17:29
if I had no fear I would when my kids have left home I
01:17:35
jump on a plane I go and try and work in La for a year like I'm working about I always wanted to work in American TV so I would go
01:17:41
right I'm gonna just go bang on the doors of execs and and if you could write write the job role what would the
01:17:48
job role be in America it would be pretty much Oprah Winfrey
01:17:54
yeah I think that if I had no fear that's that's what I do I could see you doing that in fact
01:18:00
that's that's been rattling around in the back of my head for a long time when you said earlier that you wanted your own talk show I was like I could 100 see
01:18:06
that yeah you have all the attributes you know even in your writing I see I see that I see the huge potential of
01:18:13
like great conversation that openness the vulnerability the way that you make people feel calm
01:18:19
um and you create a bridge for them to be open to your elocution is that the word your
01:18:25
ability to articulate yourself in such a wonderful apparently way with such ease
01:18:31
I could 100 see that oh wow thank you I'm very excited to watch the show oh
01:18:36
thank you so much when I when I grew up I wanted to be Oprah you know as a kid I wanted to be Oprah and that was the
01:18:42
person I think that I thought wow that's amazing but then of course you're in this country and you look around and you
01:18:47
know kind of who are your role models yeah yeah I got to meet her once um by accident uh we were in a lovely
01:18:53
restaurant in London and she was dining a few tables away and I would never go up to somebody and you know do that
01:18:58
thing and I Kenny was going to me we were with some other people who worked in Telly they were kind of execs and
01:19:04
they everybody knew she was there you know and Kenny said oh my God he knowing she's my hero because he said Oprah's there I know I know and uh he's saying
01:19:12
are you gonna I said no of course I'm not and she just walked past the table and he just got hold of her hand and she
01:19:19
looked down at him and he said and she was so warm and he said I'm so sorry I know you're leaving but I said my wife
01:19:24
absolutely adores you and she just got hold of my hand and she put it on her heart and she looked me in the eye and said and I adore you
01:19:32
and I was like thank you she hadn't got a clue who now we all were but she was
01:19:39
so warm and lovely and actually I said to Kenny afterwards I hate you for doing that but I love you because I have like
01:19:45
I have a I touched Oprah Winfrey's hand and um yeah so um I think you know the
01:19:50
way she's created her her whole broadcasting Empire as well is just amazing she's such an incredible role
01:19:55
model and has a battle through you imagine being at Winfrey at the beginning of her career you know kind of let alone you know she was an actress
01:20:01
but also what she'd gone through as a child and then to forge her way as a news broadcaster in in that environment
01:20:06
in America I think she is yeah she's such a she's a good role model I think yeah she's a role model to me too she's
01:20:12
a huge role model to me in so many ways um her grace her class her struggle you know exactly all the things you've
01:20:18
described there um but so are you you're a role model to me as well and that that became clearer and clearer throughout your book and you
01:20:24
know I'm someone that's just stepped a foot into the TV world over the last like year or two with Dragons Den but
01:20:30
people like you that I've um on my screen um your skill there's a real skill to
01:20:35
what you do and I don't think it's it's always appreciated to its full extent the level of skill the research the
01:20:41
diligence the hard work the the talent to do what you do um is really astounding having been on
01:20:47
camera a little bit I really really appreciate that and um I really also appreciate you writing a book like this
01:20:53
because the vulnerability of this book is going to um unlock a lot for a lot of people it's
01:20:58
going to liberate them from a lot of their own concerns and really also you know I'm not someone that understands
01:21:04
menopause but it's important that I do and the lens that I I read about menopause
01:21:09
through isn't from an experience that I might have someday but it's the the women in my life that matter to me that's so important and having empathy
01:21:16
for them yeah um and one of those is my my mother and her own Journey um with that and it gave me a huge sense of
01:21:23
empathy that I didn't have before a huge understanding that I didn't have before from Reading you you talk about that
01:21:29
um in this book and so openly previously so thank you because this is a very important book that I think everybody
01:21:35
should read regardless of their age race or gender I think there's something really important there for everybody and thank
01:21:41
you for coming here today and being so open and honest with me it's a huge honor to meet you it feels like every you know I freak out a little bit when I see people that I've I've looked up to
01:21:47
for so long on TV screens so yeah absolutely overwhelmed by everything you just said there so thank you so much
01:21:52
because you are obviously just what you're doing at the age that you've done you know is is phenomenal
01:21:58
and to to have that kind of wisdom to you know to be able to read a book like mine I feel like we're actually very
01:22:05
different in lots of ways but very similar in other ways and so that really means so much thank you and really really appreciate that and best of luck
01:22:12
with all the incredible things that you're doing too thank you
01:22:19
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