Iron Bars to Ironman with John McAvoy

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding. And I'm laura siddall and this is the tribathlon podcast.

As long as you're in the game, you can still always win it. And you have to be in the game. And I just feel like I'm so fortunate.

That was John McAvoy and this episode is Iron Bars to Ironman. Hey, Syd, how you doing?

I'm very well, thank you. How are you?

I am good, thank you. I am very good. So what's been happening in the world of SID lately?

Well, I feel like we're on a bit of a podcast marathon at the moment, but that's no bad thing. We're doing sort of back to back. The exciting thing, the thing that's been taking up most of my headspace and time the last week or a couple of weeks actually, is we just launched and when this comes out, it's Friday. So yesterday I just announced the winner of SID Squad, which is a program that I been launched with Parkours who are the real partner I work with. And also had a lot of other, other of my own partners have come on board like Hoka, DeBoer, Oakley, the Magic 5 credo, New Fred, Wits Up, Funkita. I think I've mentioned everybody and it's basically to support a young female triathlete for the year. So we opened applications about two weeks ago and I had 50. I was blown away, overwhelmed by the amount of applications and videos we had in. Um, and it was between. For 14 to 24 year olds and just some really awesome athletes out there. Just a lot, a lot. Very new to the sport. So started triathlon during lockdown. Um, so some haven't even sort of raced yet, but just passion and energy and love for doing, for doing it and excited to race and then a lot also that are probably pretty young, but sort of been doing it since they were, since they could walk, so to speak, and been inspired by, you know, because their parents were into it and, or things like that. And it's just been. God, it's just been so. It was so hard to make a decision. I really did want to take everybody on, but it has, it has driven me, I guess, to definitely see the need to develop this program further and to expand it so I can hopefully support more, more female triathletes in the uk, but globally as well. Like, I'd really love to develop it into something more. I think there's, there's just from seeing the applications and the videos and the response I've had, there's Definitely, definitely a need for that and it's something I've kind of, I kind of want to do. So yeah, that's been, that's been my last, last few weeks.

Fantastic. Sounds.

Sounds brilliant. What sort of, what sort of help? I, I know there's prizes as well, but what sort of help are you giving that athlete and what was it about the athlete that won that kind of stood out for you?

Yeah. So they're getting some product and some kit from sponsors which is good. And then also we're going to probably mentoring I guess from me but if they want coaching. So some of some of the applicants had coaches already. The winner actually doesn't. She's sort of self coached so we're going to talk about me giving her some coaching and guidance on that sort of thing. I'm hoping to get some nutritional experts in. I've actually had people reach out to me which has been amazing. So who work in, in nutrition and sports science or work with females specifically or work with kids. So that's really interesting from a, from that side of things. So yeah, I mean pretty much develop it how, how we want going forward. The winner and I can announce it because we've already, we've already announced it. When this comes out is it was a 24 year old Letitia Corbett. She is, I don't know, I can't really say. She just had this. There was just something about her, this energy, this buzz. I don't know whether I saw a lot of myself in her when I was younger. In that age. She's doing longer distance events and she has done. She did Ironman island last year and she's looking to do that this year. She's done crazy things like run ultras and I wasn't that I was looking for anyone in that long endurance aspect. I'd kept it pretty broad. I'd said like I said 14 to 24 and it could be. You could be new into the sport or longer and you could be doing any distance. She's a yoga teacher so I'm hoping that might help me maybe in some ways as well. Yeah, I don't know. Just she just had something about her that kind of just was like, yeah, I think this is going to be a really good fit and I'm really excited to work with her.

Fantastic. Well that sounds. Yeah, I look forward to hearing more about that as it evolves. Did you see that? Beth Potter, We've given her the Midas touch since she's been on the podcast. She's won the Virtual racing. And now she set a new 5k record. Well actually I think it's the second fastest 5k on the road ever. But it was, I thought it was going to be classed as the world record but it looks like they're unlikely to ratify it as a UK record now.

Oh really? Oh, I thought they had ratified it. So I heard, yeah, I mean super impressive. What was it? 1440, which is just mind boggling really. And I heard the rumor was it was a, I guess an unofficial British and world record. I heard but I think because it was probably at a very local low key event, I don't know how official that things need to be for it to be sort of classified as an official record in terms of the setup of the race. But still, regardless of that, like just super impressive. And it does, it does make me wonder would she, you know, the British team for the Olympics has been decided and announced for the, for the women and you know, and we, when you spoke to her, her goal was 2024, not, not Tokyo. But I do wonder after that if she's semi tempted to give a 5k on the track a go and see how she lines up for qualifying for Tokyo that way.

Well, I mean isn't it incredible that somebody that's training for three, a multi sport is putting out that sort of time on just the individual race? I think it's absolutely incredible. And I do wonder whether, you know, has she peaked just slightly too late for the Olympics? Because you've got to look at that and question and her performance in the virtual racing and question whether she maybe should be in the team.

Oh, I mean, yeah, shoulda would have cut. I mean look, she's still pretty new to triathlon and to be fair, the three athletes they've picked or two, you know, Georgia Taylor Brown's pretty young. Jess Learmonth is not as young but still pretty new to the sport. But they've proved themselves already on big races on, on that day, you know, Beth hadn't last year and ultimately that's when you know, that's when you know if Tokyo was meant to be last year and that was when the qualifying was. That's, that's what you needed to do. So I don't think you can kind of say should she be in the team? Because again at the end of the day triathlon is swim, bike, run and putting it all together, it's not. And the Olympic distance is 10k and I'm not saying she, she will be. She's blistering over 10k, we know that, but it's having the whole package. And yes, she showed that in the Super League Arena Games, but again, that's quite different from an ITU World Triathlon race series. I'm not saying that she is not going to be up there in the future. And I think, you know, the British females are so strong with depth and there's so many coming through. You probably could have picked several of them for that team and they would all do really well. But I think it's exciting. It's exciting for the future.

It is.

And I'm conscious that we have got coming up one of my favorite interviews so far, but it's also definitely the longest so far. So I think. So I think we should be keeping this intro down to kind of a.

Shorter version because frankly, I think people are fed up. They're fed up of listening to me more than you probably. And they really need to listen to this interview because it is absolutely awesome.

It is. And I was really looking forward to interviewing John McAvoy and he certainly didn't disappoint. He's a fantastic storyteller and what an incredible story he's got to tell. So. So without further ado, we'll dive into the interview with John. John McAvoy is currently a professional Ironman and a Nike sponsored athlete. However, he was previously a high profile armed robber who found redemption through the power of sport. Having broken both British records and world records whilst he was in prison. He's now forging a new life as an endurance athlete and speaker who is committed to using his story of rehabilitation to help and inspire others to change their lives for the better. His journey from iron bars to iron man is just quite astonishing and one that is inspiring others to do the same. So Sid and I wanted to learn more about his incredible story, about the power that role models have had in his life and also the importance of creating a legacy. This is a longer interview than normal, but it's just because John is such an amazing storyteller and also has got such an incredible story, one that maybe one day might be turned into a film if it can be done in a way that actually helps people rather than glorifying some of the things that he did. But I'll let him tell you all about that. I just know you're going to really enjoy this interview with John McAvoy.

Foreign.

So, John, so chuffed to get you on the tribeathlon podcast. I've been reading a book, I've been listening to podcasts. I've been Chatting to Sid about you as well. So welcome back, Sid, and welcome to the Tribathlon podcast. John.

Hello, mate. Nice to meet you. It's nice to see you again, Laura, as well.

Yeah, good to see you. When are you next coming to Girona?

Well, hopefully when all these lockdown restrictions get lifted and life can come back to some sort of normality again.

Yeah, maybe. It's probably my turn to get out to Alpe d', Huez, isn't it, really?

I think it is. I think it is your turn now.

Yeah, fantastic. So, for those people that don't know much about you or anything about you, John, do you want to tell us a bit about. Tell us your story, tell us where the story that you portray so well in the book Redemption, and, you know, kind of give people the background as to how you've got to where you are now.

So to give you a very condensed sort of version of my life, it doesn't have to be condensed, I think.

Let's explore it.

Do you know how long he talks for? Like, you've asked for this. We could be here for hours, which would be brilliant.

But I'll give you a very brief overview of my sort of my life and the decisions and stuff that I made and the reasons why I chose to make those decisions at that base at that time. So, like, in regards to my home life, I have to go back to before I was even born. So when my mum was eight months pregnant with me, my biological father, he had a heart condition that he didn't know he had. He was 38 years old. He went to bed one night. My mum had only been married to him for a year and he had a massive heart attack and died. There was no build up to it. Like I said, it was undiagnosed. So I get born and I had no dad. But what I did have, I had a mum. That was amazing. My mum had seven sisters. They just doted on me as a little boy. I had a sister. So I had this group of women bringing me up as a kid and. And I can't express how much my childhood was. Was wonderful. Like, I have no bad memories whatsoever. As a kid, I was loved, I was looked after. My mum used to do anything she could to make sure that, like, I was a happy child. And it was only when I started going to primary school and I started interacting with different groups of children that then. That. Then I realized that I didn't have a dad. And that was because children, being children, they used to tease me because they Say, where's your dad? And I didn't know where my dad was. So I asked my mum. And my mum explained to me about my dad dying before I was born. And I can always remember as a little kid, I was a very inquisitive child. So when my mum told me my dad had died, even I was very young, she simplified it. To me I was just inquisitive about what happens when you die, where you go. And my mum didn't really give me those answers. But what I'd understood from a young kid, that I sort of. I wasn't going to live forever. And I had this sort of awareness that I wasn't going to live forever. Now that awareness sparked something inside me that I didn't want just to be an average person when I got older. I wanted to do something in my life. But again, I was so young I couldn't verbalize this, but I just didn't want to be when I wanted to do something in my life. And as I got a little bit older, I developed this sort of real fascination and interest in history. And my mum used to get me these books out the news agents and they were called discovery booklets. And every month a different night, it was for children, they would come out and it would be different parts of history and there would be like child's puzzles and there'd be like questions in there. And it's like a learning booklet. And I just remember being a little kid in South London, like reading these booklets about people that had died hundreds of years before I was even born. And again it reinforcing to me, like these people had achieved something in life, they had accomplished something that I was reading about them in our house in Southeast London, like. And again it added that fire inside me that I wanted to accomplish something when I got older. Like I wanted to be remembered. And then what you can only class is what happened next was sort of the perfect storm. When I was 8 years old, this male come into my life. My first interaction with this male called Billy Tobin. As he come round to our home in South London. He knocked at the front door and he come in and I just remember the first time I ever laid eyes on him. He was just big strong man, big gold watch on his wrist, immaculately dressed. And he had really white teeth, I can always remember what his teeth were. And he had jet black hair. And he sat in the living room and he went and asked me to go and make him a hot drink, a cup of tea. And I went into the kitchen I made him his cup of tea and I went back into the liver and gave it to him and I just sat there with my mum, my sister and him and they were talking to each other and then when he left he patted me on the head, he said I was a good boy and he gave me a 20 pound note. He's the first adult to ever give me paid money. Now obviously as being a child my, my initial reaction was I could go to Woolworths and buy loads of sweets. But I was just fixated on him like I was in awe of him. The minute I met him I was just magnetized to this man. And when he left my mum explained to me that before she married my dad, when she was really young, when she was 16 years old, she married Billy. And her and Billy grew up together in Peckham in London. From being literally children, their families were best friends and my mum married him when she was 16. And actually my sister wasn't my whole sister, she was my half sister even though I didn't see her like that and I still don't see it like that today, but she was, that was her real dad. Now no one explained to me where this man come from. I didn't know. But what happened, he started coming around our house more and more and more and it wasn't to have a relationship with my mum, it was to have a relationship my sister. And he started taking my sister out on the weekends and, and I think my mum didn't want me to miss out so she would allow Billy to take me out with my sister. Now again, the perfect storm. I didn't have a dad, he didn't have a son, which I come to realize. And as the sort of months drifted into a year it was like he stopped taking my sister out on the weekends and it was just me and, and I spent more and more and more time with him and he started taking me out to restaurants. He used to teach me how to eat properly with the knives and forks going outside in. He would, he would take me to put me in situations, environments like it make me when I was going into clothes shops, it made me had the confidence to go and speak to the cashier because I was quite a shy kid and I spending more and more time with this man and all we used to talk about was money. Money was a driving factor in his life. Now for me and a young kid, I made this attachment from the success that you had in life was by the acquisition of wealth. And I thought when I got older by having lots of money, I'd be a very successful person and that would be me achieving something. So when I'm with Billy and we're driving around in these Mercedes and Porsches and he's talking about having apartments on the Champs Elysees and he's telling me when he was 21 years old he was a multi millionaire. Did I think When I was 21 years old I would also be a multi millionaire? And so this sort of fixation on wealth now, also the sort of undertone to all this, I didn't know what he did. He was never open with me about this. But what started happening was this sort of this subconscious nature towards me was this anti authority outlook he had on life. So always telling me the system was unfair, always telling me that the police were corrupt, the judiciary was corrupt, politicians were corrupt, banks were corrupt and the system was rigged. Now being a young boy again, I was really too young, but it did start seeping into my psychology as a youngster. And I would say one of the most powerful experiences I had as a kid with him was we was driving down this high street and he had this Porsche 911 and it was a limited edition car, I think it was about 200 of them in Britain at the time. And we were sitting in these traffic lights and I remember he told me to look out the window and I said, look at what? And he said all these people are sheep and excuse my language, but he basically said the system fucks them and we fuck the system. And that was a very powerful thing to say to a young child because again, I was so impressionable. Then I started connecting up the dots when my granddad passed away and me, my mum and my sister went to clear his flat out in Packham and my granddad had this massive A4 envelope from the drawer and they had all these newspaper clippings my granddad had kept. And all these newspaper clippings were about Billy and they were like the front pages of all the national tabloids back in Britain. And Billy was one of the most infamous armed robbers in the United Kingdom. The reason he come into my life when I was 8 is because he just finished serving a 16 year prison sentence for armed robbery. The police tried to shoot him twice. He had five acquittals at the Old Bailey and he was a multi millionaire when he was 21 years old. And I then put the dots together and then realized sort of the money, his outlook on life, all of these other men, he was exposing me to his children as a child. Sorry, were obviously Quite clearly all involved in organized crime by their outlook on life, the way they spoke about authority and stuff. And I made those mental connections. So then I started going through this process myself of like, being that young, driven young child that wanted to be successful. And then suddenly I'm seeing these men that again, being a young kid, it's very enticing when you see grown adults like 30, 40 years old that have fragrant disregard for rules and regulations in the law. And they're all wealthy and they're what I class as being successful. They've all got that wealth, the money, it become obtainable to me. I quite clearly then saw a path that I could travel down to get the success that I wanted when I was older, which was to acquire money, which was wealth. And then when I was 12, like I would say the pivotal moment was when I watched a film on a telly. And my real dad that died before I was born, his brother committed an armed robbery called Brinks Matt at Heathrow Airport. And he stole £26 million worth of gold bullion at the airport. And at that time, it was the biggest armed robbery in the world. And I remember sitting again in our home in. In London, watching this film on ITV and watching Sean Bane and all of these actors and actresses playing all these characters in this film that I knew and seeing my cousins being played by child actors. Now, I didn't see the fact that my uncle was serving 25 years in prison for that offense. What I saw was my uncle being portrayed in a film sitting on £26 million worth of gold bullion. And again, I feel embarrassed saying it today because obviously I was a child at the time. But that film, I would say, was the biggest catalyst then for me when I got older, that I wanted to be a criminal and I wanted to commit the biggest robbery in the world.

And that that film was fool's gold, wasn't it?

It was fool's gold, yes, correct.

Which I tried to track down and watch before this, but I couldn't track it down anywhere. But I remember it being released. I can't actually remember whether I saw or not, but. But yeah, I mean, it's amazing that that was the people that you were surrounded by.

Yeah, it's like it's. It had such a. An impact on me in regards of. That was like the, The. I remember it was the pivotal moment in the decision making of where I was going to go. Now once I made that decision, then sort of Billy could kind of see that that was the road I was going to start traveling down that trajectory. So then it was like the sort of apprenticeship in that world, really. It was not talking in cars, not talking on the phone, not trusting people. And again, I look back now, it is so perverse, like when I look back now, to say, like, that was my childhood, but like always being told, you should never, ever trust women because if you do anything, they could testify against you in court. Girlfriends, wives, to never trust them. Now, telling a young boy that, like, when you're going through that, when you're trying to find yourself and who you are as a person, that's so abnormal to teach a child that, not to trust people, and especially not to trust women, and having relationships with women and keeping distance, never having attachment to things, going through that process, that schooling of organized crime, of how you have to live and you're only known by your name and your reputation. You. That, that is. That. That's your ego, that's your identity that starts getting shaped. And so then when I was still. Because I was still young at this point, so I'm still going to school, but then suddenly, like, my teachers become an extension of the state. They were authority figures to me. So suddenly, people that I used to love to go and interact with at school, which was my teachers, and I love to learn, I loved history, I love geography. Suddenly these people become, like, not my enemy, but people that I just didn't respect. And it was so fast that I went through that process and I used to listen to them and they're trying to teach me English and maths and they're trying to teach me stuff. And I'm sitting in these classrooms thinking to myself, well, this isn't going to get me what I want in life. This is a complete waste of my time sitting there engaging with this. And I started truant in really heavily from school, like, really, really heavily. I was hardly going at all. And it was only when I got to 16 years old and my GCSEs were coming around and my mum, My mum got really upset because at this point, my mum, like, she completely lost control of me because my mum works in a florist working minimum wage. You've got this man over here and all of his friends that were all multimillionaires, they're showing me one world. My mum's telling me to go and get a job and go down that road and I'm looking at the toe and my mum just. She didn't have any power or authority over me whatsoever. She couldn't suck me back Because I was. I was far too gone down the wrong path or started to start to mentally go down that path, but because it's your mum. And my mum got upset. I didn't want her to be upset, so I went to school and I sat my gcse. I didn't do any coursework, so I was truant. And I just had this incredible teacher who's my Head of year called Mr. Vickers. And he was such an amazing man. He did do everything he could to not permanently exclude me from school. He used to ring up all the time and try to encourage me to go to school. He would speak to my mum and. And I remember when I went to pick my GCSE results up, I was the last pupil to turn up to get my results because I was completely disinterested in it. And I remember all my results were in his envelope and he. And it was in, like this. Like this bucket sort of thing. And he pulled them out and he said, do you want to open up and see what you got? You want me to tell you? And I said, you tell me. And I remember he went through all my grades and he looked at me and he went, if only you would have applied yourself what you could have got. Because I still managed to get relatively decent grades, considering I didn't do any coursework. And I remember Charlie, he gave me the results and I walked down the end of my school drive and I ripped them up and I chucked them in the bin because my mind was already gone, it was already decided that I was going to become a criminal. And. And these. These bits of paper didn't mean anything to me. And that was where sort of I started really making that inroads into being a criminal once I left school.

And so. So that was at age 16. And then. Am I right in saying that you were. You were serving time by the time you were 20? Is that right?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So. So when.

So tell me how that happened. And kind of. And Billy, who you've mentioned already, his kind of role in, you know, bringing you into that world or actually trying to shelter you in that world.

Yeah. So when I left school, again, like, being highly driven and also being surrounded by the people I was surrounded by, because I didn't really have any friends my own age. I was with Billy and all of his friends all the time. He taught me how to drive. He. He was schooling me in that world. And again, I feel embarrassed saying it today, but because of that mindset that I had and I was so Driven to be successful in that world. One of, one of the first things I did was buy a gun. I bought a sawn off shotgun off a middle aged man that sold that to a child which again just tells you all you need to know about some of the people that are engaged in that world. He didn't have any regard for my life or anyone else's life. I sent a firearm to a child. And Billy found out that that had happened. And then obviously I think he didn't realize how determined and how sort of where my mind was already at in regards of going down that world. So he got worried that I was so young and with that mentality that I would end up basically killing someone or killing myself. And because of that he basically wanted to sort of encompass me even more to protect me. So thinking I would be safer committing crime with him and his friends, which were again all middle aged men. So then what started happening was I would go out and I would sort of case security vans making deliveries to banks. I would go to security depots in, in the suburbs where all the money gets held to get put in the van to distribute. I used to go up there with a, with a video camera and film the lorries going in in the early hours of the morning to fill up the security depots. And I would, I would drive cars around and I used to have a very good memory memorizing number plates so I could remember on certain days what vans made what deliveries to what banks. And, and I used to handle that information over to other people. And then I realized that I wasn't going to become rich because again that, that drive to be a millionaire. When I was 21 years old I realized I wasn't going to do that by making other people rich. So there's a, which I didn't know at the time. There was a police surveillance operation on Billy. Billy gets arrested, the police then look for me. I'm so arrogant thinking I can't be arrested. I'm 18 years old at this point. They're never going to catch me. And then they did end up finding me. They did put a surveillance team on me. And when I was 18 years old I ended up getting arrested for conspiracy to commit armed robbery at 18.

And tell me how long that sentence, remind me how long that sentence was. But also tell me about the going into. So the term is going from my mind at the moment, but the isolation that they put you into within that.

Yeah. So solitary confinement. That's when, when I got, when I got arrested because like so just to explain to the people that are going to listen to this, when, when you get, when, when you're under the age of 21 years old in Britain, you can't be kept in prison with male adult prisoners because of child protection and stuff. So anyone under 21, you get sent to something called a young offenders institution. So it's a prison, but it's a prison for everyone under the age of 21 because your class is being more vulnerable. Now, in my case, what ended up happening? Because the Metropolitan Police believed that I was a high escape risk because of my stepdad and my uncle. So, like when my uncle was in prison, he was going to try to break out of a helicopter, which they nearly did. Billy had a track record of trying to break out of prison. Other people that I seem to associate with had track records of escaping from prison, people breaking them out with gunpoint. So obviously because of all this police intelligence, the police believe that I was a high escape risk. So what ended up happening was I'm 18 years old. The police submitted an application to the Ministry of Justice that they believed I was a very high escape risk. So they did something that was very unusual at that point and they did something called they starred me up to make me able to go into an adult institution. So I end up going into a maximum security prison in Milton Keynes called Woodhill, which is like, if anyone Googles it after this interview, it's one of the most high security prisons in the whole country. They've got special segregation units there for people that are like multiple murderers and some of the most dangerous violent people in society that have been taken out of society and then put in prison but still continue to be very violent. So I get moved there as a category a inmate under 21 years old, which again was very, very rare. Like there was, I, I think at that moment in time, there was only five of us in the whole of the United Kingdom that were starred up. And they put me in this prison round again, middle aged, organized criminals. This young kid walks in as a category A prisoner. I'm a mix of all these category A drug traffickers, armed robbers, people in there for multi million pound frauds. And I'm associating with them. They're, they're sort of, they're praising me that even the prison officers treat you differently because it's very rare that someone so young is in that situation. Now my solicitor comes up in the first legal visit I had. I said, how long do you think I might get for these offenses? And he said 16 years. So I'd only been alive for 18 years up to this point. So 16 years, I'm thinking, wow, like that is a long time. As my trial was come nearer at the Old Bailey, the prosecution offered me a plea bargain and it was on reduced charges. And because I didn't have previous offenses, because up to this point I've never been in trouble with the police, I ended up going to the number I was in number courtroom number two at the Old Bailey and I had a judge, her name was Justice Goddard, and she obviously, she can only sentence me on what the plea bargain is. The prosecution offered me this, the police wasn't happy with it. She sentences me to five years and all of the flying squad, like the robbery squadron in the Footwell in the court and, and I worked the maths of it out straight away because at that point I've already been on remand for a year, so I've got a five year sentence, I'll do half of it, three quarters of it max. So maximum, I'm in there for another year and a half, two years, and all the police are sitting down there and as I, as I walked down I just said, it's not even a shit in the shave. And I was laughing at them and they were livid, like absolutely livid. So I go back to Wood Hill, then the governor comes to my cell, says to me, you've been downgraded because we can't justify keeping you at this level of security anymore. And then what happened? Then they then transferred me out of the adult prison into a young offender's convicted prison. Now this, this moment, now what I'm about to tell you is probably the most important moment, one of the most important moments of my life and where I am today and everything I'm about to tell you, obviously I never anticipated how it was going to manifest itself. Fifteen, 20 years down the road, I get moved to this young offenders institution. They put me through reception process you, I'm as difficult as I ever am. But now the prison officers aren't calling me John anymore. Now I'm just my prison number, my surname. They put me in this cell and then four or five of them come to my cell and they basically want all my clothes off me and I refuse to give them my clothes. I said, why do you want them? And they said, because you've come from an adult prison as a category A prisoner, we believe, or the Governor believes, you are an escape risk of this young offenders institution. Because they didn't really have many Category X, Category A, young offenders in their prison. So they give you this yellow suit as a prison uniform. So when you walk around the prison, you stand out like a canary bird, basically. So every prison officer knows to look at you because you're a high escape risk, or they think you potentially are. Anyway, I refused to give my clothes. They took me down to the segregation unit, went in front of the governor and at this point they took my clothes because obviously you're in their world, you literally. There's not much you can do when you're in that situation in their world that you relinquish all your rights. They're gone. So I'll go in front of the governor at this point, I'm in his shell of suit. He says, you've disobeyed the law for Walder in prison. So they've got their own laws and orders in prison. They're called POs. And he gave me seven days confined to cell, which is seven days in the segregation unit. At the end of that seven days, the prison officers come to my cell, they asked me to go up on the wing and they said, when you go up on the wing, you've been allocated a wing cleaner's job. Now, I know I've explained, I know I've gone in loosely about my sort of view of what authority was and how anti authority I was. So obviously, when you're in prison and you're in that situation, I had always been told by my stepdad and all his friends, you never show weakness, you never bow down to them, you never cow down to them, and every day is a fight. You're literally as difficult as you can be to them. You don't give them an inch. So when they asked me to be a wing cleaner, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna go up on that wing and clean up your crap every day. So the prison officer said to me, you refusing another order? And I said, yes, put me back in front of the governor. The governor said, I'm going to punish you again and give you another seven days for list for refusing and lawful order. And he just said to me, you're in my world, I'm not in your world. And he smiled at me. And I remember this, I remember watching him smirk at me when I walked out and I went back to that cell and what they cannot stop you from doing when you're in that situation, they cannot stop you accessing books and they can't stop you from writing letters. So they're the only two Things you are you, it's a given. Like they can even restrict the amount of time you're allowed out to have a shower. You're entitled to shoot two showers per week. That's it. And when this lady used to come around with a, with a library, like she was a library, she's come out with this like little wood trolley. I just took a book off it one day because obviously I'm locked up for 24 hours a day. And it was about Nelson Mandela. And in that book there was a, there was a, there was a chapter about when he was in prison in Robben island and he smoked tobacco and he realized that the prison officers was using the fact that he smoked tobacco as a punishment to be able to take something away from him. So he thought, if I stop smoking, you can't take anything away from me. So in my head as a, at this point, I was 19 years old, I thought, wait there, if you think about putting me in this tiny little coffin, that you're punishing me, I just take that away from you, that power and control away from you. And you can't punish me anymore because you have, this is the worst you've got. And then I made that decision that day, that that's what I was going to do. So when they opened up the cell to let me back up on the wing, I said, I'm not going. And I end up spending the next sort of, well, the next calendar year, 365 days locked in that, that 12 by 6 foot cell. Now I didn't realize how long that was going to go on for when I made that decision that day. So when I made that decision, up to this point I had no interest in sport. I never used to really exercise. I was overweight, unfit, unhealthy. But when I was in that cell, I just started doing these circuits. I don't know what possessed me, but other than the fact that I needed to feel like I was a human being and I was alive and I could only do probably 10 press ups and 10 squats. I was so unfit. But as the months progressed, I would just add 10 and 10 and 10 and 10 exercises each day. And then I build the reps up and then eventually I end up doing a thousand of each exercise. And, and I remember I started to put my, my cell chair to the back of the cell because you had these like little vent windows just to get a bit of air into the cell because the air used to get so stagnant. And I remember I used to do these Step ups. And then I would read and I'll do the cell circuit, then I'd read and I'll do this every single day. I wouldn't sleep in a day because I never wanted them to think that I was sleeping my prison sentence off. Like I want them. They look through that flat that I was, that I was, I was in there, I was engaged, I wasn't taking drugs, but that sense of, that sense of feeling alive come through doing that exercise. And I made decision that I was going to continue doing that and educate myself by reading books in that cell. I had no desire whatsoever to change like it was. There was never an because to me. What I was always brought up to believe that people that like got caught and went to prison and that changed, that the system had broken them and that they were weak people. And that was what my stepdad always reiterated that to me, they were broken men, that the system had beaten them down, they put them in prison and they had changed them and they were weak for that. So that was always in my head. So when those prison officers were looking through that tiny little glass window in that prison cell, it was about that expression of, of being strong, but then also thinking, you can't control me, you can't control my body, you can't stop me from doing what I'm doing. And it was, I suppose in a way it was like me regaining back some control of my environment, which I'd lost. So in that tiny little space, I could exercise and I could read and they couldn't stop me from doing either of those two things.

Amazing. And so, so yeah, it really didn't reform you in any way, your first sentence, did it? So tell me then, so you get out and then how do you end up back in prison? I think, Was it about 24? Is that right? So tell us about how you kind of carried on that criminal journey and ended up back in prison.

So basically when I got released out of that segregation cell, I got released back out onto the street. I can honestly tell you Today, I was 100 times worse than the man was locked up as a kid. Like, I got released, I was angry, I was resentful. And even in my mind, when I was in that, when I was in that prison cell, the hate, like it pains me sometimes, the amount of hatred I had in my body, like, because it's negative energy. And I was like, I was cooking on it in that cell. And I used to think to myself, when I get out of here, every single year you've took off my life, because, again, I wasn't taking responsibility for my actions. So I didn't see it through that prison. I saw at that point, you've kidnapped me and put me in this situation, and if every year you've put me in it, I want £1,000,000 when I get out. So the day they released me from prison, I was already in that mindset of continuing being a criminal. Now, what ended up happening, I obviously, I've been to prison, I've not told the police anything. People outside in the real world heard about how I behaved whilst I was in prison. So again, you get a lot of recognition for that and kudos that you went to prison. You was difficult, it didn't break you. So within that world, sort of my standing jumped up even more because people knew then they could trust me more. So because I've been to prison, I didn't tell him anything. So I come out of prison, I'm literally. I'm literally out four days. And I found tracking devices on my car because I was paranoid when I got released from prison because I knew they would want to put me back in there. So I used to get my car checked all the time. And my friend was a mechanic and he put my car up on the ramp in the. In the garage. And they, the police had put tracking devices under my bumpers, so I knew they were there and I left them on there for a month. And I was driving around playing games with them, letting them think I was going to work every day. And then it got to a point where I was like, you know what? I know, I know they're going to do anything they can to put me back in prison. So I made the decision that if I lived in this country, in Britain, that I would end up going back to prison because I didn't want to. I wasn't going to rehabilitate. I wasn't rehabilitated. Like, I was still. My mindset was still of a criminal. Like, I still wanted to commit crime and, and make money any way that I could. So it wasn't like, it wasn't a deterrent. So, but I. I saw it logically and thought, but if I continue living like that, I'm either going to make a mistake or they're going to do something and deliberately sort of try to fit me up and frame me for something. So I made that decision to go and I did. I went to Spain and I lived that typical lifestyle that you would imagine, Charlie. Like, I was partying, I was young, I was taking drugs, I was Hanging out with people that had lots of money, which again, just sort of encouraged me even more and put that drive and that lust to accumulate even more wealth because I was round wealth. And then I come back to Britain for a friend's part birthday and then I was only going to come back for a week because. Because my life in Britain was over, like it was finished. I didn't, I didn't anticipate to, to live there ever again. I went to prison, I come out, I knew the police were watching me. So again, I thought, statistically I'm gonna end up back in prison if I live here. So my mindset was already, it's gone, I'm never going back there. And I felt free when I was in Spain because I didn't feel like anyone was observing me and watching me and stuff. But I go back there purely for a birthday party and it was only for a week I was coming back for. And I met up with one of my stepdads best friends, a man that I met when I was about 14 years old. He just got released from prison when I was 14 after serving 18 years for armed robbery. And within that world, the criminal underworld in Britain, he was a very respected man. Like, he, like he was someone. Again, when I say this to you now, I feel embarrassed to say it, but he's someone that I idolized when I was 14 years old, he was the most carefree individual I've ever met. Like there, like I said before, like when I was much younger, like a lot of those men were sort of that fragrant disregard for the system, the state authority, the police. But he was on a whole different level of disregard for the state and the police. Like he was literally the nearest that I've ever come across to being like. Like when you watch those cowboy films, like he was like a cowboy, he just did not care about anything. And being 14 years old was a bit more mature at this point. And I was just. I idolized him as a kid and when I come back from Spain, he ended up getting old of my phone number. And he rang me up one morning and he said, you want to meet for breakfast? And again, of course I'd meet him. Like I looked up to him as a young boy and yeah, I sort of, again, like I said, I idolized him. So I had so much respect for him and the way he was. I went and met him and he asked me to go and commit a crime of him. He asked me to commit a robbery of him and he said it was easy, it was easy money. And, and I said, no, I don't need to do it. I said, I'm only back here for a few days going to this party and I'm going back. And he told me to sum my money. And again that greed overcome me. And I would say Charlie was probably the best decision I've ever made in my life. And I agreed to do it with him. And I said, yeah. And what I didn't realize, what I just agreed to, what the ramifications of that were going to be, was there was a hundred man police surveillance operation watching him 24 hours a day. And I'd been watching him for two months from the robbery squad and serious and organized crime squad. And I just walked into one of the biggest police operations the Metropolitan Police were running. And four days later me and him get arrested in southeast London. And, and I thought that was really, I thought it was the end of my life. Like I remember when, when the police tried to ambush us waiting for a security van to turn up. And I remember having this car chase with these undercover like robbery squad. At the time I didn't know there was a robbery squad, but I just remember they tried to ram me and a couple of these guys jumped out the car with guns pointed up and I, I drove off on the pavement and they all jumped back in the car and they chased me. So now at this point I know there aren't police. And I remember driving nearly 100 miles an hour and I was fully prepared to die to get away from them because when I got arrested the first time, I didn't know what to expect When I was having that car chase with them. I knew what I was going back to. I was going back to that segregation cell and I, and at that moment I genuinely was fully prepared to give up my life to try to get away from them because I didn't want to go back to that place so bad. And, and they, they obviously, they end up catching me. And I just remember like we crack, I crashed the car and I ran off and, and I end up running into this dead end and I just remember this tsunami of police running towards me with all these guns pointing at me. And I just latched on to one guy, he had a bulletproof vest on and he had this gun and I thought he's gonna, he's gonna kill me. Like I genuinely thought that moment my life was finished. Like I literally, he was screaming at me, get down. And I didn't get down. And I remember tensing and that's ridiculous. But I was tensing the anticipation. He was going to shoot me. And anyway, they end up bundling me to the floor and I was just. Yeah, it's hard to even express in words at that moment how I felt. I felt like my life had finished. That's how I felt that moment in time.

You got two life sentences, is that right?

That's correct.

In the. I mean, you said you were already in a high security prison the first time around, but this time it was a whole other level. So just tell us a little bit about that, tell us about your fellow cellmates, because there was some interesting characters that you were meeting there, I think, wasn't it? And then I suppose how you got into rowing from that point on.

Yeah, so when I got arrested this time, I got transported from the scene of me getting arrested to the police station. And when I was at the police station, I was there for three days, refused all interviews. So when I say refused, I mean when I sat in the interview room, I just did not even acknowledge anyone was in the room with me. I just looked through the police officers be in my head, I'm thinking, I need to get out of this. And I'm always trying to think of ways and trying to see weaknesses and gaps everywhere, trying to see about how I can get out of this situation. You don't know how much evidence they've got against you. When they transported me from the police station to the first appearance of the Magistrates Court, I realized the gravity of the situation that I was now in, where they had me in the reception area of this police station. And I remember it was something like, it was like. It was like. It sounded like an air conditioning machine. It was just this deep humming noise. And I'm handcuffed, I'm handcuffed to one of the police officers that arrested me. All their radios are crackling and they said, like, take the prisoner outside. And so they brought me out and obviously I'm thinking, I'm just going to get in the back of a police van and we're just going to drive to the court. And when we go out into the back of this police car park, I looked up, there was like a helicopter hovering over the police station. There was at least 20 armed police officers, the ones that you see at the airports with machine guns. Police officers are Alsatian dogs. And I thought, wow, like they are really, really, really stepping this up from the first time I was arrested and I went to the magistrates court and then they moved. Then we went in this armed convoy to Belmarsh Prison. And then I got processed for the reception area of Belmarsh Prison. And then you get held in a holding cell before they put you on the wing. And then there's a. They call him a po. He's a principal officer, and he come to the cell and he. He was a nice enough guy, like he was from Wales. And he opened up and he said, john, you. You are being allocated to the hsu. And I didn't know what it was. Now, I never understood what HSU was. I didn't know what it was at that time, but when I heard H. When I was in the police station, I pretended I had concussion because I went. He tried to get to a hospital because I thought, if I get to a hospital, I'm going to try to break out, but I'm going to try to escape at the police station. So I kept pretending. I. I'd like a. I was. I was concussed, I was given all the symptoms, got headache, I feel nauseous, all that stuff. But the police didn't fall for it and they never took me to the hospital. But I think now I'm in prison, they might have put that on my file. So they're saying, I'm going to go to the hospital wing in prison. So I was like, what stage is you thinking hospital? And he said, the high security unit. Again, I still don't really understand what that is. He shuts the door and then an hour later, they all come to my cell, like the cell. Holding cell in. They handcuff me, they put me in this little van and they drive me through the prison. And, like, literally, the HSU is a. It's a prison within a prison. They built it in 1990s to house the IRA. It's the. It's. Well, it is the most secure housing complex in Western Europe. We used to call it the Bat Cave. And the key. The prison officers haven't got keys to the doors. Everything's electronic doors. You can't take hostages. I didn't really. Again, didn't understand the magnitude of what this place was.

Didn't.

They didn't try.

And when they first opened Belmarsh, didn't they put some Royal Marines in there and say. Basically they did, and none of them did.

Yeah, they. When it was first built, when. When they built the HSU in Belmarsh, they actually locked. I think there was three SAS soldiers for a weekend with stuff like hacksaw blades, crowbars, and they said, break out. They weren't. Because it has to be Escape proof. And I think from, from my memory, from what I was told it was they managed to get through one door in three days and they literally could have as much time as they wanted. And when they walked me onto this hsu, the only way you can explain it, like I said, we used to call it the bat cave. Very claustrophobic, very small, stunk of bleach. Like the smell of bleach, that industrial bleach. Like I said, prison officers didn't have keys to the door. Everything's electronic, everything's airlock. One door closes, one door opens and they, they woke me up and obviously something I'm not used to seeing in prison because in prison you normally see these old Victorian prisons or these massive open spaces where prison officers watching now suddenly it's all tiny little corridors and they walk me onto the wing that I was put on and it literally had four cells one side, four cells the other. Snooker table, exercise bike, row machine and a table. And the prison officer went to me, look like, if I was you, I'll take your exercise period now because if you don't take it now, you're not going to get it to tomorrow. You get 45 minutes a day. So you've been in the police station for three days. If I was you, I'll take it because your, your, your wing is now an exercise. So I said, okay, so you said, put your stuff in your cell. That allocate to me that put it in there. And then they brought me back down again, all these airlock doors and then they walk me outside. And even though you're outside because you can feel the air has changed when you look up, there was so much anti helicopter wire and netting, it was like, it's the only way you could explain to someone who's never seen it. It's like you're like in a hamster cage, but just with corrugated iron. So you can see the sky, but you can only see the sky through squares, but hundreds of squares because of all the anti helicopter wire. And then, then they want me to the exercise yard. In the exercise yard, the prison officer doesn't stand in the yard with prisoners, he's got his own box so you can't take him hostage. And they open that electric door and then they let me walk out into this, this, this exercise yard. And actually for how small the unit is, the exercise yard is quite big. And I remember when they let me go out, I'm just like, my eyes are scanning and there's obviously not a lot of people out There, like, there's only eight cells on the wing. And my eyes are scanning around the yard and suddenly I'm recognizing all of these people from all the national newspapers. Like when I was in Spain and stuff, like reading the stuff that was happening back in Britain and. And when I was in there, yeah, it was Sheikh Abu Hamza, the cleric that got extradited to the United States of America for terrorism. The 21, 217 attempted suicide bombers that tried to block the tube with SU side vests. And then there was another guy in there. It was one of my uncle's friends, Roger. And he come up to me with amsa. They, Roger had heard I've been arrested on the radio and I was coming to that unit and stuff. And then again, I really understood the magnitude of my situation. I knew I was going to be in a lot, a lot of trouble. So when my lawyer come up, I said, what do you think I'm going to get for this? And he think, even I think they're going to throw the book at you and give you a life sentence. Now, again, I was at life. I went, I haven't even done anything. Like no crime was actually committed. Like, there was no victim. It was a conspiracy. And he said, I know. He went, but he went, they think that you've. You've already got previous convictions, and I think they're going to hold against you, your family and so on and so forth. And. And he was 100. Correct. Like, when I went two and a half years later, I was in that unit. When I went to court eventually, after two and a half years, I was a Woolwich Crown call. The jury were put in protection. There was armed police outside the call. There was all the media for all around it. And when, when it was time for me to get sentenced, the judge looked at me, and at this point, I was 24 years old, and he said to me, you're a young man and whatever sentence I impose on you today, you're going to come out of prison young man. Because Obviously I was 24. Even if he gave me the maximum really, that he could give me for that crime, I'm still coming out of prison in my early 30s. And he went, I believe you always pose a risk to the public. So he went, the only way I can ever mitigate that risk is by handing down a life sentence. So he gave me a life sentence for conspiracy to rob and a life sentence for possession of firearms with intent to commit robbery. And sometimes people don't really get the life because they Think when you get life, you stay in prison for life. So what they, what, what life is, A life sentence is, is 100 years. It's 99 years. That's how long life is. Now when, when the just sentences you, he looked at me and went, if I was going to give you today a fixed term of imprisonment, I would have given you 10 years for what you've done. And out of that 10, you would have served five years before you've been eligible for parole. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a life sentence with a minimum tariff of five years. That means that when five years comes, that doesn't mean you get out of prison. What it means is you're, you're entitled for parole. If you don't demonstrate that you've changed and you're no longer a risk to the public, the state, the prison service can keep you in prison for the remainder of your life. When you get released from prison, if the probation service or the police see you interacting with organized criminals, they suspect that you're going back down that road of committing criminality. The burden and proof isn't they have to prove you've done it. It's basically they suspect you're doing it, then they can recall you back to prison. So then basically it gives them, it makes their job easier being able to put you in prison if they think you're going down that wrong path again instead of being able to prove you've gone down that wrong path. And he gave me those two life sentences, but I remember when he gave them to me, like, I had no intentions whatsoever to sit there and serve him. And that was why it didn't really bother me, like, in regards of. I just used to, I thought in my head, well, there's no way I'm sitting in prison for the rest of my life, so. So that's not going to happen. And then they moved me back to that unit and then they transferred me out of there to another maximum security prison in Yorkshire.

And how did that progress into getting into rowing? And tell us about kind of your achievements in rowing because they are quite astonishing given your environment.

So when I got moved to Full Saturn, which is a match from security prison in Yorkshire, there was a prison officer there in the PE department called Mark Elliott and we used to call him the Playboy. Like, he was this, he was this Yorkshireman, like, constantly sunkissed, Tan brown. Right. Like, again, it was just. You could see he had pecs, massive quads. Anyway, he was, he worked in The PE department. And he was a bit of a. He used to be a bit of a boy and a bit of lad. And even though I didn't like prison officers, he was quite funny. Like he was. Like he would always try to have a band with. Yeah. And like he was. And anyways you used to engage with him sometimes, even though you didn't used to like doing it. I just used to get sucked into him. Now every Christmas they used to hold these, these competitions in the prison. Now I'm in a maximum security prison. Most men that are in there never getting out, right, they're doing life with minimum 30, 35 years. The prison gym is really the only thing they've got right now. You can imagine in that very male, alpha male, masculine environment, right? Everyone wants to be the strongest in the prison, have that reputation as being the strongest. Can bench press the most, can you squat the most. So it's that sort of. You've got all these egos going on. There's a couple of prisons in there that they throw themselves into their fitness. So anyway, when Christmas comes around, they used to hold these competitions. Mum was Strongman, one was Superstars, right? Superstars was a fitness competition. And basically this Mark Elliott, the, The P. The P.E. officer used to compete in these, like, these, these competitions outside of prison. And they were like CrossFit back in the day, right before CrossFit just blew up and Mark used to do it. So he got their recognized circuit. So it was like 500 meter row, 25 reps of like bench pressing, 20 in each. And basically he was like, I think it was like 10 or 12 exercises in how quick you could do the whole circuit. Anyway, the competition comes around Christmas Day. You've got prisoners that have been in this full sutton for years. One guy never lost, never ever lost. And I absolutely battered everyone. Like no one even got near me, right? Because obviously when I was in my cell I was doing all these circuits again. It got me through that two and a half years in that high security unit. And I went, I fell back into that pattern again because I knew it could get me through my prison center. So every day I would do my cell circuits anyway. Smashed everyone and Mark come up to me and he said, that is really like, I know how quick that is, what you've just done there, considering you don't do that even. That's really, really, really quick. Even in regards of what I know other people do outside that specifically train to do that circuit very quick. I didn't think anything of it. He Gave me my tub of sweets because they're like quality streaks they give you for winning the competition. And then the next day I entered the strongman competition. Now I was 73 kilo. I was probably like the smallest, lightest person participating in this strongman competition in the prison. You had men in there that were like man mountains, like literally 16, 17 stone men, pecs, arms, traps, quads. All they do all day is lift weights or every time they go to the gym anyway, it was a bench press, a squat and a deadlift. And what they do, they combine all three of your weights and then it's like some, they did that, some sort of through bowler. There was like some scoring system for power to weight and in the whole prison I was like the third strongest and. But I didn't make these mental connections because I had no interest in sport. I didn't understand about athletic, athletic ability. I didn't understand about these things. It didn't resonate with me whatsoever. I just thought I was strong. And then I was known in that prison to be really fit and really strong. And the next year went back again, batted everyone and anyway, I formed this relationship within prison of being a very fit prisoner. Then I'll get downgraded, I get moved out of her Maximus security prison because at this point I was planning the system, I was doing everything they asked me to do because I knew I wasn't going to get out of prison unless I went through. I jumped over all the hurdles. So I knew every year when I sat my sentence plan boards and they said, we want you to do X, Y and Z. I would sit there and do X, Y and Z. And I thought, when I get to that point of my parole hearing, you're not, not going to be able to release me because you've asked me to do everything and I've done it. So I know if I've ticked all the boxes, you have to let me out or you're going to move me to an open prison and then I'm just going to abscond, right? Because that was where my mind was. I didn't want to change, but I had to play game the system. So I get moved to this open prison and then it was working like I got moved there, sorry, to the, to the category B prison. And again, didn't change, didn't rehabilitate. I've got access to mobile phones that you're not allowed to have. I'm talking to my friends that live in Spain, I'm talking to my friends that live in The Netherlands. I'm saying, look, I'm nearly come to the end of this sentence. Just make sure that when I'm ready to go, you're there, ready for me and I'm coming. And all my age were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry. Like, when you, when you're ready, you've got somewhere to come, we can put you here, you can go here. And then my whole life changed in 2009. 2009 on the 14th of November. Woke up that morning, went through the same process, doing my cell circuit, reading my book. By this point, I was. I had a job in the prison, I was going to education. And in that evening, I was watching a game of football on the tv and at half time, the Republic of Ireland were playing France in the qualifier and I couldn't believe Ireland was still in the game. And I phoned up my cousin to say, are you watching this game? It's incredible. And my cousin went to me, are you on your own? And I said, yeah, of course. And he just said, I've got something to tell you. And I said, what? And he said, aaron's died. And Aaron was my best friend from. We were kids. Like, when I went to Spain, we basically lived with each other. Like, we lived. We lived out of each other's pockets. And I'd never. At the beginning, I was in disbelief. I couldn't believe he'd died. But, like, I'd never lost anyone that I loved. Like, I used to hear about people dying and being killed or horrific things happening to people, but I was always immune from it. It never happened to me. They was other people. And then suddenly someone that I deeply cared about and loved had died. And the next night, I remember on it, ITV on the News, News at 10, because the crime that my friend died in happened in the Netherlands committing a robbery. Because they were all English criminals in the Netherlands committing this robbery. It made headline news. And I remember being in my prison cell watching the last moments of my friend's life on the CCTV camera in the Netherlands. And then. And then I just. It's hard for me to explain it into words. Like, I looked at my life and I looked at his life and he never achieved anything he was capable of achieving. He. He was an amazing person. He genuinely was an amazing person. He had such a good spirit and he got sucked into this toxic, horrible, vile, like, shit life. And everyone that, like, I looked up to as a kid, that I idolized as kids were old men rotten in prison, done nothing with their lives. And I just realized what this life that I had engaged in was. And. And obviously I could relate to my friend because I cared for him so much. I spent so much time with him. And then it put me in that situation. If I wasn't where I was at, I would have been with him. I would have probably been in that car with him that night. I lost my night, lost my life or. And then I realized how fortunate and lucky I was as a person that all of those years before when the police were in that car park in South London with all those guns pointed at me, it took one police officer to pull the trigger. My life would have ended in a cul de sac in southeast London. And all I had to show for all of this destruction and misery that I had ever created in the world was this shit, horrible fucking watch on my wrist, this Rolex Daytona. And it was pathetic. And I had it in prison because it was like a bit of a fu. To the system that even though you've put me in prison, you can't take anything off me. And again, it was an arrogance that I had whilst I was in there, towards the state. And, And I, I made the decision that night that, That I was done. Like I. I was cashing in, like I was done. I. I didn't want this life anymore. I didn't want to be in this place. I didn't want to be around these people. And I. And I. And I can remember the next morning when my cell door opened. We used to have to eat, and I came communal eating area in the prison for breakfast. And I just remember sitting there and I was disengaged, but subconsciously taking in the conversations that were going on around me. And there was these prisoners talking about stabbing people. And this person's an informer. And I just thought, I can't be around these people no more. I have to get away from them. And it's very hard, like, when you're in that situation. Like, it's like being a drug addict, addicted to crack, blocked in the. In a drug den, you like. Even though I knew my heart that I didn't want to be there anymore, I went to something else in my life. I was trapped. I was physically trapped in that world. And I couldn't just get up and get out. I didn't have that choice. So I had to find something. I didn't know what it was like. My identity was wrapped up in being a criminal, being around these people, engaging in these conversations. Like these were people that were friends of mine and I didn't want to be around them anymore. And I went down the prison gym and there was just a prisoner one day, like he wasn't even fit, he wasn't even, like he was overweight, he'd done any exercise. But when you're in prison you only get a certain amount of gym sessions a week. You get free, right? And he was down there every single day. And I just remember going down that gym and I just saw him in there. I saw him in there before, like my friend died. But then when, when Aaron did die, I become more in tune to him down there more. And I went up to him, I said, how do you come down here so much? Because I just thought that gym could be my escapism from the wing. And he explained to me that he was rowing a million meters for a children's hospice. And because of that he got a note from the gym officers to allow him access to the gym. And like I said, like, you only get three gym sessions per week and you're not allowed to go to the gym with any other wings because of gang activity. So that's why you only get limited to a certain amount of gym because you can only go with your wings. But he was down in all different wings. And I even asked the prison officers and see if they let you do it. And I asked, and the prison officer at the time was called Craig, the head of the gym down there. And he agreed, he green light it. He said as long as you raise money, you could row a million meters for charity. So I went back up on the wing. Some of the guys up there sponsored me like peanuts. It was like 50 pence and a pound of like their weekly earnings that they make like sweeping and, and working in the workshops and stuff. And then I had like some of my, my family sent me in some money, a sponsorship. And I handed in the sponsorship form and the gym wrote me this, this, basically this, this letter, a note or a pass which allowed me to come off my wing to go down to the gym in the mornings. I made movements and I got in the RAM machine. I was 26 years old and I didn't know what I was doing. I just started pulling the handle towards me. The first session I ever done was I rode 32, 000 meters. My technique was awful. But honestly, like, I, I can vividly remember it, like when I was on that machine for that two hours, it completely and utterly transcended me out of prison. Like, I remember looking at those numbers on that, that screen and everyone left Me alone. And I. It kind of like you go into like a trance. Like it was generally like I just out of body experience. And I didn't realize about endorphins and that like the runner's high that people would often refer to, that's how I felt at that moment on that round machine. I felt that feeling and everyone just left me alone. Prison officer did talk to me. Prisoners left me alone and I went back up on the wing and then I went down in the next day and then the next day and the next day and I kept doing it and I did the first million in a month. And I was like, I want to keep continue doing this because this is going to help me get to the end of my prison sentence. So then I wrote another million. Then I wrote another million. And when I got to 3 million, a prisoner said to me, you do realize if you rode 5 million meters, that's equivalent to run across the Atlantic Ocean. It's like 5000K. And I didn't know that at the time, so I asked if I could continue doing it because I just thought it's going to buy me an extra two months of gym. And the prison officers agreed it. And then I don't know what you could say happened next was destiny or the stars aligning. But one day this prison officer just walked behind me, called Darren Davis, and he looks over my shoulder and I wrote 10,000 meters. And he went, that is really, really fast. And he went away and he come back a couple of days later and he gave me all these pieces of paper and had all the world and British records on an indoor machine. And I remember looking at them and I was like, they can't be real, like, because I could nearly break some of them at that moment. And bear in mind, like, you're in prison, you're in a. In like in a bubble. It's not. It's not the real world. Like, I don't see what athletes are. I knew in prison I was fit, but I didn't know in the real world. And he planted the seed in my head and I went back to my cell and I remember thinking to myself, I'm going to see if I can ask him if I can try to break some of these. It just sparked something inside me. And I went back and I said, look, do you reckon it'd be possible if I could try to break some of these? And he said, look, I can't make any promises. He went, but let me look into it. And he went away and he went to the prison governor. And again, like, I was so lucky that, like, the governor of that prison was, like, a really religious Christian. And Darren went to him, and I really believe this, this could be the catalyst for him to turn his life around. And I really think, like, this could help him. And like, he said, yep, he can do it. And then Darren went away to concept two, the people that owned the row machine, the company, and said, look, this is the situation. He's not going to have to go to competitions. He can't go out into, like, a public setting, do these things. He's in prison. I'm a prison officer. There's other prison officers. Could we validate these things if we watch him do it? And. And I agreed it. They said, as long as you weigh him, because I was doing it under 75 kilo, you had to have a data card to put in the machine to prove that I rode that distance. And Darren come back to me, said, you can do whatever you want. And the first record I tried to break, I went to break was for the marathon. I don't know why I picked it. I picked it. I picked it off the list, and I broke it by seven minutes. And, like, honestly, when I'd done it, I. I just remember the. Oh, I felt ecstatic. And I remember being on this mat, this gym mat, and I had to do the records. I had to eat pure sugar because I wasn't allowed energy gels or anything like that, or electrolyte drinks. I didn't understand about sports nutrition, but I just knew I needed. I needed something when I was doing these things because I knew, I always used to know when I got past 20 miles in a round machine, I start feeling lightheaded. And I used to, like, someone said, just eat sugar and stuff. So we used to get, like, the raw sugar, take a lot of sugar and eat it. Literally eat it. Before I started working out, I put it into a drink, made my own drinks and stuff out of it, made electrolyte drinks. And I did it. And I was on this mat, this record, and everything I'd ever wanted as a kid, to be good at something and be successful and achieve something. When I got older, I felt like it. In that moment, being in that gym, I felt amazing. And I thought I, this is what I'm going to do with my life. I'm going to use my body as a vehicle to get me out of this place. This is what I'm going to do. And then. And when I say I become obsessed, I start going down to the prison library. I was reading books on sports nutrition, on training heart rate zones even though I wasn't allowed heart rate monitoring prison. I wanted to understand about how you get fit because I didn't know how, what I was doing. Like I was on this ram machine, just literally rowing. I wasn't doing anything specific to be good at it, I was just doing it. And I had woken up disability in my body. I didn't know I possessed that Darren identified in me. And then within the next 18 months I end up setting free world records and eight British records. And at one time I was the only lightweight man in the world to have all three ultra endurance world records at the same time.

Remind me what those three world records are because they were, they were, they were ultra endurance ones, weren't they?

Yeah, I broke the world record for 100,000 meters. Then I broke the world record for the most amount of distance road in 24 hours which was 163 miles. And then I broke the world record for the longest continuous non stop road which was just short of two days.

45 hours, wasn't it? I think.

Yeah, 45, 45.

The longest 24 was 264 kilometers for those of us who don't work in miles. And I did, I did go on to check if you still hold any of those records, but I think they've.

Been, they've all been gone.

They've all gone how randomly. Do you know how far, how many miles total you clocked up in prison?

Yes, roughly. I. So when I rode, when I rode the 5 million, I literally. I've still got that today. It's at my mum's house, it's in a binder because every single session I had to write down and in a prison officer I have to look at the RAM machine and sign it at the end to prove that I concept used to give me certificates. So I wrote 5 million in the book. I probably reckon I'd rode roughly around 10 million meters in those. In those like two, two years. So yeah, about 10 million. Not that much.

It is amazing. And, and you've obviously got some. Do you think you've got a physical ability that was kind of bestowed on you, you know? Or is this just, was this just cumulative? Was it something you were born with or is it kind of your training that in the cells that have got you there, do you think?

Well, if I showed you pictures of me as a kid, you. I don't think. I think you'd be in a bit of disbelief. Like when I Say I was overweight. I was overweight like as a child. My mum sent me some pictures a couple of months ago and I couldn't even believe how big I was. Like if you would have said to my PE teachers at school, secondary school that I would probably come out of my school as one of the better athletes. I don't, I just, they wouldn't have believed you. Like my school was very football dominated. Like it was an all boys school. You was either good at football and if you wasn't you was just a crap athlete. And he wasn't like encouraged to do anything else. I don't know. Like I'm trying to think because I never did anything as a kid like that would have sort of identified did. Was I, was I naturally good at any like anything physically because I didn't engage in it, I never engaged in sport. I just didn't, it didn't compute in my head whatsoever. Like I, I literally like the Tour de France to me even to 26 years old was something that like skinny guys did on a bike in the mountains. Like I couldn't have sat there and told you about anything. Right.

So guy living in the mountains these days.

Yeah the irony of our life sort of like sort of evolves and now these things start manifest and stuff. But yeah, it's like it just didn't even register in my head at all. Like rowing, football, vaguely like a little bit of football. As a kid growing up like I would, I would play football and go and goal but I was always that chubby kid that used to get put in gold because I was so bad at like ball sports. But I think being, I don't know like when I was in prison and obviously doing that training to feel alive like it was always about the suffering element of like it made, that's what made me feel alive. But when I, when I would, I remember when I did the 100k world record I, I honestly I, I've never physically been in so much self inflicted pain through sport like even anything I've ever done. Ever since like that 100k. I didn't hardly have any, well I didn't have any sports nutrition whatsoever because I was in prison. So we had to make our own electrolyte drinks and stuff again and obviously I, I started understanding about that side. It was like sports nutrition but being limited to what I had access to in prison. And I remember getting to 85000 meters and my lats were just like literally cramping and I, and I remember like Darren was sitting behind me. And he didn't say at the time, but he said afterwards, like, my, my lats were like shuddering. You could see like where they were. So I was so dehydrated and I'd run out of sodium. But I just remember being on that Ramesh and that last 15, 000 meters, all I kept thinking about was the policeman that arrested me, DCI Curry, that arrested me twice when I was a little. When I was a kid and then when I was a man, and just proving that I just wasn't just this. This waste of space, this piece of that was locked in prison. I was so determined to be good at this and. And I thought, I just gotta suck it up for 15 more K and just grit it out. I'm not. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna give in. I'm not gonna quit. I want to do something in my life and, and I, I can do something exceptional here. And that was what motivated me at that moment in time. But I suppose, yeah, I probably did always add that that's why I'm such a believer. I think everyone is good at something. I believe I was always good at it, but it was just never. It was never allowed to express that talent as a kid. I was never guided. If I would have been guided as a kid, it would probably been a very different story for my life.

It sounds to me like you've got an actual ability to suffer.

Yeah. But you know what? Again, I'm a great believer in life. You can't blame everyone for the bad if you don't blame them for the good. And like, realistically, my stepdad was horrifically bad role model. He was like, it was everything you wouldn't want your child to be brought up around in regards of guidance. But he also taught me skills that have served me well throughout my life. Later on, for instance, when I was a young kid, he would always tell me to be able to. I was a very shy kid when I was little. I wasn't very outgoing. I was very introverted and I was always that little kid that would hide behind my mum's leg. And because I was brought up by my mum and my sisters, but my sister and my aunties, like, I was always doted on and sort of, I was just. I was very shy, especially when I was put in bigger situations around men, so I would just always clam up and I would just be very offish with people. But when Billy started taking me out, he used to fall. Forced me into interacting with different groups of people. And he said you can never just hang out with one sort of group of people. You have to be very open minded to mixing with different people. So when I was a kid, like he'd take me out when he'd go and meet lawyers or accountants, which I think later on developed my social skills because it allowed me to be able to express myself to different groups of people. And I find it even to today. Like I find sometimes when you take certain groups of people out of their comfort zone and put them into a new environment, they really struggle to interact with people. Like I've seen very intelligent academics that are amazing at talking to students. You put them into a youth center and they just like, they don't know what. They don't really know how to interact with them and they they try to act cool and it's really, really bad. But I think that he helped me develop my social skills. And then also I think that, that not wanting to show weakness in regards to the sport element of it, I think that played a big role in me being sort of successful in doing what I did years ago. It was about that, that grit and determination of not showing weakness and drawing on my life experiences. Like to me for instance, being locked in a segregation cell for 24 hours a day for 365 days of my life. It's very rare or it's very unlikely, shall I say, in the remainder of my life on earth, I'm ever going to be in a situation as bad as that. Like, in regards of, like, if you was going to be hopeless and give up, that must have been it. Like that would have been it, that hole there. So when you've experienced that and when I say I've had nothing, like I've literally not even had the clothes of my own back, like I've not had any control the food that goes in my body. But when you've genuinely lost everything, you've your own, you're in a, you're in a hole. And don't get me wrong, it's self inflicted. I put myself in that situation and I fully accept the what I did. I never ever blame anyone else for it. I was a grown man. I made my own decisions in life. They were poor life choices. There wasn't mistakes that led me to being in that situation. But because I've experienced what that feels like, it's like nothing will ever come close to that ever again. So like when lockdown was happening and everyone was. Not everyone, but some people were moaning and stuff and I understand everyone's got their own perception of reality based on their life experiences. But to me, that's. That's like. That was nothing. Like I always felt like out of adversity and like when things. When I feel like my back's up against the wall and things aren't going my way, I always go on the front foot and regain control of the situation. But like, the stuff that was happening with coronavirus, like, I wanted to take the front foot and I wanted to optimize the opportunities that. That could give me personally to grow and develop. I wasn't just going to sit in my house and sort of feel sorry for myself and just. Just give into it and just surrender. I wanted to be the one to. To take the initiative, which has meant me being where I am today and being in the mountains.

Yeah, I mean, I was gonna. We're gonna. Wanted to talk about that because obviously you now sort of fairly been out in France for a while. When did you, when did you move out there? Was that during, like last year in lockdown and. Or how did you then. Was it a process of lockdown as another catalyst, or has it been something that you've always wanted to do?

So. But yeah, it was something where, like, in reality, Laura, my life has been very turbulent. Like, I've eaten from a young age, from, like, I would say from. From being quite a young teenager to go into prison, to coming out of prison, to being in Spain, to being in the Netherlands, to coming back, going to prison for 10 years. Like, my life has been turbulent, but I've had a lot of turbulence going on in my life. It's been like, not, well, chaotic in regards of where I've been, not having control of my environment. And then when I got released from prison, like, I've never. Someone said I've never felt at home anywhere. I've never, I've never gone home. Like, I lived in London and I used to go home and it never felt like my home. I didn't, I never, I didn't really like being there. Like, subconsciously, I just didn't like it. And then when I was allowed to start training abroad and like my probation officer, I used to have to ask permission at the beginning. They wouldn't because I wasn't allowed. Because I got life sentences, I wasn't allowed to leave the country without asking. So it was very restrictive. So every time I left, I could only leave the country for seven days and I had to go back to Britain. I had to report to my probation officer to prove I'd been I'd come back and I returned. So I couldn't just go on like an ad hoc holiday, my friends, or go and watch the Tour de France on a whim. I had to ask months in advance. Sometimes they lost my paperwork. I was meant to do Ironman races, they lost my paperwork. They mixed my races up and I couldn't race the race because I couldn't leave the country. But then when two years ago with the Secretary of State, took my license conditions off and I had the freedom of movement again, I come out to France and I come to the mountains, and it was the first time in my whole adult life I'd ever felt like I feel content and happy, like just going to the shops, I've got a smile on my face and feeling like I've never felt attachment to anything. Like there's not been much in my life where I've. I've been attached to something that if it was taken away from me, I would miss it. Where, like, even when I'm not here and I have to go somewhere else after, like six, seven, eight days, I'm like, I want to go back because I miss it that much. And like, when I'm just walking about, like, the privilege. I've got to be in such a beautiful place. And, and the love I feel towards this place, it was always drawing me here. And I didn't want it to be a vacation. I didn't want it to be a place where I come once a year. And then Covid happened, and then I just. I just did an overview of my life and I was looking at everything, where I was at, what I was doing. And like, we're only on this earth for such a short period of time. And, and, and Covid, I found it to be an opportunity for me personally that I could utilize the situation where everything went online. So I didn't need to attend meetings, I didn't need to do it in person. So then I'm like, well, if I'm never. If I'm ever going to do it, it's going to be now because this is the moment where I'm free to do it. So I come here in the summer, and I was here for a month on my own. And then I was just. I fell in love with it. I just literally, I, like, I started it, like, mixing with the local community and making friends. And then I just, I looked at my life and I just thought, you know what? I'm just gonna make. I'm just gonna make the jump because life's too short. Like, why wouldn't I? Like, I'm probably, if I'm lucky, I've probably got about another 40 summers left in me before I'm gone. So why would I not do it and pull it off to next year or the year after? Because tomorrow will never come and you don't know what could happen tomorrow. Like, tomorrow I could get ill and die, whatever. So I just thought, I need, I need to make this decision. I'm going to make it. And, yeah, and I made it. And I would honestly put it down. It's been one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life by far.

Is there something about, like, having spent so many years in a 12 foot, 12 by 6 cell and you're now like, you don't have walls, you have open space. Is there something about that freedom? Or is it that you know the UK as well and you said when you went back out and you went back to London and you didn't feel at home there, but there's a lot of association with life before you went into prison and went through the sport and the rowing is. Do you think, is that anything to do with now, like having that detachment from the uk, but being in this open space or just you've found somewhere that you've loved?

Yeah, no, I've definitely, I would definitely say that the, the reference between like being entombed in a, in a, in a cage for that period of time and then having the complete polar opposite to it and the extreme freedom, like you like, and also then being immersed into nature so profoundly like that, that's the most important thing. I like this place, for instance. Like, I've, I've, I've eaten meat my whole life, never even considered not eating it. And I come here and every night I was going up in the summer and I was feeding these two horses and I used to go every night, just get a bag of carrots and go out there and feed them. And I just remember one night looking at these horses and I just thought, I'm a hypocrite. I can't. And I, I can't. How can I, how can I eat meat like the cat? And I started seeing cows in fields and, and the cows being fields, even though they were in fields on the mountains, I knew they were all going to die. And it looked, and it felt like when I looked at them behind these, like, electric fences that, like, it reminded me of prison. And I just thought, I'm a hypocrite. I'm eating all These animals, but then I love these animals but they're the same. And then I stopped eating meat and I haven't had meat since, since last year, since last summer. It's, it's had a profound impact on my psychology and my, my men, my, my physical and mental well being. Like I said, like it's, I've never experienced love to how I feel at the moment being where I am here. Like I've never had that, I've never felt it. I would. And I said this the other day. The only other thing in my life that I love more than space is my mum. And that is it. And that's how I know I've got such a strong connection to this space. It was like I felt like I was always meant to be and this was where my journey was always meant to be, to come and I just. Yeah. And again, I appreciate the privilege of being in such an amazing, beautiful place and fit in the way that I feel. And, and you know what, like when people start talking about money and stuff, it like I, I, I, I won't go into too much detail but like I've walked away from a lot of stuff because my happiness means more to me than the stuff. So I'd rather be happy and content with less money than have more money and be miserable in a place and get on that hamster wheel. And I just made that decision and choice. I thought, I weighed everything up, I thought I'm going to file this money but my happiness is going to go through the roof. So I'll take the happiness.

Because you like your social media now? God, there's so many things I want to talk about but your social media is so outwardly positive and the messages you project and tell me really seriously, do you have a shit day? Do you wake up one morning and actually go, no, actually this is, I'm like. Because you're just, I mean, yeah.

Do you know what though? I think again, it's perspective, it's like, like are there days where I wake up and I feel tired? Yes, there are days like everyone, we're all human but like where I'm at, the place I'm at at the moment, I can, hand on heart, genuinely say that when I wake up in the morning because of where my life experience and where I've been, I am so appreciative of where I'm at. Like, I'll give, this is an example of it. Last year I never ever, ever watched these sorts of things on the TV because normally it's always the Same sort of narrative. But Ross Kemp went into Belmarsh Prison and he did a documentary series, right, about Belmarsh. I watched it because obviously, the work I do around the criminal justice system back in Britain, it's sometimes worthwhile watching it because it has a direct impact in some of the work that I would be doing. I put it on and I'm sitting in my flat in London watching Ross Kemp on this documentary. I never thought for a million years they would let Ross Kemp into that hsu, because I remember when I was in there, journalists were banned from going into it. When they're watching the documentary, when he gets, like the. The second part of it, he's walking across and he goes, now I'm gonna go and take your shoes. Anyway. I can't even express to into words I have not seen this place since 2007. That was. That was the day I left that unit to go to Full Sutton. And I remember Ross Kemp walked into this unit and the hairs on my neck stood up, like, genuinely, this is genuine. And the governor of that unit walked him to one of the cells and he said, could you lock me in it? I just want to see what it feels like. And you can watch this. People listening to this can watch this. Afterwards, he walks into this cell and they lock it, and he's in there for like a minute and he says, let me out. He went, let me out. It's too claustrophobic. And the governor went to him, where you are now is the end of the line. You cannot go anywhere else in the UK justice system. You are literally in that hole right now. I got up the next morning and I was driving to Hampton Court Lido and I went to go swimming. And I honestly thought in my head, I was. I could not get out that image of that unit in my head. And I thought, no matter what happens in the rest of my life, I'm winning, I'm out. I beat the odds. They give me an 83% chance when I got out of prison that I would be back in prison within two years. So to be where I am today, I've got so much gratitude and appreciation for this. I would one never take it for granted. And I'm. And I'm. I'm conscious. I make a conscious effort to be thankful for the. Where I am today, because I understand statistically it's nearly negligible the amount of people that would be. And do what I've gotten on to do with my life. And I. I'm not saying I'm special I'm not anything else, but I am so, so appreciative of the way my life's unfolded, that it's brought me to this place. And, and, and again, like, I understand the impact. Like, I never understood the impact my story could have at the beginning, but I understand it now. And like, the other day I got a message from a. From a guy and I asked him privately if it was okay to share this, and he said yes. But when you read a message from a man that was going to take his own life and kill himself, and he read my story and heard me on a podcast and he decided not to take his own life and I'm not making this up, like, to know you can have that impact over another human's life, that they've not killed themselves and left two children behind and stuff like that is the most amazing feeling personally for me, for all the stuff I've gone through in my life and the situation I've been through, to come to where I am today. That's why I always feel the way I am. I'm so. I feel so fortunate that I'm in the position I'm in to one, be where I am, but two, to be able to just help other people see the light and that you can. It isn't the end and to. It is the end. Like, like I think John Lennon said it, you can. As long as you're in the game, you can still always win it and you have to be in the game. And I just feel like I'm so fortunate and I am genuinely, like, appreciative, but like, there are days I get up and I might. I feel a bit tired today, but.

It'S a good tired.

Yeah, it's good times.

And so talk to me. I'm really intrigued. There seems to be an underlying theme to your story in your book, and we haven't even got on to Pro Iron man yet at all. But there's this underlying theme of role models to me in that you had Billy as a role model, you had Darren as a role model model Terry. But also now you've become this role model for like, the guy that you just gave the example of. But also I think there's pictures of you in the, in the prison gyms as well, isn't there? Talk to me about how you know the importance of role models to you and how you think that they can impact. They've impacted your life and you could potentially impact others.

So from my own personal experience and from the experience of, of what I've heard and seen. I think everyone's a role model. You can be a good role model or you can be a bad role model, but you are going to be a role model to someone and it depends on that person being exposed, a young person in particular, because they're more impressionable and more malleable role models. Again, as a young person, I didn't really understand the importance of a positive role model in my life. Now, I grew up in that environment where I was exposed to at that time, very negative role models in the regards of taking me down the road or encouraging me to go down a road that was very negative. Now I can, hand on heart, turn around and say, if, if I would have had Richard Branson be that man come into my life 8 years old, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now I would probably gone off and been an entrepreneur. If Seb co would have come into my life 8 years old, I would have probably gone off and become a runner. Would I have gone to the Olympics? I don't know. But I would have encouraged to go and do something positive. So it just shows you as a young person or when, when a person is young, how malleable they are to their environment. And you only know what you know in life. Now it took me to get into 26 years old to coming across that prison officer Darren Davies. That was the first positive role model, male role model in my life. That encouraged me and aided me, supported me for no agenda. Now I had lots of going back to what I said earlier, a lot of trust issues because of the way I was brought up with my stepdad. They're not trusting people. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone's out to get you. It took me a long time with Darren to build up that deep trust towards him, to realize that he genuinely just wanted me to be successful at something. He wanted me to turn my life around and change because that's his character. He completely changed my outlook and then gave me that awareness of what a role model is because, like, Darren showed me the importance because if he wouldn't have helped me in the situation I was in, and bear in mind, I had no control over my environment, but I had control of my body, but not over my environment. I was. I was in an artificially created environment that I couldn't like, get out of. But Darren reached into that place and gave me that opportunity and cared for me and helped me to find what I was good at in life and cultivate it. So I understand now so strongly what a positive role model can do for someone's life because Darren done it for me. And it's that sense of giving back and helping other people because Darren unlocked that potential in me. And each. He showed me the power what one person can have over another person's life because I could have been the greatest athlete that's ever walked planet Earth. It would not have made any difference whatsoever being in that prison because I did not have control of my environment. Like when I was in prison, there was a guy in there and literally he could break the British record for bench press. But he did it in a prison where there wasn't none of those prison officers that were able to help him to use that gift. Show him you're an incredibly athlete. Even though I said it to him, there was. He didn't have that Darren. He wasn't lucky enough to have that man. I had come into my life and that's what's really. It really opened up my eyes later on in my life and I was 26 years old when I got out of prison to the importance of what a role model, a positive role model can do for other people's lives. Yeah. And again, I think you have to be authentic to yourself because there's no point creating an artificial narrative around yourself. You are who you are. And I believe it in myself. Like, I know there's people that don't like me. That's. That's fine. Everyone's got their opinions. Some people will never be able to forgive what I did years ago. And I'm respectful of people's opinions and stuff. Like I can. I can't change them. I can't make them see me differently. But I can only show people I'm me and I'm who I am. And some people as a positive effect on. And thankfully it's more people that has a positive effect on than the people that it doesn't.

Do you. Now, I know we're jumping about and we've missed out big, big chunks here, but obviously now you're doing a lot of work with kids and youngsters. So being. And do you see yourself as being that role model to them or having some impact or purpose in their lives?

Yeah, totally. Because again, I understand it from my own childhood, the importance that again, if I'd have had that, that that person in my life as a. As a kid that would have encouraged me to go off and do something constructive and positive my life and believed in me and showed me and sparked that the inspiration in me as a kid. Shed. You've got this gift. You're driven, you're ambitious, you can, you can harness that and put it into something positive and accomplish something with your life. And again, in regards to my situation with a lot of these things is the fact that I love the fact that I'm able to open up doors and unlock opportunities for young people because again, I've managed to get into a very privileged position where like brands and organizations want to work with me. So then what that allows me to do then is allow to open up those doors and say, well, help this organization, help that organization to be able to link people into different sporting organizations and brands and, and to be able to unlock opportunities, because that's the most important thing. Like, you can inspire kids, you can, you can open up their minds to their abilities and their capabilities. But if you're not then going to give them the, the I'll open up the door for them to walk through it, to be able to use those gifts. It's kind of pointless. Like you, you need to be able. And I, that I used to get very frustrated with it at the beginning, like when I do a lot of school talks because you go in, you inspire, you open up their minds and they're like, wow, like this guy come from being in a, in a, in a box and he's doing what he's doing today and the kids for two days afterwards are like buzzing off it and then they just, they get sucked back in to their environment of hopelessness or no one there that is encouraging them. So that's why, like, I, when I made that decision that I wanted to sort of give back, it was more tangible stuff because it did frustrate me at the very beginning with doing those school talks. It was always more just talk and there was no substance behind it other than just sparking that inspiration in them. But you need to give them something more. And again, it's then me being able to leverage my relationships with organizations and people to be able to open up those doors and pathways for young people.

I think I'm right in saying, are you still the only Ironman athlete that's sponsored by Nike? Is that right?

No, I'm not.

Somebody else has got it as well now.

The, the Iron man world champion is as well. Oh, of course. Yeah.

But that was the case, I think.

Wasn't was the case. It was the case for a bit. It was the case for a bit.

How has the influence of the Nike swoosh? I mean, by the way, I, you know, I'm going to have to come back to Books because you're obviously an avid reader, I know you are, and I love, I would put myself in the same category. And Phil Knight's book Shoe Dog is just absolutely brilliant. I'm a big Nike fan. But how has the Nike swoosh impacted that work that you're doing with, with the kids?

Well, let me put it to you like this. I've. I've had many occasions where I've gone into young offenders institutions, I've gone into schools, youth centers, and you're, you'll, you do the whole debt presentation, slide deck, you do the whole talk and at the end the only question you get asked is what trains are you wearing? How much kit does Nike give you? And all they're obsessed about. I, I didn't really understand the power of it until I started delivering it within my talks, within schools, because the kids get it. The kids understand what Nike represents. Like it is so important in their lives. Like the way, the way they, the way they view it through sport, through culture, through, like, through youth, like the youth organizations, like the way the emphasis and the way obviously Nike is a brand, what it represents to young people. So me making that correlation between where I come from to never giving up, to working towards a goal and then to being under that umbrella with some of the greatest athletes that have ever walked the planet legitimately not smoking mirrors, but legitimately doing it and showing young people that if you do believe in yourself, you can get to that. Because they don't, lots of them, you talk to them and they're not really interested in the sport. They don't really get it. They don't understand about rowing. That isn't what they get. They get the end part of the Nike part at the end. And I, I could tell you multiple different, like, personal stories, but one in particular, my, My friend Jasper runs an organization in London called Football Beyond Borders. And he went into a pru, which is a pupil referral unit with children excluded from mainstream education. Before he went to the crew that afternoon, he went to Nike's offices in London to have a meeting. And when he left, he took a biro, right? He just took a 90 Baro and didn't think anything of it. And then when he's gone to this ppru, it's People referral unit. He's, he's in the classroom, the teachers are doing the, the lesson. This kid that's sitting next to him is just one of the most disruptive children in the class. Anyway, Jasper's sitting there and the kid's just Staring at him. And Jasper looked him and said, what's wrong? And he said, where's that pen from? And he said, and he didn't even realize, he said, I got it a minute ago from an office. And the kid was like, all right. And Jasper. And I'll tell you what, he went, if you listen to what the teacher's telling you to do for the next hour, you can keep that pen, right? And follow him. He gave the kid the pen. The kid literally sat there in silence for an hour and done everything the teacher asked him to do. When the class had finished and that kid left, the teacher said to Jasper, I have never seen him so quiet in the classroom since he's arrived here from school. And it just shows you the power of that brand, how you can coerce young people into doing the good stuff in life by using it as a, as a carrot and a stick, showing them that again, if you do the right things in life, good things can happen. But it's such a magnetizing, powerful thing. And I, when, when I really understood it, that was where, like when I first started working, obviously it was more about my relationship, was about an athlete. Now as an athlete, it was the pinnacle. Like I said, it was being under the umbrella with some of the best athletes in the world. But what I come to realize was my relationship with them. It was about leveraging that relationship to be able to go to them with ideas, with things that I wanted to do and leverage the power of the brand to give back into the community to help young people. Because young people look up to it so much. Like realistically, let's be realistic about it. I could tell you again multiple different stories from police officers where children, young people have committed murders, robberies for Nike trainers. Like, that's how powerful that brand is to them. So if you can leverage it for good in the community, that I think is a very important thing that I'm able to do. Which leads on to doing all the work that we're going to be doing in the summer.

I was going to say that's a, that's a pretty good segue yourself into. You've got some exciting plans with Nike, but with kids and communities coming up.

Yeah, so in the United Kingdom, 79% of all active space, playing fields, basketball courts, tennis courts, are locked behind school gates. So when the six weeks holiday comes up, the summer holidays for children, all those school facilities are closed to the community. So we're going to run a project this summer called Open Doors in partnership with UK Active. It's going to be one of Nike's biggest community led initiatives in the country this summer coming obviously we're hoping it's going to be a big summer of sport with the Olympics and the European championships and so on and so forth, if it happens is another thing. But this is going to happen and we're going to unlock these school facilities. So this summer we're going to start off a pilot project of opening up schools across London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester. And when these schools are open, sporting organisations like Football Beyond Borders, Gloves not Guns, Hackney Laces are going to be able to access these school facilities. We're going to run sort of sport camps but with an educational thread running through it. So the kids are going to go there, they're going to get two healthy nutritious meals a day, they're going to get breakfast and lunch. They're then going to participate in sport in the morning, do some learning in the afternoon. When I say learning I'm not talking about sitting in the classroom learning, I'm talking about learning people coming in and learn, helping them teach new skills, hopefully getting some other big brands to come in, teaching them about how to like you work gopros, how to how to work Apple products like opportunities that in their businesses, people that get jobs. So again creating the awareness for young people and then in the afternoon they get engaged in more sport and the idea will be that obviously the kids are going to get healthier, fitter again for people that listen to this, this is a statistic that absolutely shocked me when I found this out. But children from lower social economic backgrounds in the United kingdom, during the six weeks holiday, their cardiovascular fitness regresses by 80%, not 18, 80% their academic learning regresses by three full calendar months. So when they go back to school In September they're three months behind and 80% less fit because all they've done through that whole six week period is basically nothing. They've sat in front of computer screens all day being sedentary, they've been eating crap food because sometimes mum and mum and dad haven't got much money. So that's they're skipping meals. They might just be eating chocolate bars and crisps and obviously that has an effect over their physiology. Now you start adding Covid to this and lockdowns and all this stuff that's gone on the last sort of year. It just magnifies how much this project is going to be important. So this year is going to be the pilot. Next year we want to scale it up the year after we want to scale it up until it becomes basically a nationally recognized project that every summer that the UK government backs and basically a lot sums of money to be able to unlock these schools and get as many kids through those school gates. And this isn't teachers delivering this stuff. This is basically allowing community sports like organizations to be able to access these schools for nothing. Because at the moment that's the cost that they can't afford to cover by hiring out basketball courts, football pitches, tennis, because it costs a lot of money to access these sporting facilities. But these schools have got everything there and as I said, the taxpayer still paying to keep the school running over the six weeks holiday. So that's the plan and hopefully we help as many kids as we can. And the Nike swoosh will be that carrot and stick to get the kids in, engaged in the program. And it looks a lot better than the Department for Education trying to sell it into kids because they just seen them as head teachers trying to sell them in to get them back to school in six holiday. You put a few Nike swooshes up and it encourages more engagement with young people. Fantastic.

It sounds like an absolutely brilliant project and I'm sitting here wondering why nobody's thought of it before. Because it's one of those. It seems like a really obvious thing now that you've said it, but it's absolutely. Yeah, it sounds brilliant. Clearly you're a big believer that education has helped you kind of turn your life around. Firstly, obviously you're looking to do that with a foundation. So talk to me about how important you think that has been for you. But also there are any particular books along that journey that you thought these were the ones. I mean, you've mentioned Nelson Mandela. I'm not sure if that was the book A Long Walk to Freedom or A different thing, but are there any other books that you think you know, have really helped make an impression on you?

Oh, I, I could say one book straight off the bat has had a massive impact over me. It was called the Secret. It was about the laws of attraction. I must have had, I must have read that book at least 100 times, back and back and back and back. And I kept referencing it about visualization. But when I was in prison, when, when I got to that point where I went to use my body as that vehicle, I used to visualize every day when I was on that ram machine that when I got out of prison, I will become an athlete. I will become an athlete. I will become. And I have to feel, I remember I Used to go through like in my mind what that would look like, what it would feel like, what it would taste like when, when I was out, how, how I would be, how it would help me with my life. That book had an amazing impact over me and Darren bought me in a book by the playwright Jeff Thompson. It was called the Formula and it's the smallest book ever. Like I've spoken about this before in interviews and then afterwards like people have tagged me and they've gone and bought the Formula and when it comes it's like a little mini book. So people expecting this massive big book to come. This is the tiniest book ever, but it's like a modern day version of the, of the Secret and it's about how to live your life like eating nutritious food, sleeping, visualization, being active. And again I read that in prison and I just, and I just lived my life by it. I lived my life when I was in prison, my diet, my sleep, my training and then when I got out of prison I just continued it and it had a massive positive effect over me whilst I was in there and also as I got out.

And have you been bringing this type of learning to your sort of foundation charity work?

Yeah, like with the foundation. The foundation again like coming out of prison and joining a rowing club. I was very fortunate to sort of join a good rowing club where I met amazing friends and acquaintances and through that rowing club and through my links into rowing we I set this foundation up via one of, and he was an ex GB rowing coach called Miles Thompson, Forbes Thompson and he had coached Dame Catherine Granger, Heather Stannin, Mark Hunter won two medal gold medal at the Olympics and a silver medal. And then Robbie Williams who won a, not the singer, the rower that won a silver medal at London 2012 but collectively like they, I think the foundations got I think 12 Olympic medals in regards to the trustees on it. And the, and the, the formation of the trust was to, was to bring resources in that we would then distribute out to smaller charities. So for them then to deliver grassroots stuff.

Okay, fantastic. And so what, and what, what are the, what are you doing at Grassroots with that particular foundation?

So so basically like smaller charities like your gloves, not guns in London that's like works out of community center. We put in money, a request for a thousand pounds to buy some boxing gloves or some balls or rowing machines or some weights stuff that will help them to be able to deliver activity into the community, to prevent anti social behavior and also to supply and help.

Young people be active now you mentioned when you were young, you watched the film of your family and the impact that it had on your life. Is there a film coming out about your life?

So like, I don't. It always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable talking about it because sometimes. So I'm not saying this in a very egotistical way, but like over the last three years, year and a half more so I've probably had in excess of 15 offers made to me. Now they've, some of them have been just like nonsense. Others of them, if I, if I, if I wanted to do it financially, very lucrative, if I wanted to do it to be famous, it would benefit me. But which is a, which is the, the most important thing to me and always will be. I remember what I felt like when I was a kid watching that film. And I would never allow the wrong person to make my life into a film so I could financially benefit out of it, knowing that that film would most likely glamorize crime, glorify it, encourage other people to engage in it. So if I ever did decide to do it, it would have to be with the right person for the right reason, with the right message. What I've come to realize is when you deal with a lot of these, these organizations like producers and directors, what makes for the truth and what makes for a good story are two very different things. And I even remember, I'm not going to name who they were, I can only tell you that they made a film and that film had an Oscar within it. So if the film didn't win an Oscar, but the person in that film won an Oscar, the actor. So it was a very high profile film. And I remember I met this producer, he read the book and I met him in London and he went to me, you've probably got the most unbelievable true story I've ever read in my life. He went, and, and this is what he said to me when it's too good to be true. He went like, it's like the arc of the rainbow. He went like, you need. And, and the fact that you're still alive makes it very hard to tell it because it's like, it's too good. So like he wanted to construct the, these narratives. I said, no, I'm not doing it because I wouldn't do it. And then sort of maybe go and do an interview. And the journalist goes to me, so what happened here? And I go, well, that's not true. And that's not true. And that's not true. And that's not True. So one, it has to be authentic, but to. The messaging in that film has to be, has to be right. And like I said, like, there's been put to me and I have been lucrative financially, but they wasn't prepared to give me any creative control over the script, over the actors. And I'm not prepared to do that because I understand what rewatching a film about my uncle as a kid, that impact that had over me and that glorification of crime. And I know again, how young and impressionable people can be when they're young and how it could encourage people to make the wrong decisions. And not only that, I would want something made in light where it just says to people, no matter where you are in your life, you can always overcome it. You can always achieve something with your life, no matter where you started from. And I'd want that film to have that narrative. And I just feel like it's just waiting for the right, right person, the right director, the right production company. And if it was all right, I would probably do it. But it would have to be right and it would have to be with the right team of people to do it.

We were talking about this interview beforehand, but I'm going to throw us one of Sid's questions in here, but. But I'm going to ask it because I, I want to know the answer. I don't know whether she will, whether it's a good question to ask. But if somebody was going to play you in the film, who would you have it be? As long as you've got the film with the right message, the perfect director who plays John McAvoy?

You know what? It's hard. I can't, I can't answer it like, like I met. I'll tell you, like, it's a hard one to answer. Like, it's very, very hard because it's like that is very. I can only tell you I did meet an actor, a high profile actor last year before COVID and it is the most surreal experience when you meet another human that wants to play you. And then when you're talking how self conscious you become because you're watching them looking at your hands and you can see he's studying you. And I was watching him and his eyes were like watching my hands and you start getting really paranoid. Like, I started putting my hands down. I was like, yeah, it is a hard one. It is. Like I'm trying to think, like, who? I don't think I can answer it. I really don't. I don't there's no one I've ever watched and gone, wow. Like, he would be amazing.

Let me flip it and say, Sid, you know John really well. Who would you have played John?

Well, I was gonna say, like, he could play himself, but he clearly had no acting skills when he was in prison and getting arrested and not. Didn't convince anybody about anything at that point. I think you mentioned a few stories. Oh, God, I don't know. I was. I'm gonna avoid that question as well. I was gonna go down the line that Charlie said he's a big reader, but he normally listens to audiobooks, and your book isn't an audiobook, so he actually had to physically read it. But would you. Would you consider. Would you put it. Would you narrate your own book? And again, and that's not in a egotistical way, that's just saying, like, because you've got such. Like, we've been on now for hours, and I've just been so absorbed with what you've said, and I. I've listened to podcasts. We've chatted and met. And yet the way you. You talk about things and stuff. Would you. Would you do that as a. Yeah, I would.

Yeah, I would. I would do that. I would do that. I don't think the acting. I don't think I'd be the man to do the job, if I'm honest. I don't. I don't think I'd be a man to do the job. I think I'd let the roll down of people. I'd disappoint people. But the. The audiobook, I would. I would definitely be up for that if that was ever an opportunity to do it. It's never really come up yet, though, to be honest.

You should be pushing your publisher. Yeah, you should count yourself pretty honored. I don't read many physical books. I'm horribly slow reader, so. But. But I plowed my way through that, and it was absolutely fantastic. And I can't recommend it highly enough, but I think it would make a brilliant audiobook. And whether you read the whole thing or whether you just did the first chapter and the last chapter and then somebody else does the legwork in the middle, I think.

I think it has to be John's voice. I think he has to be his. His style and stuff.

Do you know what is quite funny? Over the years where I've met people, like people that I don't know them, and I've never met them before, they've never listened to me speak and I've met them and then they've read the book. And then when they've met me, they've gone, you sound like the book. I take that as a compliment. They went, no, no. They genuinely, like, if I had to put a voice to that book, that would be your. It is literally you that's reading that book to me.

I think it would be brilliant. And I think another way that I've seen it done really well or heard it done really well, actually. David Goggins his book Don't Hurt Me. So they. So the audiobook of that is read by the ghostwriter, but in between each chapter or every so often, they'll do like a little podcast, like a 10, 15 minutes on that particular part of the story, and it works brilliantly. So. And it's the only book I've ever heard that does it that way. And I think, yeah, so I think an audiobook is definitely. That should definitely be on the cards.

I know we're way over time, which, I mean. Thank you. For starters, you talked about what success looked like when you were young and when you were growing up. And obviously that has changed and you've touched on some of what it is now. But what yet just go a little bit more. What does success and leaving that legacy look like now to you in what you're doing now?

Well, I'd always say, Laura, like, again, I think as you grow and develop as a person throughout life, and I know not necessarily everyone goes through this journey, some people don't really change much at all in their lives. But I would say when I was growing up, like, that legacy part of my life was a very driving factor. So nearly all the decisions I ever chose to make that were very detrimental to my life. And then also when. When I started engaging in sport, then again, it was all about, like, being the best athlete I could be in records and all this sort of stuff. But what I come to realize as I've got older is that, like, true legacy isn't about, like, the amassing of. Of stuff. It's not having millions of pounds in the bank. It's not like having my. My walls decorated with records on an indoor Ram machine or how fast I can run or how quick I can ride a bike, like legacies. It's a living thing. Like, if you can impact on a human's life. For instance, what we went back to earlier when I said about that man that reached out to me on the weekend and said he was going to kill himself. Now, that man, if he would not have read my book or listened to a podcast past and gone and done that, he would have left two children all on their own for the rest of their lives. Now to me that's legacy. That is a living embodiment of legacy. So when I'm gone, his kids lives will be so much more different because their dad's been alive. I, I believe that if you truly want that in your life and you want to, you want to, you want that legacy, that's what it is. It's a living embodiment. It's passing on from generation generation because his kids will grow up, they will have kids, their whole outlook on life will be different. And it's about having that positive interaction with people. The schools program in the summer, if you can get thousands, tens of thousands of kids through these programs and projects and you managed give 100 of them that you change the trajectory of their lives and in their kids lives like that's, that's what legacy is about. It's about helping other people, lifting other people up. And it goes back to role models like what Charlie said with Darren. Like when Darren helped me all those years ago. He reached back and he, and he pulled me up and he put that, he sent that ladder down to me and he gave me that opportunity to walk up that ladder and take me out of that place and to achieve something in my life. And, and he turned, he changed my life, that one man. And if I could now multiply that by a million or a thousand or a hundred, it doesn't matter. As long as it's just one person that I'm having that positive impact over. And it's just, it's just trying to do as much as I can with my life whilst I'm still alive to try to sort of just help as many people as I can, but then also keeping that balance with my own well being as well. Making sure that I'm happy and content. Because sometimes like you have to, you have to get that you have to keep yourself in check because you can forget I've been guilty of it in the past. I've become too intoxicated with other people's issues and it becomes very detrimental to you as a person. So you need to keep yourself in good balance because if you're not good, you can't help anyone. But then if you have got resources and opportunity, you can unlock things for other people. It's about just giving back. Because at the end of the day everything we amass is just going to rot and fall away anyway. So whilst we're still alive. We may as well use what we've got to sort of help other people and give other people opportunities. And if that just means you don't need to be Nelson Mandela and change the world, even if it just means you help one person have a better life, you've, you've done enough. You've done enough. And that you should be happy with that. Fantastic.

And it's an amazing message to hear. I can't believe we've done a two hour interview and we've barely even talked about. I don't think the word Ironman hasn't come up more than about twice triathlon or anything. We certainly haven't been talking about nutrition plans or, or anything like that. What are your, what are your goals with regards to your sport? You know, you've obviously come into sport late. What are your goals for your sporting career?

So it was, it was just, it's life when like when I, when I started on the journey of going into to Ironman, it was in 2013 then I. That was the first race I ever done. I was six months out of prison. I did Ironman UK because I wasn't able to travel anywhere else in the world because I had to travel restrictions. So I had to do an Ironman six weeks out from the race, being released from prison six months earlier. And then I did that race and then, and then I got the bug for it and I loved it because what inspired me when I was in prison there was a, there was a episode of. It was called Trans World Sport on Channel 4 and I remember watching Kona and I just saw they did a highlight on Trans World Sport and Kona and I was watching these like these phenomenal athletes running off bikes after running 112 miles, running like sub three hour marathons and I was just in awe of it and, and Darren's actually got a blog that I wrote whilst I was in prison that used to put up on the gym wall and it was about like aspirations of what you were going to do when you got out. And I remember saying I'll do an Ironman when I get released from prison because I watched it on Transworld Sport and anyway I did the first Ironman after being out for six months, six weeks before the race, taught myself to swim, bought a bike that was too big for me because I didn't have much money. And I just remember running down that carpet, that red carpet in Bolton town centre. It was pissing down with rain but it was amazing. I just remember that I was Welling up as I run down the finish line. I'm not a really emotional person but it meant so much to me. Like I watched that program in prison and then suddenly I'm competing in it. And then what I did a big mistake. I did again not being consumed and driven to being good at being good at it. I started training for Ironman. How I used to row on the Ram machine in prison where like my body would just go through this process of adaptation. So I just started running and I just started riding, I just started swimming. There was no real structure to anything and then, and then eventually it catches up with you and I. I know the thing that was bad in regards with me because. Because obviously I was fit from rowing. It was like when my body went for that process of adaptation to swimming, cycling and, and running, I did get relatively quick, relatively fast if that makes sense. I went from basically being like a non runner to being able to run a sub 3 hour marathon within 8 weeks. Like all of these things like when I was at, when I was at the rowing club you had rowers like lightweight men that have gone to the Olympics. Like if you say this to most triathletes, they think you're lying or they think you're making up. But like I've seen 71 kilo men that Olympic row is putting out nearly 400 watts for half, half hour on a what bike? And I know people say about the calibration but genuinely like these men are animals. But that was my point of reference. So what do I do? I start using them as my guide. So I start doing those sessions they're doing, getting off, being sick, running. And then I start. I just overtrained and I just dug myself into this huge huge hole of over training where I had to go and have like ECGs on my heart. And then really like from 2015 I then really started stepping on. And then I did Iron Man Frankfurt. And then, and then that was a big thing for me because I was allowed, that was the first race I was ever allowed to do leaving the United Kingdom in 2016. And then the inevitable happens like with most athletes. Again my own doing to a certain regard because my love for running, I end up getting a run injury and I just absolutely trashed my left foot with the tendon in it. I mean that set me back. And then. Yeah and then last year was Covid. But really like to go back to your point in regards to triathlon and ironman, it's just really getting the most out of myself and reaching My potential. I generally felt if I would have raced last year I was, I was in amazing shape. I hope I get to race this year because if I live in the mountains for a whole year and my, my red blood cell count would be through the roof if I don't go back. I've got like literally every advantage in the world now to being very, very fast and I'll be absolutely devastated if I don't get.

What races might you have planned then or what's on the list? I mean there's out. You've got a race on your doorstep. The iconic out triathlon Again.

Again, Laura, like again I'm in to do that race in July if it happens.

Yeah.

And again I'll be distraught if I don't do well in it. I'll be distraught. Short because I did the bike course the other day and it's like literally if you, if you do manage to come out me and you ride the calls, I, I will be amazed if you turn around and tell me it's not one of the best bike courses. It is just straw droppingly beautiful. Like it's one of these courses where you think it's superimposed when you, when you're cycling through the villages and into the valleys and then like you just got these mountains on either side of you. So I'm doing the outdoors. I'm meant to be doing the outdoors long course triathlon, Iron man Hamburg on the 7th of June, which I don't think is going to happen if I'm honest. I think it's highly unlikely. But then I suppose it all depends where they move it.

Yeah.

And then that they were going to be the two big races I was going to do. I was going to do. I was meant to be doing Ironman Hamburg, June and then the long course and in doing some like, I wanted to try to do some like ultramath and mountain runs in September around this sort of region. Um, and then. Yeah, and then sort of just to see what, what was what with races and bike races and stuff in the mountains.

Do you, you said about you now able to get you elite, able to leave the UK and do some racing. Are there any, do you have other travel? Like, are there any other restrictions on you at the moment with how you're living?

Yeah, so. So the only, the only real big one for me has always been the United States of America. So basically you get one. I would get one bite at the charity. Realistically, like if I don't, if, if I, if I put in for A visa and it was rejected. I can't then apply for five years. And reality is if you've been rejected once, it's highly likely you'll get rejected the second time. So for me to be able to go to America, it would have to be for a very good reason. There was meant. I was again before COVID I was, I was looking to go to Oregon to go out to Nike's headquarters out there to do an event, but that got obviously canceled because of everything that happened with COVID And for that I would have been able to get character references from people that worked at Nike that had senior positions. And then I could have got letters in the United Kingdom from some sort of ex youth justice minister and another politician, which would have added more weight to my place to go to America. But that would probably be the only place where I'd really like to go that I think that would probably be very, very hard for me to go. Because in my case, because of my understanding of it, because of the offense in which I was convicted of in America is classed as a federal offense. So an offense against the state and government and it's organized crime and it's firearms related. It would be very, very hard. Like you can apply. You can apply. It doesn't say you can't. Like if you've been convicted of terrorism or espionage, you cannot, you will not get in. But for my crime, you, you can apply. But I think it, I think it'll be very challenging unless it was the right set of circumstances for the right reason. I think, I think it'd be hard for me to get in if I'm honest.

And Kona. And the same would apply to Kona, I'm assuming, would it?

Yeah. And yeah. And the issue is with doing a race like that for me would be you would qualify for it. And then even if we're putting for a visa application for, again going through the procedure I'd have to go through, it says on there you're not guaranteed to get an answer back within six months. So it isn't one of these quick things that you can go and have an interview and then they say the next day you've got it or not. So you could go through all that process, qualify. And like I said to you before, like I experienced it two years ago before I had my license conditions removed. I was meant to raise Iron Man Hamburg and my probation officer basically made a mistake on the paperwork and I rang her up to say I'm leaving tomorrow. And she said leaving for where? And I said, germany. And she was like, no, you're not. And I said, yeah, I am. It's all been done. She went quiet and she went, I'm so sorry, I've made a mistake. I, I thought you wanted to go away. Your mistake. And then I said, okay, well, can you not just change your phone? She said, no, I can't. It has to go to my senior reporting officer. And literally a week before the race, I couldn't go. I done all that training and it was done. I wasn't able to leave the country to go. And realistically, like, could I have taken the risk and gone? Probably. Like, would I have got caught? Probably not. But again, if I got caught, I would have gone back to prison. And not only that, that's not my life now. Like, that was my life years ago. If they would have said something, I wouldn't have listened to them and I would just go done it anyway. But like, yeah, I, I, I'm a, my, my outlook on life's a lot different now than what it was years ago. So when she said it to me, she said, I'm so sorry, but you're not to go. And they, they don't really understand. Like, they think you're just doing like a sports event that don't understand the months and months and months of training that I got into and that, you know, when you're injured and you go through the injuries and, and you still get, you still would, I still would have got to the start line and then you get thrown a curveball like that and you're, you're in amazing shape. And I can remember like, I went to Henley Roll Regatta because I couldn't go to Ironman Hamburg. And I remember being with my mates that rode and I went. The irony, I'm probably one of the fittest people is Regatta. I'm not doing any sort of sports event this summer.

John, it's been, I'm so conscious of your time. It's been an absolutely brilliant interview. I've loved it. I haven't got through half of the questions I had listed, but I'm really, really grateful. It's an incredibly inspiring story. I desperately hope at some point you meet the director that's going to make the film the right way so that we can see it on, on the screen and that it can just further enhance the work, the amazing work you're doing. But it's been, it's been absolutely brilliant to chat to you and, and to get Sid's insight on it as well. So thank You. Fantastic. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Charlie. Thank you, Laura.

Yeah, no worries. We'll hopefully see you. We'll make a deal. Girona or Alpe d'. Huez.

You need to come here.

I want to say I want to come and cycle with you guys, but I've got no choice.

Oh, actually, I have one. I have one final question. It's a bit of a left wing one. You have a partnership with one of the biggest companies in sport, Nike. How come you do not own a pair of trousers?

Do you know what I thought you was gonna ask me then?

If you watch John in all his pictures, even when he's in the snow up the mountains, he's in shorts, I.

Thought then you was gonna say to me, why do I not own a pair of cycling shoes? And I would have said, yeah, good point. I've asked and asked and asked for years to have a pair of cycling shoes. Do you know what? Genuinely, like, even when I'm up here, like, even the locals, they see me walk around, I think I'm known as this like mad English person, that rounding like minus 10 shorts, but I genuinely don't feel it. And it's been so. You know what? I think it goes back to when I was a little kid. My mum used to take me walking when I was little. I can remember it. We used to piss down with rain in the evening. It would be like in the winter and we would go walking and my mum's exactly the same with a cold, like she switches all the radiators off in the house. And we've always been like it as a kid. I've always been like it. I'm a mum, she loves the house to be cold. And I think obviously psychologically it's done something to my brain, but obviously now, I now love the cold. So it's getting hot here now and I'm like, oh, I like going out. It's like at 2 or 3 degrees.

Just gonna have to go higher up the mountain, aren't you?

I can't go much higher.

On that note, we will leave it John. It's been a brilliant.

Thanks, John.

Take.

You find out more about John and get all of his social media links at his website, which is thereal mcavoy.com and that's spelled M C A V O Y. I'll put that in the show notes. And also a link to his brilliant book Redemption, which I highly recommend you read. I absolutely loved it. So I'll put a link to that on the show notes as well. So, Sid, what did you make of that chat with John McAvoy?

Oh, I'm a. I'm a huge, huge fan of John. And I followed him, read his book very early on and funnily enough, he actually recognized me, which is very random. We'd spoken on social media and we'd always said, tried to meet up for years, and it was kind of like, are you ever back in London? And then he happened to be in Girona and we had. Eventually we'd arranged to meet for coffee the following day and actually he walked into a cafe where I was sitting and recognized me first. That was kind of a bit. Bit like, oh, my God, I've just met John McAvoy. But just, oh, God. I mean, I could. Like you said, he's a fantastic storyteller. He has a fantastic story to tell, but just so many messages in that. And the thing that I love now, and I'm just so impressed about now, is his outlook on life and the positivity he has, the gratitude he has in what he does every day is just. Is just amazing. And that then linked with all the work he's doing, giving back and the projects and the initiatives he's got, and setting up with Nike and active in the summer in the uk, I think is just. Oh, it's just amazing. But, yeah, I mean, far too many messages to pull out and pick from, from that conversation. You could go back and listening to it time and time again and you could pick out different, different points.

I think you're absolutely right. There is so much good advice in there. I loved the bit where we're talking about role models and how role models were so important to him, but how he's now becoming an amazing role model for so many people that need it, that may go down the route that he was going down as a youngster. So I thought that was really interesting. And I mean, he's clearly incredibly goal orientated, isn't he? You know, but the goals have changed. You know, when he was younger, it was all about money and being a millionaire by the time he was 21. And now it's. Those goals are very different. And so I thought that was really interesting. And also the legacy piece, you know, how right from being a kid he was impressed by the legacy that people had left behind and now he's kind of very motivated by the legacy that he'll leave behind. So, so many brilliant messages and, yeah, I know that I'm going to listen to that one again, despite the fact that it is the longest episode we've had.

Yeah, I didn't know whether we should have broken it up into like a two parter, but I'll definitely, I'll definitely be listening again. I guess people can put it on for a long, a long car drive or a long. Well, I don't like saying listen to it. Maybe on the turbo. Don't listen when you're outside. Make the most of the nature and the surroundings that you are riding in when you're outside on your bike, as John would do in the Alps. And so maybe it's when you're on the turbo that you can listen to it.

Well, I was chatting to former guest Fi Carter earlier on this week and she said, I've got to do a virtual ultramarathon now because of all of the craziness that's going on. Any recommendations of any episode? I said, aha, perfect episode for you.

So what's that then? She's doing it on the treadmill?

No, no, no, she's doing it just staying local. But just. So when I say virtual, it's not. No, thank goodness. It's not on the treadmill. But yes. So I thought that this is the perfect episode to kind of while away some time on a long run. But yeah, I know that everybody's going to really enjoy that as much as we enjoy chatting to him.

So yeah, and I guess if people do enjoy it, don't forget you can leave a review for the podcast or send us messages, let us know what you think, what you'd like to hear more of, how much I talk and how little you'd like to hear that in the future. But yeah, please leave us a review because it does help us going forward.

Absolutely it does. A nice 5 star review and sharing with your mates is definitely good advice.

Thank you, Sid.

So in the meantime, I hope everybody has an amazing week and keep on training. And remember, this podcast is brought to you by Brits Superfoods.

It's.

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