Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Ian Cockburn - Death at The Hands of Your Government

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Ian Cockburn is a survivor of one of the most harrowing health scandals in UK history. At just six years old Ian was battling childhood Leukemia, and during one of his final treatments was infected with Hepatitis C through a contaminated blood transfusion—a fallout from the UK's importation of unscreened blood products over two decades. His medical journey began with a dramatic evacuation to a UK airbase, then a fight against Hep-C, which threatened not only his life but his dream of serving his country. Ian opens up about the subsequent government and NHS cover-up that prolonged the crisis, the personal and professional hurdles he faced due to the infection, and how he overcame these challenges to live a fulfilling life with his family. Despite being barred from joining the British Army in his youth due to his medical history, Ian's unwavering determination, inspired by military podcasts, led him to reapply as a reservist and volunteer police officer, achieving success in both endeavors. The UK public inquiry's publication date is approaching, which Ian hopes will reveal the depths of the scandal's negligence which is still estimated to result in a death over four days. Ian shares his mission to raise awareness and ensure justice for the victims. https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/infected-blood-scandal-increased-financial-support-for-victims-confirmed https://www.hepctrust.org.uk/find-support/infected-blood-and-blood-products/infected-blood-inquiry/#:~:text=20%20May%202024.-,The%20history%20of%20the%20contaminated%20blood%20scandal,with%20on%2Dgoing%20health%20complications. Wolf 21- Check out what they have to offer for the best sleep of your life: https://www.thewolf21.com Use Code: "clearedhot" for 30% off of your 1st order The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Good morning, everybody, and welcome back. Before I get into the ad read, check out this new badass podcast shirt. For those of you who don't have video or don't watch the podcast, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not going to try to describe it. You can get them now at the podcast store, which I'll put a link in the show notes. Some very cool things coming up in 2024. I'm only going to be able to talk about them. As they work their way through, this rebranding is kind of one of them.

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week. And yeah, if you want to support a brand that does an amazing amount for veteran organizations, then do me a favor. And also, if you want to support the podcast indirectly, go to black riflecoffee.com and get your coffee needs and send some to people that also may not like coffee but have not heard of black rifle coffee. And that's it. That's what we're going to end on for the business side of the house. My guest today, his name is. name is Ian. He has a real last name, of course. I mean, everybody does. But he didn't want me to use his, and you'll understand why as we go through this conversation. So he let me choose. He's from across the pond. I chose Cockburn. So my guest today is Ian Cockburn. Here is the subject line

on the email that he sent me. Thoughts on escaping death at the hands of the government, the subsequent cover-up and how best to serve my country afterwards. Yeah, that got my attention. too. So I'm going to briefly go through this without going into too much. And I'll give you the wave tops. Imagine fighting off leukemia when you are young, thinking you are out of the woods and getting tainted blood from a U.S. prison and developing hepatitis C. Then the potential complications of attacking that hepatitis C. Would it allow the leukemia to reactivate inside of your body? Sorry if that's not the correct term. That's how I'm thinking my way through this. What if the government in the UK actually knew about this problem, tried to hide it and is still currently under investigation and the report is getting ready to come out?

Yeah, it grabbed my attention. And that's exactly why I sat down with Ian. I'm going to leave it at that because he actually does a fantastic job of explaining everything in detail that I just mentioned. So, episode number 327 with Mr. Ian Cockburn and Joy. You are by far the guest that has traveled the farthest to come beyond the show Why did you decide to reach out? Maybe we'd just start there Kind of in that A bit of a reflective year

Turn 40 this year Was that a problem for you mentally? I'm still not quite there yet I've still got a couple of weeks We'll be all right. Does it shock you being 40? Yeah. I'm 46 now.

I don't think that I believed human beings lived this long when I was in my teens. No. And now I'm wondering how much sand is in the top of the hourglass? Yeah. Well, I'm hoping there's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, there almost wasn't. My, yeah, my dad passed away.

just for Christmas as well. So kind of... Sorry to hear that. No, thank you. But I think something that goes with that, you end up reflecting quite a lot. I ended up spending a lot of time sort of around where I grew up,

kind of looking at that kind of stuff and just being a bit more reflective. And then there's stuff that's kind of going on anyway in the news that we're going to touch on. And so it's one of those things where I've been thinking about it more and more. And, you know, I'm a listener of the show anyway. And, you know, I listen on, you know, listen to the Monday podcast, listen to the Friday podcast.

How did you find it? Been probably Joe Rogan. Fucking Joe. It's kind of... He's the great connector. Yeah. Of people. And, you know, obligatory listening for every male over, I don't know, 16 or whatever.

So... Yeah. His audience is very broad and diverse and very large. I think I just saw, God, when did he announce this? A week ago when his deal with Spotify no longer became just Spotify. And I think in one day he topped the Apple podcast charts again. A single day. Like, God, damn.

And you know what? I know Joe, pretty well. I don't want to overstate our friendship by any stretch, but we've been able to spend some good time together. I wonder how much that weighs on him, knowing that the conversations that you're going to have are listened to by tens of millions of people. There's a lot of responsibility in that.

It's got to be huge, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I appreciate this is, you know, one of one podcasts that I've done probably ever will. Let me tell you, it's going to be the best. one you've done so far. Well, exactly. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, you can be used to it, I guess. You can be used to public spotlight, but as a human being, you can't... Do you ever get used to that many people? Well, exactly. You can't numb yourself to that amount of... I mean, most people still worry about just doing something stupid in front of ten people, right? I always equated to sporting stadiums as the way I try to visually quantify the metrics. has a different meaning to your particular brand than it does over here.

So we'll say soccer. You guys have a soccer scene or football scene is huge, obviously, in the UK. What's the average holding capacity for a stadium over there? I'm probably talking out my ass because I'm not a football follower. Is that legal? Yeah, I think so. I think it's pretty standard expression. I don't want people looking for you when you get home.

I go, so I heard you're not in the same. and the national pastime. Yeah, no. So, well, I mean, I'm very casual with it. You know, if England managed to get to a semi-final in something, then, you know, the attention maybe is grabbed. But maybe 50,000 people in one of those stadiums? Yeah, 50,000.

I think Wembley holds, I think it holds 90,000. So. Would you look that up, Michael, real quick? So let's say it. But again, that's going to be like an average-sized college over here, right? Depending on where you're at. But again, I look at it. Okay, so what do we got here?

I look up Wembley specifically. Let's just say it's 100,000 people, which be a massive stadium here in the U.S. and probably in the UK as well. Some of his episodes have done 50 million downloads. 500 of those stadiums full of people. Holy shit. I mean, you wonder if there's a point where it just stops being real.

Yeah, you're right. I mean, so, and again, even look at that picture. Look how big that is. And that's only 90,000 people. If he did an episode that has a million downloads, which would be, he probably could fart into a microphone for an hour. And the episode would get millions of downloads. That would be essentially 11 of those stadiums, shoulder to shoulder.

What a wild world that we live in that you can reach that many people. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, I'd caught you a few times on there. So listen to Jocco. And I think the episode that really grabbed me in with you was Nick Labbery a few years ago,

where, and it was that kind of thing where you've heard the story once, and then you hear it again in a different conversation through a slight different lens, different questions, all of that, and then you, you know, kind of, went back and sort of listened to some of the other stuff. And I kind of found it interesting as well, you know, particularly, you know, the military stuff's cool.

You know, the stories you get from that, but also kind of looking outside that as well and kind of going down a little avenues that, you know, you wouldn't necessarily go looking for yourself. I mean, other stuff that, you know, I'm really into as well, like alpinism. Yeah. So, you know, you had Mark Twight on there. And it's like, oh, shit. Relatively good at alpinism, that marked weight. And so you've then got these degrees of separation where you sort of know things from different things that then kind of converge. So, yeah, yeah.

And kind of, you know, long story short, listening to that, you listen to the Friday episode. And they kind of say, you know, people sort of write in with some, you know, whole range of stuff. Yeah, it's wild. Kind of in that reflective mood, I sort of thought, well, yeah, go on, I've got some story to tell. and, you know, and kind of a purpose for doing it this year. So sort of sent an email off. And not reflection on yourself, didn't expect to hear anything back. You know, I'm sure you're...

People don't believe me that I answer my emails. Yeah. And so, you know, I was expecting maybe a shout-out on a Friday episode or something. And when the invitation came, you kind of... Well, you can't say no to this stuff. Well, you didn't actually ask any questions in your email. So it would have been tough to have a... Pretty sure I did.

Maybe I didn't read to the end. You said would you be interested in doing an episode to which, of course, given the subject line that obviously I'll let you unpack. I mean, how could you pass up on that opportunity? I was talking about the episode today with my wife earlier today. And again, I want you to totally tell the story in your own terms, but not to tip the hand too much. I didn't realize that the penal system in the United States allowed blood to be shipped over. It's fucking terrifying, isn't it? Michael's face right now is like, what?

I had no idea. Yeah. I also don't know that much about the penal system. So it's not that I'm highly educated on it, but I had no idea that it was possible for tainted blood from the US penal system to make its way overseas and infect other people. Yeah. And it's been all over.

So, and this is a cart a little bit, I guess, in front of the horse. In your email, you were saying that the UK is getting ready, Forget the exact term that you used, but they're getting ready to write a report on it or they are going to be reporting on it, not necessarily like right now, but in the very near future, correct? Yeah, so a public inquiry, which I'm trying to think what your equivalent term would be. But basically a formal investigation by the government. Government sponsored, independent of the government, but government sponsored with full legal weight and bearing. I wonder if that would be like a grand jury investigation for us or a grand jury hearing. Which I think depending on that, they will determine if they'll take additional action.

Yeah. I mean, I'm the wrong guy to ask for the legal stuff. But in terms of that kind of weight and investigation, it's something in that realm, you know, they've, they've, so far in the inquired, they've interviewed everyone that's involved, including, you know, current members of the UK government, including the Prime Minister, health secretaries from way back, and everyone, so it's a big deal. We've also got various others going on at the moment that have tended to grab the headlines more. I mean, we'll touch on this, but, you know, part of the reason I'm here is because the

interest in this seems to kind of blow hot and cold. So grabs a big headline, but then there's kind of no follow-up to actually see what happens often. But we've had a similar one recently with the post office, our postal service, where basically a computer system that was put in however long ago had glitches in it that as a basically a result of computer error. a load of people that own and run post offices were wrongly convicted of theft and fraud and imprisoned. And so that's going on. The COVID inquiry, again, another public inquiry in terms of how that was dealt is going on.

So it's, you know, it's a big deal. I mean, there have been various kind of private inquiries, again, that I can touch on a little bit, that have kind of tried to push the needle on this over the years. but it's never gained the waiting. And this is something that goes back to the 70s. That was one of the shocking things from email as well. I couldn't believe that it had been going on or at least had started that long ago. Yeah.

Man, I'll just let you unpack it, like however you want to. Cool. So, I mean, I wonder, because this is going to come out pretty much bang on when the final report of the public. inquiry comes out. So there's a lot of factual and legal information in there that hopefully they, you know, one of the results of this is that people will go and look at the facts themselves. And so, you know, I've got some headlines that I'd probably look to unpack. One of the things I wanted to do was to kind of talk through how it's factored in my life and kind of the impact it's had on me personally.

Because, again, I am probably the anomaly in people affected. Because you survived? Survived, yeah. And to the degree that I'm able to live now. And the life that I have is, you know, by most metrics, pretty much perfect. It's not very much not the case. across percentages of people that were affected by this. I think it being your personal story will make it more impactful.

I think that's one of the things about headlines and why they blow hot or cold. I certainly don't think that's unique to being on your side of the pond. If it doesn't directly touch somebody, it's kind of easy to dismiss. Yeah. Just hearing about something that happened, maybe there are not that I've seen a single one of these headlines, but maybe the article was about something back in the 70s or 80s.

I mean, good luck really garnering the attention of, somebody Michael's age. I don't blame them. Like, well, that was two times more than I have been old ago. I have other shit going on in my life that I'm going to pay attention to. Yeah. Yeah, man, take it away. Cool.

Okay. So, I mean, we're going back a long way now. So I was born in 1984. And it kind of grew up in a bit of a bubble. so my parents were teachers at a prep school and we lived on site so kind of grew up in this sort of bubble

of privilege but without necessarily the you know the income that people attending that school probably had but kind of grew up in this bubble of living basically in the grounds of this sort of old manor

manor house private swimming pool. I'm just imagining Hogwarts, if I'm being totally clear. You're not far off. Okay, good. You're not far off at all. And don't get me wrong, we weren't living in the tower. We sort of had a flat on side of the teachers' accommodation.

But it was great place to grow up and kind of went to that school for a little bit. And there are kind of themes that will kind of come back to where quite, a lot of my life has benefited from privilege, but in kind of odd ways. How did the students treat you there? Do they treat you as your equal or not because of the fact that your parents were teachers and you weren't there because of an economic situation? I think completely equals. I mean, you know, back then...

Which is what I would hope. Yeah. I mean, I don't know because I think at that age, you know, kids aren't even aware of that kind of stuff. I was just one of, you know, the other kids there. Yeah, you're just one in the crowd. Yeah. And so, yeah, kind of grew up in that kind of weird bubble, which was great. And when I was five, we were going on, I think, our first holiday abroad,

which was to Yugoslavia, now Croatia. And I wasn't well. I was tired all the time. My legs hurt. I had this weird kind of super intense tingling in my lips. And it was clear that I just wasn't right. I remember the doctor coming, you know, our local family doctor coming in, checking me out.

I don't know the night before or a couple of nights before we were due to fly out. And exactly what the decision was, I don't know, but it was basically it was decided we were going to go, but a close eye should be kept on me. And I was probably going to be going back to the doctor pretty soon after we got back from this holiday. So we then went to Yugoslavia. This is pre, you know, pre-everything, pre-Serbia, Bosnia, all that stuff. and had half of what was going to be just a great sort of beach resort type holiday and I went downhill big time

and so I got taken to the hospital there in a town called Riehaka and was diagnosed with leukemia which was obviously problematic anyway particularly problematic there. I was too ill to fly back commercially. And hospitals in Yugoslava at the time, I mean, it wasn't Soviet bloc.

I mean, you might know more than me on this, but it was not the kind of the modern Croatia that it is now. Probably could be aptly described as perhaps like a second world medical system. Not, you know, non-existent, but probably not tip of the spear when it came to their ability. You might be right. I could be being unfair because, I mean, I was diagnosed and treated effectively, but certainly culturally, very different. So, you know, I was admitted to hospital. Pretty much no one spoke English.

My parents couldn't stay with me. And you were five? Yeah. Okay. Wow. I remember, so example, I remember going to the toilet, not being able to reach the chain because I was too small to, you know, reach it from, you know, one of those old-fashioned ones with a system up top.

Trying to say, oh, I can't do this and they sort of brought out toilet roll. You know, is that kind of language barrier stuff where, you know, just completely on your own isolated. Parents were able to come and visit, and I might be, you know, obviously hazy on the details, but I think it was for like an hour at a time. each day and this went on for I don't know probably about a week maybe I'm not sure what is leukemia now of all the notes I've taken I should have actually worked this out because it's had quite a big bearing on my life but we have somebody here

who can assist us in these things it is cancer is it blood cancer am I correct in that I think blood cancer technically is something different but it is in the blood and it's in the bone marrow and okay and there's there's various types of it I'm gonna I'll read this just for everybody's benefit, a malignant progressive disease in which the bone marrow and other blood-forming organs produce increased numbers of immature or abnormal leukococytes. Lukocytes. Thank you. These suppress the production of normal blood cells leading to anemia and other symptoms. And then on the right, it's a cancer-forming blood-forming tissue hindering the body's ability to fight infection.

Leukemia is a cancer of blood-forming tissue and bone marrow may types exist, such as acute. lymphoblastic leukemia acute myeldo leukemia and chronic lymphotic leukemia you know what all those are right no i believe i said all of them incorrectly so i think you're far off and and michael just to just to um make it slightly worse mine was a slightly weird type so it was called leukemia b cell okay um which i think was was less known at the time and certainly had complications around around the treatment. Okay, an aggressive, fast-growing type of leukemia, blood cancer, in which too many B-cell lymphoblasts, which are immature white blood cells, are found in the bone, marrow, and blood.

It is the most common type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, also called B-cell acute lymphotic leukemia and precursor B, lymphoblastic leukemia. I apologize to anybody out there in the medical field for, any of those poor enunciations if they're ready. I think that's pretty good. Doing the best I can. So, not ideal.

And, you know, I've got vivid memories of nasty stuff happening. I remember a bone marrow test, which is basically where they drill into the bone and you hit and suck out the marrow. Sounds relatively pain-free. Yeah, no. I assume I had local anesthesia. aesthetic that went skin deep, but I was very much awake for this. Seeing the needle, the needle is not thin.

Yeah. Now, those needles are the things that horror movies are made from. Right. So that was pretty horrendous. And as I said, I was too ill. They couldn't put me on a plane and fly me home, at least commercially. And so, again, this slight theme of privilege, I got my first private jet ride at the age of five. Doctor from the UK came out, assessed me, and, you know, the view was taken, I need to get back.

My dad and my brother went on a commercial flight home. My mum and I got flown out by a converted Learjet. Air ambulance off an island just off the coast of Croatia called Kirk Island, I think, which I think had an RAF base stationed on it. Royal Air Force, that is. And so I was flown from there, landed on the runway at RF Bryce Norton, which I don't know, maybe you might have been through there at some point in your career. If we were, it was in passing only.

Honestly, it would be tough. It's near Oxford and England. It's basically the big Royal Air Force Base in the UK. It's also just down the road from the John Radcliffe Hospital, which is kind of one of our premier hospitals in the UK. So ambulance waiting on the tarmac, ambulance from the base to hospital, where I then stayed for on and off for nine months.

during that time had various complications the type of leukemia itself was a complication I had a sort of aggressive form of pneumonia called numicistus which obviously as you're having chemo and all of this your immune system just evaporates right so in that is the treatment for leukemia is chemotherapy? It was for me. Okay. They also do radiotherapy. And certainly, you know, some of the kids, you know, of my whatever you call it, cohort.

Yeah. You know, I was on a children's ward there. Went through radiotherapy. It was always a question whether or not that would happen to me as well, which it didn't. But it's kind of a case of, I guess, with different. cancer sometimes you'd have radiotherapy over chemotherapy I think with leukemia and again this is where my lack of medical degree doesn't necessarily help but I think with leukemia it's full body irradiation rather than

targeted well if it's in the blood system or the yeah the blood-producing organs you think you would have to yeah and I think they do that if you need a bone marrow transplant because basically they have to kill all the bone marrow and then and then put new stuff in I think again this is drawing from what I know from house rather than my own experience. Great show, by the way. Right. Watched it many times.

I don't know if I saw the whole thing. At some point, you realize he's not going to solve this problem until the last five minutes, so I could probably just skip ahead to the end of the show and solve all the world's medical issues. And it won't be lupus either. It won't be lupus. How awesome would it be if doctors had that ability to just determine in an instant what it was? Yes, it's not that way. So, yeah, no radiotherapy.

Just chemotherapy. And, again, weird year experiences that at that age, and again, this is probably a theme of what I'm going to talk through. But I think when you have that kind of thing as a kid, you don't have any other frame of reference of what's normal. It's a bit like growing up in that bubble. So although I was very aware of what was going on, I also didn't kind of have that, you know, oh my God, why me and... It was all you had known at that point. Equally, I knew that death was a very real possibility.

But I guess maybe this is a personality thing because, you know, whether you had the same thing. I knew it was a possibility, but I also knew it was a possibility. but I also knew it. It's not going to be me. I was going to ask you, do you remember what your thoughts on death were at five? I mean, I know that's a weird question because I don't know if I even could contemplate what death was. I remember thinking about it. And although there were some really dark points during that time, as you would expect, they overall, it was a case of I knew death was an option.

And clearly I really didn't like that option. I was also very aware of it around me. As I said, there was kind of a very close-knit group of families that all had kids in that ward at the same time. And sometimes one of those kids would disappear. You know, I remember going and seeing the grave of a kid called Lee, who was, I think a bit older than me, but similar age. And so it was very very...

much there. But I also don't remember being particularly afraid of it because, again, well, it wasn't going to be me because, you know, you see life through your own eyes. And, you know, at that point, well, maybe it's Liz. My life was the Ian show. So everybody's life. You can fill that in with their own name. You're not unique in that. Obviously, the main character is not going to go. You have to be the hero in your own story. Right. So, yeah, so I don't, don't remember that. I mean, There were plenty of things that I was afraid about, plenty of things I didn't like. You know, you get to know different bits of the treatment after a while. I would know when it was time for the painful leg injection and would freak out about that.

I would know when it was time for blood tests, which I hated. Every Tuesday and Thursday for a long time, I went under general anesthetic for lumbar punctures and bone marrow tests. which, again, it's, you know, being five years old and waking up with a killer hangover twice a week is pretty brutal. And a lot of the medicine kind of, I don't know, have you ever had a sort of like a fever dream type thing where you're sort of half, if you're really ill and you're kind of half conscious, half not and sort of. I don't think so. You mean like you're kind of in that hallucinogenic state, you can't tell what's real, what's not? I've only experienced that by watching movies, which means I haven't experienced it at all.

But I think I have a frame of reference for what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. So there's plenty unpleasant about it, but certainly in my mind, I don't ever really think that I was personally petrified that I was going to die. I just didn't see it as an option.

And there was also loads of really cool stuff that happened during that time as well. So, you know, as a five-year-old, Everyone that comes to see you, everyone that sees your parents over that time will have something cool to give you. I was swamped with transformers and the rest of it. Very nice. There was a big, you know, sort of friends of the hospital association. So we got out for loads of trips and, you know, social stuff. Again, some of the stuff that sort of sparked interest in the military early on, because we're really close to Bryce Norton, we did trips out.

Once went up in one of the air-to-air refueling jets. While you were going through treatment. Yeah. Okay. Mini-buss of sick leukemia kids going out to the airbase. Yeah, totally. Let's put them up in an airplane completely fall to the gills of gasoline. Yeah.

Over the North Sea, refueling tornadoes. What can happen, you know? Yeah. I think looking back, safeguarding. Fuck. Yeah. Safeguarding children isn't quite what it is now. I actually think that they probably were thinking of every possible opportunity to get your minds off of what you were struggling through.

Yeah. I totally understand why they would do that. I don't know if I would put kids in a mid-air refueling airplane, but who am I to judge? Exactly. Yeah, that was cool. You know, did an attack helicopter simulator that they had on base as well. Also got flown, again, this isn't with them, this is with Make a Wish Foundation. And again, I don't know how this affects whether there's sort of terms of service that you should sign up to.

But I got flown over here, went to Disney World and Florida. But I think it was surely after I was kind of clear of leukemia. So I don't quite know what the criteria is. I know the sort of the assumption is that it's for terminal kids. But I think it's terminal and very seriously ill kids or whatever. I think that latter description is probably the most accurate. I don't think it's, oh man, I think they would almost have to add in terminally ill because, or are and seriously ill, not just terminally ill because otherwise how like horrible of a thought process of a program.

I'm going to sign my kid up for this and hopefully the kid never figures out that this program is only for those that are terminally ill. Yeah. That would be a rough. That would be pretty bad. Rough realization. So loads of cool stuff happened when I was in hospital as well. So I've got a lot of really fond memories. And some of the staff, I won't ever forget.

My, whatever he'd be called, the consultant pediatric. Oh, shit, what do you call a doctor that? Cancer doctor. Oncologist. Yep. I was going to say gynecologist and thought, no, that would be weird. No, that's just an insight to where your head's at. Right.

So, yeah. An awesome guy, Martin Moncrief, Dr. Martin Moncrief, I should say, who was at my wedding and also died this year, died in January. You know, someone I'll never forget, hence, you know, whatever, 22 years later being a guest at my wedding. So loads of positive.

lots of kind of not so good stuff there as well. But eventually I went into remission and then came down with appendicitis pretty much. While still in the hospital? So again, memory might be hazy, but I think I almost remember it as we were getting like the park and ride bus from the hospital to the car to go home and kind of went,

The light at the end of the tunnel is almost shining upon you. It's like, let's just go back. And again, the exact facts may be fuzzy, but I think pretty much everyone had kind of waved us goodbye from the hospital. And they hadn't even had a chance to strip the bed, and I was back in it. So back in hospital for weeks. And again, how long I was back in for, I don't know, a few weeks, a few months. I don't know.

It doesn't matter. Eventually had my appendix out, all good. So, yeah, by the time I was six, talking now, I think 1990, maybe 91, and trying to do the maths, no, it'd be 1990. 84 plus 6 is 1990. So I'm out. I've got all sorts of weird scars that no one has. You know, I've got the appendix scar that was my sword wound.

I've got my scar on the neck from Hickman line. The port, yeah. Yeah. So came in there, came out here, which I told everyone for years was a bullet hole. And you'd be amazed how many people believed that. I mean, that's a strong and compelling story to tell, though, especially when you have the scar to go with it. I like it.

Especially when you ate. So. Yes. It's like, yeah, I was robbing a bank, and he got smoked by the, security guard. Yeah. Yeah. But here I am.

So, yeah. So it's a kind of a whole load of weirdness, but I was well. I was all good. Were you feeling well? Like you felt back to your normal self? I don't know, man. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

I mean, certainly better than I had felt. I mean, loads of times through that journey. I mean, there'd be sometimes where you'd feel well. And to be honest, a lot of the treatments worse than the disease. Yeah. You know, there was, I think there's a treatment. cytosine that would just absolutely kill my eyes. Where, you know, walking around in the middle of winter with sunglasses on and that kind of

thing, there was platelets I had that made you itch from the inside out. How do you scratch that? You just eat it to ride around. There's some medication they sort of tried to give to ease it a bit, but it doesn't really. So, yeah, kind of a lot of odds. So obviously not having that anymore. And, you know, as a kid, you just get on with stuff, don't you? Yeah.

It's like now, you know, if you get ill, then you might have a couple of days off work. But if, you know, if it's one of the kids, it's kind of get into school, you'll be fine. Just suck it up and, you know, get on with it. So, so, yeah, so I think I felt better. And, you know, and then kind of got on with my life. It was a major part of life. I'd missed a lot of school. Kind of caught up with school.

Pretty much everything except my handwriting, and I still write like a four-year-old. But things were good. We moved house. My dad, well, both my parents have always been religious. I said they were teachers, but my dad got ordained as a priest. I would have been nine.

probably been nine. He'd sort of been training to do it for a few years and then did that. So as a result, we moved. And again, to sort of that theme of kind of privilege, but with sort of without the wealth as part of that, both me and my brother were able to go to private school where we moved to. Do you feel bad about how you grew up? You've used the term privilege about a half a dozen times so far. I'm curious where it comes from. It's because, I think it's because. I've kind of got a feat in both camps. I've experienced a huge amount of privilege

because of what my parents did for a living and the situation that they were able to put us in as a family. But also, a teacher doesn't get paid a lot and a priest doesn't get paid a lot. So it's also kind of an odd lens because you might sort of have you're exposed to it all. But when, you know, when one of your friends is getting picked up for the school holidays off the playing field by his dad in a helicopter, um, and, you know, and you're just going back in your, you know, in your, in your, in your normal old car.

Um, it's, it's a, it's a thing in that direction. And I think they, that, that, the, that, the, that, There's also, I mean, as there is here, I'm sure, but in the UK, there's quite a big class divide still. And the schooling system, I think, is a key sort of source of contention there. So I think I've had it from both sides where, you know, I'm probably seen as privileged, posh by those that haven't been in that environment. But then also certainly never been, you know, either me now or my parents before me in that kind of financial position that a load of my friends were. And that sits quite heavily. I know that that sat heavily with my parents.

We're starting to feel it now with our experiences of the school our kids go to, where you kind of go, well, you know, by all accounts, we're doing pretty well. But equally, we aren't going to pick you up in a brand new Bentley. You know, we kind of have normal money. You know, so it's a weird, it's a weird mix. And I think it's one we sort of try to. I ask because, I don't know, there's a lot of trends on what you see on your phone. And a lot of it, I think, is determined based off what you're looking at, right?

It feeds you kind of what you're looking at. I've seen conversations with people where they almost spend as much time. discussing subjects as they do, talking about the privilege that they come from. And everything that you just described is a sliding scale. You could be at the top of somebody's privilege scale and at the absolute bottom of somebody else's, right? Somebody's making $100,000 a year versus $50 billion of net worth. I don't know how much value there is in forcing that into a conversation because it slides all over the place because everybody in the first world, let's just start with that, is absolutely privileged to a degree over the fast majority

of everybody else on earth. Do you have to bring that up in conversation? And I don't want you to change any way, shape, or form the way that you're talking. It was just it piqued my curiosity because I'm interested where it comes from. A lot of the times I've seen it, it comes from a place of guilt. where people feel bad about where they are, even though they had no hand in developing the situation that they grew up in. And I don't know if that's healthy, actually, because there's always somebody who's going to

be more privileged than you and somebody who's going to be less privileged than you. I think recognizing that maybe in your decision-making process, realizing that you are more fortunate than other people, inside of situations that you can't control where you were, I mean, being bored into the first world, the first world, like, let's just call it what is. It's a fucking lottery. You and I had no hint in where we were born. I guess I could have at some age decided to go move into the third or fourth or fifth world, but I chose not to do so.

But it's as it's as if people want you to be held accountable for things that you had happened or that had happened in the world long before you ever became a part of it. And I just don't know, I don't know how healthy that is. I completely agree. I think one of the reasons that it sits in my mind is because as an adult, I think I can be very objective to it. And you think, well, actually, this is where it is. And exactly what you said, you know, at the top of one scale, your... It's the fucking basement of another one. Right.

Yeah. And so this is exactly what our kids have experienced in the last two years were changing schools. So they essentially went from sort of being at the, I guess, at the... the top of that scale to then being at the bottom of another scale, just going into different worlds. I guess the only reason I talk about it now is because, I guess some of my experiences and the things I've been exposed to aren't typical in the UK.

So I guess it's kind of perhaps explaining some of those things, not necessarily from a series of, from a position of guilt, because I mean, I'm really, happy with every, I wouldn't change any experience in my life. Easy to say with hindsight. But I think it's also an important part of who I am by, because having had a foot in both of those camps, I feel like I can talk from a good position of understanding and empathy from both sides of that divide.

And I think that divide is getting bigger in, certainly in UK society, I think. Probably in the US too. and I think the data supports that. Yeah. So, yeah, that's not really kind of either from a sense of sort of poor me or a sense of guilt. It's just, it's just being a material bit of that. It's important for you. I get it.

I was just curious. Sorry to interrupt you. No, that's cool. Whoa, whoa, yeah. You were getting out of the hospital. You had appendicitis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you went back in, but then you did get out.

Yeah. So we're fast forwarding a few years now. So where would I be? I'm probably about 13. And the reason I mention it is because I'm now going to a school where, you know, my, kind of my, everything I'm into I'm into is kind of around military. You know, you've talked about it before where you were from the age of whatever. 11. Right.

You knew exactly what you want to do. to be. I was exactly the same and you know, inspired by lots of the same stuff you know, obviously the film Navy Seals. I mean, it's... Epic. It's a tribute to cinema. Yeah.

Cinematic tour de force, if you will. Indeed. What else is that? Top Gun. I'm not going to lie. I go back and watch it about once a year. Yeah. Fuck, it's terrible. The tactics that they use, man, if I was an instructor back then it would rip their shit to pieces. Top Gun is good. Yeah.

What are your thoughts on Maverick? I like it. Yeah. My wife hates it, so I will generally put it on the TV once a week and walk away. We went to see it as a family in the cinema, you know, big sound. Oh, I did too. Twice. You know, and first title scene tingles because it's what you watched as a kid.

Yeah, the theme song. Yeah. That's what got you going. And it's a cool film. And it's just, you know, it's the thing. There's so much shit coming out on everything, all the streaming platforms, the kind of the summer blockbusters gone. And, yeah, I think they had Maverick in the can for, I don't know, three years or something.

I think so. Same of the latest James Bond film. And then when you see something like that come out at the cinema, it's awesome. Actually, one of the things I enjoyed the most about Maverick is they spent almost no time defining the enemy that they were fighting. Yeah. Is it Russia or is it China or it's somewhere snowy with. you know what, leave that all out, and you can actually just focus it on the story that you were trying to tell. It really took it from a place of not trying to make it a political

or whatever it is. It's like, we have an enemy, we're going to go fight it. Let's focus on the story. Yeah. And our hero, Captain Pete Mitchell, obviously. So, I think that's very good. Also hot shots, of course. Part dear? I prefer the first one, but sure. The second one got a little off the rails. Yeah. But no, all that stuff. You know, the documentary GI Jane. Was that your buds class? It was the one right before mine. Yeah, they had to change the Chow Hall regulations on that because of how they swept through that. And you'd be surprised at how many people have emailed in.

And I feel they're either excellent trolls or actually have asked about whether or not, you know, what was it? Did you have any women in your class? You know, what was training like around that time period? As if it is not a Hollywood movie. You know? Yeah. It's all right. I remember buying that on VHS.

Most of the people who bought it on VHS is because they wanted to see Demi or Demi Moore's ass. Yeah. I bought it in the same transaction I also bought True Lies with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think that might be more accurate. Yeah. Dude, this just reminded me Demi Moore's ass. You'll like this one, Michael. We've started keeping a, and you should do this with your kids.

We've started keeping notes on quotes from Tyler. You ready for the latest one the other night? Yeah. It only takes one set of tits for a man to book a direct flight. That's pretty good. That's true. It is. And it tied me back to that.

I mean, honestly, probably most of the dudes were trying to see Demi Moore in some level of undress. God, I forget what the fuck we were watching. And Tyler was doing the dishes in like bell bottoms in an NRA T-shirt that he thrifted. And he said that and my wife and I about fucking fell out. chair laughing, you need to start keeping track of quotes your kids say. Yeah. Well, we started mentally tracking those. When my son was, I don't know, 18 months, two years.

Well, see, here's my plan. I'm right him down because when the opportunity presents itself, by that, I mean, the most embarrassing opportunity. Like when he's older and has kids and he's dropping off at school, I'm going to make bumper stickers of that shit and put it on the back of his car. Well, he started well young. He started talking early. And in fact, it probably wasn't even 18 months.

He was probably about a year old. And we heard about it from nursery at pickup. Because, I don't know, something wouldn't fit in the thing. And he'd chuck this block on the flunk, oh, for fuck's sake. Yeah. And my wife's an English specialist. She was pleased that he used language and context and all of that. I always told my kids, if they used it in a proper sentences,

it could be a lot harder for me to get upset. Right. So, yeah. No, I mean, they come up with some great ones. I think my daughter at the age of three, the sort of immortal quote that every good family should get McDonald's if they can. I feel like that's a self-serving quote a little bit, a little bit of herself peeking through there. I get it. A little bit.

But yeah, yeah, we keep track. Yeah, starting to dread what's going to come in the next few years. How old are they now? They are going to be 13 in March. Boy and girl? Boy girl twins, yeah. That was another little surprise of the story. Yeah.

Yeah, you're fucked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was the surprise. We got married, we didn't know if we'd be able to have kids. A lot of people that go through chemotherapy can't. We said, well, let's, you know, let's try.

And if it happens, great. If it doesn't, that's cool too. We'll be rich. And my wife came back from honeymoon, pregnant with twins. Okay. And that's, you found out rapidly. there. And that did not fit the spreadsheet. They never do.

I don't think there's, I have really seen people try to schedule their life. Like, this is when we're going to have a kid. And I just don't know if it's ever possible for it totally to work itself out. I don't think you can ever be totally prepared either. I'm not saying, and I'm not trying to say people

should be irresponsible because there's no way there is, of course, planning you can do and waiting until a time in your life where maybe you have an economic situation that's better or a job situation. I'm not saying play Russian roulette. with having kids but man there's nothing that prepares you for. I mean we we we had ours and I mean we could maybe have afforded half a kid. We definitely couldn't afford two.

We had a really tough decade after that for various other reasons but yeah that was that was tough but now when my kids are 18 I'm going to be 45. Yeah. And there's still quite a long, long life out in front of there. I have 2018 and 15 for my kids, two boys and a girl, and I'm 46. Right. I can still do all the things I want to do with them. I could still fuck the boys up if I need to, you know, cheating, obviously, with old man techniques and the wisdom that we have throughout our life.

But I'm grateful that I have as much, I don't know how much time I have left. I'm grateful that I have the ability physically to be active. in their life the way that I can't. Yeah. And that's really important to me as well. Yeah. And so it's all worked out really well. I've got other friends that probably been more responsible in terms of their financial

planning and that kind of thing. But I see them now. They're my age. And they've got young kids. They've got three-year-olds. I just think, fucking. You need to be able to have some semblance of youth to deal with that thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Didn't Al Pacino just have a, not that he's, I feel like, and I don't know Al Pacino and I'm not trying to be a dick, but I feel like he may not be intimately involved in the raising of this child, but I swear that he is in his 80s and he just had a kid. Yeah. You will not see your child graduate high school. Right. Like, everybody has their own choices to make. That's not one that I would make. But I interrupted you again.

You are 13 now in your own story. 13 now, yes. So 13 now. and I remember an awkward conversation with my parents where they're saying, essentially, you were better, but there might be a problem, you might be ill again. There's a chance that one of the blood transfusions you had had a virus in it. that could make you quite seriously ill.

How did they get that information? So that came from retrospective screening of people that had received blood transfusions that had been tracked back through more retrospective screenings to contaminated batches of blood. Okay. So, I'm like, shit. Okay.

And, you know, You know, it's all relative, but certainly at that time, it was slightly better news that what they thought I might be infected with was hepatitis C. Lots of other people at the time were infected with HIV or HIV and hepatitis C. And, I mean, neither's good. Yeah. Neither's good at all. The HIV was also coming from the tainted blood.

Yeah. Where was this blood coming from? So it's not the only source, but a key source and a lot of what's been talked about at the moment was a, get this, a blended blood product called Factor 8. That this sounds like the fucking movie Blade already. Right. Yeah. Where the vampires are creating their own, like, artificial vat of blood. Right.

So although I imagine the manufacturing process is slightly more. advanced. These batches were blended from pools of donors. And I think I read a statistic. I'm going to check my notes because what I don't want to do with stuff touching on this is give the wrong information. I'm happy to give complete falsehoods in terms of my story. But yeah, this I don't want to get wrong. So again, I've read here, Factor 8 pulled from up to 40. thousand donors per batch and one donor with something in it could take the whole batch. Yeah, that makes sense. That batch taints potentially everyone that takes it in from there.

So I was then tested and positive for hepatitis C. Did you have any of the physical symptoms before that or the conversation with your parents? I don't know. and I don't know because I remember talking about this with my uncle actually because being better is all relative isn't it and when you've had leukemia you're better but you know whether whether there was stuff underlying during that time probably do you have any estimate of how many blood transfusions you may have received during your not many really not many almost to the point where you could kind of pinpoint down

and as luck would have it this was pretty much right the tail end of treatment so almost banging out the door could have even been around the appendicitis bit so potentially just a shit deal from a complication that you know came in but it's impossible to say for sure

because it's all based on likelihoods and, you know, your son was exposed around about this time where we think this batch was in circulation and what have you. Was the Factor 8 a UK system or a US system? Worldwide. Worldwide. Yeah. Holy shit.

Again, this sounds like the beginnings of a vampire horror movie. Yeah. I would also love to be, how fascinating would it be to be sitting at a table with these people when they were coming up with the naming convention? where in the fuck did factor eight come from? Who knows? Maybe factors one through seven didn't work. I know.

And as far as I understand it, this stuff is like concentrated fruit juice, where they'll take it all, they'll concentrate it down, and then basically dilute it back up to then become a... Really? And again, we're getting onto the potentially talking out my ass point here. but, you know, when I'm reading words like pulled and concentrated and... I mean, I understand those words. I don't know whether that's for storage, transportation, whatever, because...

Both, yeah. Other bits that I've read, and again, without the medical degree, you know, it's talking about batches from particular time that were still in circulation years later, which that could be misunderstanding on my part, but from what I've read, that seems to be what's indicated. So, I mean, it seems to me your worst kind of nightmare of what kind of product you think you're actually getting. There's a whole question there around informed consent, both as a parent and as a patient, in terms of do you know what you're getting and do you know what the risks of this treatment are? That's kind of one of the things we kind of assume in modern medicine we get, but,

you know, it's only as good as the information. I mean, how often and I don't know, do you get treated for anything where you really understand? Or do they say, you know, any terms and conditions you look, you know, you could get this, this, this, this and this. And boom. So, yeah, so tested positive for it. And then there was the question around what to do next. There was a treatment for it called interferon,

which they use on, what is it? I don't know. I don't know whether it's antiviral or... Michael can look it up. Interferon. Yeah, good man. It's very beneficial to have somebody to fact-check two people who don't know what they're talking about in real time. You might be busy today, Michael. Sorry. Interferon is a man-made drug that helps the immune system find in attack viruses and cancer. It is used clinically to treat viral infections such as hepatitis C.

Right. Okay. So, I think there's a view. And I mean, I think this was relatively new at the time. time, I think, I think probably with modern understanding whether this would have been a risk or not scientifically, there was definitely a question and a bit of a Sophie's choice question that there was a chance, this was the only treatment that would help the hepatitis, but there was a chance, whether it was a small or a 50-50, whatever, that maybe it could also cause leukemia to relapse because, I mean, I guess probably because it says there, it messes around with those kind of things.

And when you're a few years into remission, who knows? So I guess because it messes with the immune system, there was certainly in our minds that question and that decision of what do you do? Do you wait and see what this thing does to you? A hepatitis C will causes cirrhosis of the liver. which is scarring of the liver tissue. The natural conclusion of that, if left to go,

will be liver failure, often through liver cancer and death. I don't know, again, for things like donor lists where you would sit, particularly if you've got a virus circulating in your system that is going to destroy the next liver that comes into your body as well. I don't know. But there was very much that choice of do you do nothing and see what happens with this and treat it at some stage?

Or do you roll the dice on bringing back the thing that nearly killed you a few years ago? And again, our accounts may vary. But I pretty much remember sitting in our living room and just kind of going, fuck it. sitting in waiting for something to happen is much worse than getting on with it and doing something, you know? Yeah. So deal with the problem in the moment as opposed to waiting for the guillotine.

Yeah. And I can't remember whether this was before or after. Might have even been after to kind of force the question. But I also went into hospital to get a liver biopsy. So, you know, again, stick you with a needle, grabber at the end. pinch as a chunk of the liver out, they test it. And that showed that I was already getting scarring of the liver. So it was doing its work.

I remember, again, conversations there touching on death. I remember a spectacularly clumsy conversation with sort of my, again, slightly Hogwarts-ish, my head of house at school who was kind of, you know, responsible for. Which house were you in? Hufflepuff? No, I was Slytherin. Okay, just checking. Yeah, so, you know, he was the guy kind of ultimately, I guess, sort of responsible for sort of, you know,

sort of well-being type stuff. And we're talking about, okay, he's going to be ill, he's going to be on treatment, he might be missing some time, all of this. And I'm sure he remembers, I'm sure I remember him coming out with, you know, the word we're all trying to avoid here is death, isn't it? It's like, well, yeah, no shit.

Thanks. So we got on with that. That treatment was, I mean, it was okay actually. It was basically an injection, subcutaneous, so sort of into the fat somewhere on the body, which ended up going all over the place because I was inject to myself, I know, three, four times a week. Over time, your skin, your tissue calcifies.

is so what's the problem of drug addicts worldwide. You run out of places you can stick yourself. Yeah. And basically it kind of caused like sort of heavy, fluy symptoms, which was really rough at first. But, yeah, again, like with anything else, you sort of get into a flow of it. So I got used to sort of taking it late in the evening

so I could sort of sleep the worst of the effect off and get on with it. But then it was also an uncertain future. So it's then, well, this might work. It might work for a bit. Might not work at all. What does that mean for your life long term? Does that mean, you know, does that mean no sexual partners ever?

Does that mean no drinking? Which, you know, from medical point of view, you kind of go, oh, no drinking. I mean, priorities, right? But as a teenage boy, things like socializing and girls were starting to become pretty hot in the radar. Yeah, and it was only going to continue to become more so. Right. So, yeah, so that went on for, I don't know, a year, 18 months maybe. Of dealing, so the self-injections, flu-light symptoms afterwards, 18 months.

Yeah. And I think I cleared it for a bit. And then, because I'd have tests, you know, PCR tests that we've all had for COVID now, I guess. I mean, they can test for all sorts of stuff. Sometimes it would show positive. Sometimes it would show negative. And so there was this kind of push-pull between do you keep treating? Does the body clear it?

Is it responding? Is it not? And I think we made the call to do a second course of treatment just to sort of really kick it in the ass and get rid of it. which is what we did. And I did. So I was kind of clear again. And I said it was from this point that this conversation I had a few years ago with my uncle, he says he maintains at that point, that was the point where he saw me get well.

He'd, you know, obviously from five onwards, I'd obviously recovered from leukemia and been better. But he says it was from that point that suddenly I became properly, well. I mean, you were in the trenches for like eight or nine years. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it showed as well because all this time, you know, I was doing normal boy stuff. But I certainly wasn't the biggest.

I wasn't the fastest, wasn't the strongest. And I think I felt that. And I think after that, I think then I kind of really started catching up with my peers. So, so, yeah, so I was clear of that. And, and basically my life then kind of got on a, kind of got on a normal track. I was, again, you know, by this point, I was obsessed with joining the army. I ditched, I ditched my, my maverick ambitions for me. And this was, this was the late 90s.

So you're scratching around it a little bit to call back to, you know, really cool, real world stuff. But, you know, lots of stuff we're looking at things like the, you know, obviously the Falklands had happened in the 80s. Still a lot of people around telling good stories about things we did there. Bravo 2-0. You know, the SAS patrol in the first Gulf War was, you know, huge. two films again I should have included this in the list before the Sean Bean Bravo

2-0 I don't know if you've seen I think I've seen pieces of both There's some excellently questionable stuff with that as well but I won't have it

I'm pretty sure it happened exactly as it did on screen stuff like the Iranian embassy siege in London just you know that was they were all the books. They're what, you know, me and sort of my other friends that were really into this were doing. At the school I went to as well, they had what's called the combined

cadet force, which is army cadets. Well, it's combined conduct force. It was army and air force there. There's a sea cadets thing as well. And we had a link up with our local army reserve unit as well. So we were doing, you know, all the stuff you want to. do as a teenager. We're doing weapons handling. We're doing field exercises. I got to go off and, I mean, again, modern safeguarding, no chance, I guess, that a 14, 15 year old is going to be able to do some of the stuff that we did. You know, we would go off with the Army Reserves officer training. So we just went off and did training weekends. So, you know, running around training areas around the UK, firing all the stuff.

Or maybe or were it would be better if we went back to that? It was my world. I loved it. I realized I was good at it. And I was just at home. I loved everything about it. I loved the getting shouted at, whether it's Sergeant on drill or someone chucking the,

you know, the beds out the window in the bow. It just, it was just so entertaining and it also had all its rules. And maybe it was, I don't know, maybe it's just played to my mindset or again, maybe because of the stuff I'd gone through, kind of having those rules and boundaries around it and that kind of security. But I just, I was all in. I absolutely loved it. And that was what I was going to do as a career.

And I mean, some of this stuff we were. we got to do. I mean, I remember, again, a 14-year-old throwing battle noise simulators at each other and then bouncing off trees and coming back at us and all that. I support that. Yeah. I mean, we're eye pro, but, you know.

No. Yeah. No, no iPro, no ear pro. Again, I'm not so sure that the world wouldn't be better for, things like that, not that particular activity. What's the worst that could happen? We could spend a lot of time talking about the worst things that could happen. I know quite a few people with fewer than 10 fingers due to everything from flashbangs to exactly what you're talking about, those artillery simulators going off in their hand, which it shouldn't have been in the first place, but I digress.

Yeah. I just think maybe that pressure and exposure is not, shouldn't always be viewed negatively. Is there risk involved in it? Yes. Maybe a little bit of risk or consequence. It's not the worst thing that could happen. Yeah. No, it's awesome.

And also when I started, so, I know, 14, 15, and started doing this stuff with the Army Reserves, it was also a good wake-up cordal in terms of what it actually involves. You know, particularly going off and doing a two-week stint rather than just a weekend. You know, you can suck up a weekend but doing two weeks on the bounce kind of going, oh, actually, I was really struggling with that. and so in my sixth form year which again American equivalent junior year junior senior then you finish right correct yeah so it was that that six form year I then got

fit I'd always been quite casual in terms of sport I love playing rugby the rest of the year I wasn't remotely interested I didn't want to play hockey in the winter I didn't want to play cricket in the summer. So I avoided it as far as possible and then came back to rugby in the in the autumn and you know, it really hurt for a few weeks and then you get match fit. And that was my approach. That changed in six-form and I thought, no, if I'm going to do this seriously, I don't do that. So I started getting fit and I started responding big time to it. And again, maybe that's, part of that is I was well. And so, and I realized that I was able to keep up with the guys that were, you know, 10 years older than me doing this stuff and I was good at it and I was able to carry weight.

I was able to, I put my hand up to do the hard stuff. I'd carry the radio to show I could do it. I would, you know, carry the heavier gun, the LSW because, well, it was bigger and it was slightly cooler than the other one. And I was just all about it. I also had a mentor that was kind of working with me on that. and he was a major and and he was the one kind of opening these doors sort of saying actually want to come to this training weekend that training weekend this two two week course in the summer went off and saw an awesome firepower demonstration that I think they kind of open up as a you know a bit of a PR thing for people interested and as well as um you know recruitment exercise as well as that kind of thing where you've got the combined arms. going, so you've got artillery going off.

And you're on like this grandstand in the middle of Salisbury Plain, which is, you know, where tanks and infantry trains. So you're sat there, like watching a sports game with artillery going off. That is 100% a recruiting event. Yeah. Again, you've got Harry is flying over, firing flares out, machine guns going off from tanks. and seeing all the bullets ricocheting off and the warrior personnel carriers

with the guys coming out the back and doing all that and again it's just so clear to me all that other stuff's cool but I want to be the guy in the back coming out of the thing and getting in the mud and doing that so I was just completely sold and then the question started coming up is my medical history

going to be a problem and sure enough on some of the reading, yeah, it was going to be a problem. Would have been the same here in the US. Yeah. And the gutting thing was the leukemia, probably less of an issue. The hepatitis was the killer. That was the thing that would screen you out. In your treatment of the hepatitis, were you able to completely clear it from your system?

Yeah. Okay. And so I'd, although I kind of knew that was going to be a risk in my mind, I'd kind of go, well, it will be fine. Because there are all these doctors that are saying, if you have an issue, we'll write a waiver for you, will write a disclaimer because you're now no more likely to contract this than anyone else. And the government will then take that waiver and file it in the garbage can. Well, right. Yeah. Or shredder.

Yeah. Into a garbage can. And that's exactly it. So I'd been in blissful ignorance thinking, well, no, these doctors are going to write their letter and it'll be fine because they're doctors, so they know what they're talking about. And this major was asking unofficially behind the scenes, Army Medical Boards and all of that. I've got this guy who's really promising what's, you know, are there ways around this. And I remember him kind of take to me one side. It's at the end of a training week.

And he obviously wasn't going to tell me at the beginning, but he clearly knew. And basically said, yeah, sorry, no go. And I was just devastated. How old do you think you were at that point? I would have been... Probably 17? 16, 17. Yeah.

Yeah, probably 17. And it was just like the floor. of your life just dropping away. It's, and I think you might understand this more than a lot of people that I speak to about it, because a lot of people I would speak to about it would have absolutely no desire to do what I wanted to do. And I think because, you know, Army military is the kind of thing that a lot of boys particularly think about, talk about, play, that it can kind of be seen as, well, yeah, but, you know, all

boys go through that. Most don't end up doing it. But that, I was so focused on doing it. It absolutely devastated me. I know what you're talking about more than you may think. The first time I tried to join the military, they stamped permanently disqualified on my paper. So in the U.S., It's called the MEP station, which I think is the military enlistment processing station. And you take the ASVAB in the morning. My dad drove me up. We were in Santa Cruz. He drove us up the coast of California to, I think it was Oakland, the Oakland MEPs, which is near San Francisco.

And it's a long day. You get there, you take the test. I don't think I slept well the night before. All the physical tests. I mean, I can't even remember all this stuff that we did. But one of the tests that they did was a blood pressure test. and the first reading that they did on me was high. So they flag that as an issue,

and they'll let you have your blood pressure tested a few more times that day. But let me just tell you having a flag come up that your blood pressure is high did not lower my blood pressure at all. So you can imagine how the other tests went. Here's a 17-year-old kid, junior in high school, had his dad drive him up there, and had the recruiter come to my parents' house at 17, so they could sign for me, or I guess it would be with me.

I think all of our signatures were on the paper. And I'm up there and the doctor comes out. It's like, you have hypertension, which is a permanently disqualifying condition and stamped. I still have the paperwork today. I found it in my military records. It was in a safe. The fucking red stamp. And I remember leaving that room and coming down to find my dad.

And I was just in absolute tears. I know that just gutted. I don't think I had ever had. a thought about what else I was going to do because of course in the Andy show the hero of my own story this is the this is what I want to do of course this is the only option and in the end both permanently and disqualified were inaccurate terms because we my grandmother had been a nurse and she know she started taking my blood pressure regularly she's like you're completely fucking fine went to some specialists and I remember getting an EKG and looking at all

the things that they could look at. And there was a certain amount of time that we had to wait and then we could apply again. I remember all I had to do, though, was the blood pressure. So imagine that. Like, son of a bitch. I remember driving to Oakland with my dad just trying to stay as calm as possible. And then I went and found, in my mind, I wanted to say it was like a nice cushioned window where I was overlooking the city. It was probably a little cubby inside of a government building with no windows whatsoever. And shit. artificial light. But just laying down for like an hour. And then the doctor came out and I remember them putting the cuff on my arm. And I'm just trying to just trying to actually lower your blood pressure is not as easy as most people may think with that gravity of the potential situation on top of that. And the first reading came back and it was good. And then the next one got better and better.

And all of a sudden, the permanently disqualified became, this is your ship date for boot camp. But I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. It sucked. Yeah. And, yeah, I was, well, just... It got you. Yeah.

Yeah, it got you. And I think I just completely lost who I was. That's fair. And it kind of everything suffered. And again, I mean, I need to preface all of this with... I also look back and take full accountability of my actions and my approach. For the shit you're about to talk. about.

Yeah, and my laziness and all this. So first of all, I just want to be very clear. I'm not just taking this and just putting it in a blame pile with someone else. This was all me. Of course, at this time as well,

I'm also head over heels in love. And, yeah, but I'm also starting a good eight-year odyssey of being a complete asshole as well. I've got no direction. but as far as I'm concerned, I am now at least fully healthy and clear from hepatitis. So I can now, you know, I can do everything except what I want to do. And this same conversation with this major, who was my mentor,

and it was something that niggled in my mind and I thought, where did that come from? And I wondered about it for years afterwards. I'm not pretty sure where it came from. and I assume it was probably from my mum. Although she might be listening to go, I didn't fucking say that. You'll find out soon enough. Yeah, we shall find out.

He also said, I know this relationship's really important to you. Don't make it everything that you are or something like that. And it could have been her. It could have been one of my friends. I said there was this kind of tight group of sort of three of us that were all kind of going down this, this sort of pipeline into, into the army. And it could well have been one of them that also said, you know, this is going to be a thing as well. But yeah, so she was kind of everything then over, over the next couple of years. And, yeah, and we didn't treat each other

well. Oh, are you 17, 18, 19, 19. Right, yeah. As much drama as you can possibly imagine. Fuck yeah. Although conversely, she had a twin sister, and it's not going where you think. I'm not going to lie, that is where my head went. Of course. Positive. I introduced her twin sister to my best friend at the time. Well, I say at the time, he's still my best friend.

But I introduced them at that time. And they're now married, have two kids, and are godparents to my kids. So positive things come out of everything, right? Not out of the relationship that we had. So we screwed each other over a lot. And again, through this is a good eight-year period of my kind of behavior on this. I was very convinced that I was right in all things, morally perfect, and everyone else around me was... The hero of your own story.

So again, this isn't a reflection. on her, but our relationship wasn't great. But the thing that finished me off was eventually she dumped me. And what do you think the person she dumped me for did for a living? Who's in the military? Yeah. He was Army. I'd just come back from a tour of Iraq, Suntan, and I just...

It's tough. Disintegrated. That's tough. Yeah. Didn't go get over it for a long, long time. And kind of everything had gone out the window with that. All my ambition for anything, any kind of direction, any sort of... And this isn't her.

This is, you know, this was kind of almost like the store that broke the camel's back. But I was just done. And so I kind of went through, yeah, my late teens, early 20s, convincing everyone else that I was completely, well, not convincing, attempting to convince everyone else that I completely had my shit together and I knew exactly what I was doing. It's a very common tale though. Yeah.

And I went very dark places and some pretty bad behaviours, some big risk-taking behaviours, which I'm not going to go into at all because of what I'm now looking to do. now. I'd quite like to keep my career and future careers and that kind of thing. But yeah, didn't live well for a long time. And ultimately, came out of that,

yeah, a number of years later with really nothing to show for it other than a failed business and an absolute bucket load of debt. Despite everyone's attempts to, you know, steer me away from various big risks I was taking, you know, big decisions,

how you know, finance your first business and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, came out with a lot of debt and a failed business, which in large part was due to my immaturity of handling relationships. And at that point, I met my wife, my now wife. And 180 degree pivot. Isn't it amazing how much losing your sense of purpose, the impact it can have on your life? And again, I'm glad you prefaced it with like these horrible things happens. However, I may have had both hands on the wheel and the gas and brake and clutch and shifting knob.

And actually, this is horrible, but this is what I did with it. But losing that sense of purpose or that sense of who you are, how. fucked it can get, and then you find a reason to find it again, and how you can course correct those behaviors. It's incredibly powerful. So I met her. Where'd you guys meet? At my brother's wedding. Okay.

Classic tale. I was best man. She was the bridesmaid. Toxedo? We do things better over our side. We're talking tails. That's a tuxedo with tails. I don't say tuxedos dinner jacket

bow tie we're talking cravats and long coat I don't know enough about this shit to argue I like the idea of a cravat

what is the point of the tails in that outfit I don't know other than they can charge you more per square inch of fabric like I don't

I don't know it's just what we do okay it's what we do so yeah and Ascotts no

rookie yes that's what I'm talking about maybe did we have you've just covered every fucking possible answer known to man. I can't remember.

We might have done. We might have done. Yes, no, maybe. Like, fuck, man. Which one is it? Yeah. It would be part of it. I've definitely worn one to a wedding. Whether it was that one or not. Okay. I don't remember. But yeah. But she was in the wedding party as well? Yeah. So she was the bridesmaid. So...

Oh, this is like a Hallmark movie. Yeah. You guys may not have those. And it had sort of been... Well, my sister-in-law had been trying to engineer it for a couple of years before. And it hadn't come to anything. We'd met a couple of times. I liked her. She maintained she wasn't even considering it from her point of view. Women like to lie, you know.

She was also married. Okay. She may not have considered it from her point of view. And again, I won't go into it because it's her story, not mine. It wasn't a good marriage. There was trouble. alcoholism. Probably best to leave abroad, like you said, her story.

The only reason I mention alcoholism is because who better when you finally do move on from that marriage to get with than the financially ruined guy that's just lost a business in the pub trade. So I'd been working pubs, bars, hotels for for years and that's what I did so yeah we we got together at the wedding um and and it was just instant we we would I I drove her home on my way home which doesn't matter where that was at the time but it wasn't on the way it was it was it was a triangle it was a triangle across you drove 80 miles out of the way to take her back to her house yeah I get it more like 300 yeah yeah

You have to do what you have to do. And we were talking on the way. We knew we were going to be together. We were together for a few weeks before my, and then my business tanked. I was in the process of selling it. And relationship-wise, everything went to shit. But anyway, I won't go into that, mainly because it's fucking boring. So, yeah, we then got to go on this very high risk thing.

thing where who did that and you know a few years later we got married again we had kids as a surprise and

getting together with her just changed all that round she brought out something in me that brought kind of some goodness back and

she also rooted me in I don't know how she helped me get rid of my own self-centeredness and self-entitlement. And I then started from scratch, built up a career again, completely different field to what I do now. And over those years, you know, we grew up to what it was. She got pregnant. We had a very traumatic birth. again we had twins it's not uncommon

she had prea clamsher which basically you know blood pressure that if it's not sorted will kill you and the kids we went in for a routine checkup and she went straight into hospital and C-section later that day they don't fuck around that out yeah and they were eight nine weeks premature

about three pounds each so combined still much less than what I weighed when I was born and I distinct remember three separate occasions of knowing that one of them had died they didn't

but when they were born they come and show you one and take it out Patrick when he was born wasn't breathing and they had the you know the mask and the bag and they took him out still doing that without stopping by me. And I was, fuck.

Doctor then came into the room half an hour later with the face of someone that's just about to tell you that your kids have died. And started with the words, I'm really sorry. And then finished with, it's taken me a while to get here. And both first were like, you.

You should cut. should cockpunch that guy. Yeah. Just, right. Work on your bedside manner. Fucking hell. Right.

Delivery counts. Yeah. So I'd experienced the grief, like in an instant of knowing, you know, they're gone, only to then get it back again. That happened again the next day.

They were taken off to a specialist unit in a different city from where, from where we were. So I had to leave my wife in the hospital because she was being sewn back together and do a run to the other hospital. And I remember arriving in that specialist unit and saying, you know, how are they doing? And the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, The nurse said, Patrick's doing very well. What do you take from that?

I mean, if you're going to only say one of two is doing well, the natural assumption would be that things are gone horribly wrong for the other. You would think, right? It's like, okay. What about Eva? Oh, I'm just looking after Patrick. Eva's over there with the other one. Fucking hell.

So, yeah. The reason I touch on those bits is, because, again, it plays back, I think, in terms of what I wanted to mention, around just how different, the different experiences that you can get out of the medical system in our country. I would say every country. Right. Because I said, I owe my life to that doctor I mentioned before, Martin Moncrief,

who was at my wedding. but I've also had some just horrendous experiences in hospital. My wife had a horrendous experience in that same hospital. While the kids were up on one floor in the neonatal unit, she was one floor down in the maternity ward, where they lost her for a day, so she didn't get any medication. That's fine.

Recovering from, you know, pretty traumatic surgery, having had two kids pulled out to you. I found her unable to move in a bed, kind of in a corner, forgotten about, with clearly someone else's bloodied whatever bandages that had been discarded on a table next to her. So there's kind of the extremes of the care. The care the kids got was second to none, where, you know, for a while incubators around the place, one-to-one nurse support of those things. So it's the difference between being absolutely elite medical care to just being the worst. That's just humanity though. I don't know if there's an occupation on earth that is immune from that.

Yeah. You know, whether it be a psychiatrist or psychologist, I mean, personal train or diet, like fill in the blink. Yeah, exactly. And I think in a very long way, what I'm getting round to is I think one of the big things for me is the difference between having, major issues with an institution, but also recognizing that within those institutions, there are heroes all around. There are also a lot of jobsworths around as well. What's the jobs worth?

Jobs worth, bare minimum. You know, someone that has no issue with, you know, doing the bare minimum, poor service, doesn't care. A cunt, if you will. Sure. Yeah. Your country has mastered the usage of this term, so. I agree.

I agree. So, yeah, exactly that. So, yeah, everywhere in the spectrum there. But then kind of out of it, so we had a really, really rough start to that. And again, fast forward, it's sort of those bits where you kind of think that you're in the worst possible situation. in life and how can things ever recover? You know, in the whole in terms of debt, rough start in terms of not knowing

whether your kids are going to make it. At the point where it was actually happening and my wife was being operated on, I thought I was going to lose them all. And I remember, you know, very clearly sort of doing one of those look yourself in the mirror I mean, you know, just taking a moment myself before going into the operating room

and just kind of going, suck this up, you're the only one in the room that's able to be strong. But kind of thinking, I could lose all three now, which obviously I didn't. But you go from those very dark places where you think, how do you come back from this where you've sort of had this traumatic stuff happen? you kind of feel like a failure direction list

you've got all this debt that you're shouldering how can it ever get to a good place and you know for for us anyway the answer is you know one day at a time and and fast forward to where we are now

you know you look down any list of you know of metrics and we've got a perfect life our kids are fantastic they're doing amazingly at school. Me and my wife both have strong careers. We live in a, you know,

we probably live in one of the most beautiful parts of our country. We get to do everything that you dream to do. We take nice holidays, we do all of this. And that is just, as I said at the beginning, that is just so, such a small percentage of the people that were affected by this infected blood got to do that. And that's what I'm circling back to.

That's where I wanted to go next, because I'm curious in this, when you first heard about, you know, your parents had heard about the issue with the blood, potential issue of the blood, you go and you get screened. Did you guys have any idea the size, scope and scale? No. Okay. So, and the reason I've kind of tried to sort of skip forward to where I am now

to kind of play back to this is because there's a huge difference between what I experienced at the time and what I know now because the facts of this stuff have come around because I was in the position. Obviously, I was lucky. So to a large degree, this is stuff that I've put in my rearview mirror.

I've kind of mentioned sort of the, you know, the fallout of it, I guess, in terms of perhaps sort of how it's sort of affected me for those years and come those sort of second and third order effect. but a huge amount of people never made it past the first order effect because they're dead or they've got lifelong crippling conditions that are going on so but you don't I didn't know the scope of it at the time so I'd kind of put it behind me and and it's only really been the last

few years that it's come more and more to the fore and again that as I was mentioned at the beginning going back to the leukemia, when it's, when you're just kind of going through it, it's normal. And so you don't, well, I say you don't. I'm talking in generalities. I've only got a sample of one with me to compare it to. But I never thought of myself as special or particularly harmed because all the way through my life, I'd dealt with these serious illnesses. So that was just my experience. So I never really thought about, you know, terms like being a victim or like that. It was just, well, I got a shitty hand early on. I got over it.

Things are all good now. But it did also put a lot of things into, whether it's into context or giving me a skewed view at stuff. So things like empathy for other people's problems was something that I certainly wasn't good at. And again, growing up, getting a bit more mature, also I have to give pretty major credit again to my wife for this in terms of kind of grounding me a little bit and kind of helping teach me some of that stuff of that thing. And I don't know, a lot of people sort of say it's one that Joe Rogan uses a lot, you know, the worst thing that's happened to you is the

worst thing that's ever happened to you. It's called the Dark Night of the Soul. Right. And I struggled for quite a long time with all these people with these nothing problems that would get really bent out of shape. But actually those people did have significant problems. They were the worst things in their life. It doesn't surprise me, though, that somebody who survive what you survive for the length of time period that you had to work your way through it would have a different lens on challenge and difficulty and pain and suffering and all those things. It shouldn't, it isn't to me and I would hope it's not to a lot of people. a different scale of empathy. It seems like it would probably be a little bit normal, actually, at the tail end of that. Yeah. And it's easy to not think of yourself as a victim

when your data point is only one. Yeah. Until you start discovering things like this. You're like, wait a minute. And so I'd never particularly paid attention to this. And, I mean, can you blame public interest? No, probably not. and sure there was stuff out there,

but I certainly don't think it was at the forefront of public knowledge or interest because I was pretty much unaware of the wider scale of what was going on. I knew other people had been affected to what extent and to what scale and the kind of culpability around it I was completely oblivious to. so to me it was always well that was shit that happened but yeah whatever what are you going to do but it was only more recently where it started getting brought up so subsequent UK governments have you know sort of said oh this should never have happened it's you know biggest foul up we ever did and all of that but have done pretty much nothing about it

Minister at the time Theresa May said that there should be support to victims of this and also announced there would be a public inquiry. So that's kind of brought it to the surface a little bit more. And I think it really sort of focused me back in on it because you kind of go, oh shit, that was me. I thought that was done with. I thought everyone had forgotten about that. I've always been a bit annoyed that, you know, it was kind of, kind of happened and we get really bent out of shape about some things, but no one's really talking about this. But beyond that, I'd never really paid it too much mind. And also never really felt that I could, given my circumstances now, right? But then looking into it and understanding just what happened and, and then, and, you know, and,

The, I mean, again, this is one going to have to draw heavily on notes, but the history behind it, the cover-ups, the, I don't know whether you should have apparent or alleged behind these destruction of records, behind all of this and all the warning signs that came before it, you kind of go, well, okay, that's different now, that's not okay. but then when you understand actually the extent of the devastation, which I just wasn't, whether it was something I didn't want to revisit or just didn't care about because I was young, living life,

and had moved on from. I'm sure there's probably stuff that if I'd been more minded to go and look for it, I could have found out about it. But when you realise what could have been and what thousands of other people have been through, then you start to get really pissed off. Yeah. And you go, well, why does no one care?

And it's not why does no one care? There's been a huge amount of effort for decades to do something about this, but people haven't been listening. And I'm only becoming aware of that, really in the last couple of years. Which is crazy, considering you were directly involved. Right.

And then it also, again, calls into question and this is probably, you know, it's also a call back to probably why why I was minded to write to you in the first place as well. Because I take a lot of some of the things that you talk about and the guys that do your podcast talk about from a different context,

but from the things that they struggle with, particularly post-military career, things like Survivor's Guilt, where I've been asked about Survivor's Guilt before, and I kind of played it off and sort of thought, well, no, not really. But then I thought, well, actually, there is that, because I've always felt like I shouldn't really be talking about this, because what right have I got to talk about it when my life's fine? It should be, you know, the story should be with the people whose lives aren't fine

or the people that don't have lives anymore. Sometimes they're not able to have that voice, though. Yeah. You know? And I would say the biggest reason for you to talk about is to make sure something like this never happens again. Right. Hence, hence I'm here.

Yeah. I feel like I've got a voice that I can use. I feel like actually my, you know, my story is almost irrelevant. It's really only the backdrop of the lens I see this through, and it's why I'm involved. And there's also that thing that, and I get, you know, you talk about with, with people on this around, also you owe it to, you know, the people that didn't make it. Yeah.

To make the most of what you've got, because you're lucky to be in that position. So that's where I am. And what I was going to do then with that as a, as a, as a back. backdrop, if it's called you, is to kind of talk through... Dive in, dude. What we've actually got here. So, again, everything I've got here is stuff that I've taken from publicly available stuff. So this isn't my own stuff.

I'm obviously not an investigator or a historian or anything like that. This is all sort of open source stuff. So any inaccuracies... Blame it on the author. Right. Blame it on the internet. So, I mean, just to give you some headline statistics, the estimated figures of people that were infected through this range from 5,000 to 30,000. It's broad.

Infected with HIV or hepatitis C throughout the 70s, 80s, and I guess just chipping into the early 90s. of which 3,000 plus are dead and who knows how much further that goes because it also doesn't take for me anyway a genius to spot that this was also happening in the middle of the AIDS epidemic where the stigma that went along with this stuff was huge

and still is I guess I was very cagey about who knew about me only until sort of recently. And I still kind of have to clarify in my mind when I talk to anyone about it. Through a blood transfusion and I'm completely fine. The treatment worked. How many years from when you were infected and toward you were notified? Six-ish. And it's happened at a phase in your life where you weren't sexually active.

Right. This doesn't take into account either that people that may have had this happen. Yeah, later in their life who didn't know. Yeah. Who, I mean, fuck, how do you start connecting the dots to that and how far that could have? How many marriages were destroyed by, you know, one of the partners finding out they were infected with hepatitis or HIV by their partner and say, well, how do this happen? Or even bigger numbers. People just live in a more promiscuous lifestyle.

They're single. Some dude in his 20s is just banging anything that'll stand still. And that, you know, and who knows what the other side of that equation. And it's funny how people sometimes like to pretend that dudes are the only people that get horny. You know, there's women out there also who are exploring the offerings of men. Like, how do you start keeping track of that? Exactly. And I guess that's probably where the discrepancies and those estimated figures come from.

Yeah. I imagine, I imagine, and again, it's not clear from the research I've done in terms of, I assume that lower figure is about the ones they know about that were directly infected. The higher figure, I guess, is how far it could have gone and maybe some of the second and third order bits there. Like I said, 3,000 dead. and still today estimated, and bear in mind this is just the UK, that one person dies every four days as a direct result of this. How many other countries have they been able to determine that this was involved in? I don't know the total amount, but other countries that have been affected, the US,

probably thousands have been infected, and millions have been paid out in out-of-court settlements. But I guess there's... I have not heard a single mention of that. Well, neither had I. And I can only assume that is because you've got a private system. Maybe there isn't that government oversight or government culpability. I wonder who made the payment. The drug companies, maybe.

What was it, factor eight? Factor eight, yeah. So you said that that was a multinational organization. Well, the Factor eight was the product. Okay. Largely, it was exported from other places. It was exported from the U.S., certainly to the UK, because the UK couldn't keep up with demand for blood products.

God, I wonder who'd end up paying that out. Yeah, the investigators have to. Yeah. Other countries, I haven't got stats for any of these, but France, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Japan, Canada, Iran, Iraq, In other countries, politicians and drug companies have been convicted of negligence. So far, not in the UK. It's been said that there is a possibility, and I suspect probably will be the case that that will happen

as a following the report on this public inquiry. This report has also been pushed back. I'm trying to think how many times now. I think it's been pushed back a full year at various times. It's been sort of bumped from a spring to an autumn to a spring to a summer. And I believe that the reason behind that is basically they've been overwhelmed with the amount of damning evidence that has come in. And as part of the public inquiry process, people that are going to be named as culpable need to be informed, need to have a right to reply. within the process before.

So it gets deeper the more they dig. Right, yeah. And obviously it's right that people shouldn't be aired out and hung, drawn, courted in public before an inquiry is complete. But as a result, that final report has been pushed back and back and back. Okay. So I think we're going to see more on that.

I told you the horrendous, or at least sounding horrendous, the whole idea of how it was created and how it was there. A date for you here, US scientist Judith Graham-Pool warned against the use as unethical and dangerous in 1974. 1975 W.H.O. warns against importing, especially from the US. Michael, start Googling shit. You don't have to pull it up and see if you can find anything about this factor eight from the US.

Okay. 1975, a world in action documentary. I think that's a US or was a US one, warned about the dangers of hepatitis C. As a result of this, 1978, 50% of factor 8 in the UK was imported. 1990, a Cook report, I remember the Cook report,

is basically this guy that would go around and, you know, sort of do kind of undercover reporting stuff and sort of exposed stuff. But then had it aired in 1990, so this could have even been before I was infected, saying that there was suspected negligence around this stuff. In 2000, there was a destroyed evidence investigation where it was found that files with minutes and background papers of advisory committee on virology, safety of blood, the ACUSB apparently, had found that there were, basically, information there had mysteriously gone missing. And they put it down to most likely an inexperienced member

of staff had accidentally disposed of it. It sucks when paperwork that's important, accidentally lights on fire. Doesn't it? 2009 the Archer report which was a privately funded so an independent one so it didn't kind of have the powers of a full public inquiry but in lack of one they sort of tried to do this

found that more files had been destroyed through the 90s again I said already 2017 where Theresa May announce the public inquiry 2018 as part of this a false ministerial statement was withdrawn the ministerial statement

so ministers politicians working in government so the statement had been all documents up to 1995 are available through the national archives well they weren't so that was withdrawn

because in 2019 it was found around 450 files had been taken from the archives by staff of the Department of Health and Social Care and unfortunately not returned. So who knows where they went. 2022 interim compensation was paid to infected victims, including myself. But that still hasn't extended nearly four. far enough for what a lot of people would feel to be reasonable, things like families of deceased. I was going to say, did they only paid to the living, or did they go all the way back?

I'm not quite clear. I think it might be, I think it's to the living and to those that, and to the immediate next of kin, I think. So wives, husbands of people that, I think, lost spouses that could prove it was a direct result. I could be wrong on that. but in terms of things like compensating parents that lost children, children that lost parents, I don't think that's happened.

It's been recommended that it should because in 2023 the inquiry set out basically a compensation recommendation for victims that said, you know, don't hang about into the final report because we already know, you know, but we're working on basically, we're working on the details now around individual culpability. It's no longer a question as to whether or not it happened. Right, yeah. The facts are there. So, you know, sort these people out. The government's been pushing back hard, basically saying, hey, we'll wait for the final result before we do anything.

And that would be an additional payout on top of what has already been paid? I guess, yeah. And I guess that, I mean, presumably that will depend more in individual circumstances, you know. like I said there's a there's a big variance in circumstances between where I am and where a lot of other people are and you'd expect that to be reflected some way yeah that could be just due to luck though or at the age that you were when you when it was identified your body's ability to process what was going on or the treatment because of that age I mean you and somebody else getting infected with hep C somebody in their early teens versus somebody let's call it in their 60s 70s and 80s same origin point, but the outcome, substantially different. Yeah. So they've been pushing back to that. Former health minister who's now somewhat of a celebrity in our country,

having been the health secretary through the COVID pandemic and exposed and quite heavily criticized for handling of that as well as a lot of the messaging around that. Again, a different story. declared there was a clear and moral case for, you know, for victims to be sorted. But it appears, again, I don't have all the answers to the technicalities. Maybe everyone is acting in good faith. But there's a fairly solid consensus of thinking. Because like you, we're looking at our next general election coming up pretty soon.

A lot of people think it's probably going to be. end of this year. Exactly when it's going to happen, who knows, because they, unlike you in the UK, they can kind of pick their moment to call the election. I think there's sort of a maximum term it can go to, but essentially the government in power can choose to call one early, basically. So, you know, time it when you're polling well. Every four years for the madness here.

Right. So there's quite a lot of speculation that the government's really just trying to stall and pass that payoff onto the new government. But I mean, successive governments, I mean, again, like you kind of got a sort of a two-party system, arguably. We do have an in-the-middle party that does hold this way of, can hold a sway of power sort of depending on the balance if they sort of partner one way or the other. but essentially we have the conservatives which are like your republicans and labor sort of more left like the democrats obviously political scientists will no doubt be able to pull apart all the reasons they're not good comparisons but that will do for now both of them have you know seesawed into power since this time both have criticized each other in terms of their handling of it but no one's actually done anything yeah

And the, I mean, the hemophilia society on their website, again, I'll cite it because maybe it's a mistype, but if it's not, it seems pretty damning. They've been campaigning for an inquiry for this since 1988. So we've got this stuff that back to 1974, we're saying this stuff's dangerous. It's unethical. It's a bad idea. We get to, I mean, what's that? That's 50 years. Yeah. Right? And we're still not at a point where there are answers to this.

And you can speculate, does this stuff take a very long time to work through? Has there been sufficient motivation? Or is everyone just waiting for everyone to die and forget about it? Hmm. That's a good question. given the motivations and desires for people who are in power often tough to answer Michael what were you able to find if anything about factor aid in the US um I found that apparently it mostly came from one prison in Arkansas oh fucking awesome right yeah

the Arkansas prison blood scandal apparently there's a documentary about this somewhere what year is this from do you know Michael this particular I think the document I don't know about this article, but I think the documentary was 05. There's a... Let's see. Scroll up here a little bit, all the way to the top. I need to get a mouse where I can take over for you. You're substandard at your job. Okay, I won't read all this, but the Arkansas prison blood scandal resulted from the state's selling plasma extracted from prisoners at the Cummins Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction, the ADC. Corruption among the administrators of the prison blood program and poor supervision resulted in disease tainted blood,

often carrying hepatitis or HIV, knowingly being shipped to blood brokers. Not two words that I would ever thought I would see together, blood brokers, even though I'm sure there is a medical backing behind that. It's back to Blade, isn't it? That's actually what I was thinking. It's like, step into the alleyway, I have my suitcase. Like, holy shit, right, blood brokers, who in turn shipped it to Canada, Europe and Asia. Revelation of the misdeeds and the healthcare crisis it created in Canada nearly brought

down the Liberal Party government in 1997. In 1994, Arkansas became the last state to stop selling plasma extracted from prisoners. In 1994, they were still doing that. Wow. Okay. Arkansas's prison blood program began in 1964 as a way for both prisoners and the prison system to make money. Michael, did they have a sperm donor program as well in the U.S. prison system? Google that as we can. Okay. I mean, I'm just saying, they're willing to sell stuff to make money. How fucking far did this go?

Back to the article, everyone. Arkansas law forbids paying prisoners for their labor. Okay, so I guess they can sell their blood. Whoa. I mean, obviously, they can't do this anymore. But holy shit. Set up by Birmingham, Alabama physician August R. Staw. It was from 1967 to 1978, managed at various times by group of physicians from the University of Arkansas's medical science campus.

Now the now the University of Arkansas for medical sciences in Little Rock. The problems with the prison plasma program were Legion. Great word. Prisoners were not adequately screened for disease. and state investigators later confirmed allegations that some prisoners were not paid in cash, but in drugs. Other misdeeds included an inmate clerk in the prison's plasmus center selling the right to bleed to fellow inmates who had been excluded because they were likely infected with hepatitis B, which is a possible indicator of HIV infection. Holy shit. Michael, what did you find about the sperm donors?

I don't think they can donate sperm, but there has been some talk of letting inmates send sperm to their spouses for in vitro fertilization. So that's about all I found. God. At least it wasn't also in Arkansas at 1964. We had the Jack in the Can program where prisoners were like that. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.

Then they would have, what was the term? It was the blood bank or the blood brink. or the blood broker. Yeah, it's sperm brokers. God. Okay, so it sounds like this shit or the origin of this was in the U.S. Man. Scroll down a little bit.

Michael, I want to see if there was punishment for these people before. Keep going. 85. It sounds like they hired an institute of law and policy to conduct an independent investigation. Keep going down. 89. A prisoner. No.

No. 1991, it looks like they started telling stories about it. 1992, a series of state police investigations uncovered corruption in the prison plasma program, including allegations of nepotism such as ADC directors Lockhart asking Jimmy Lord, owner of Pine Bluff Biologicals to hire his son. Lockhart was forced to resign. Let's see. It's been the subject of a novel, titled Blood Trail in 1998.

Subject of a documentary, yes. Factor 8, the Arkansas prison blood scandal. I'm watching that. shit as soon as we're done here, which was released in 2005 and drew worldwide attention to the events. I'm absolutely attaching this in the show notes. Keep going down. British government being uncompensating payments in October of 2022, considered an interim

payment for the full inquiry to be continued. Man. It sounds like from just the origin, the program was fucked. They knew it was not being monitored in the way that it should be. doesn't sound like a great idea, does it? I mean, let's chuck a load of blood. I can appreciate the outside of the box thinking like, oh, we can't pay prisoners for their labor, so we'll let them sell their bodily fluids.

But maybe move on to the next idea. Maybe that one. Have a panel of people to look at this, though. Yeah. And what sucks is that's obviously more than one person. But starting in Arkansas and the global effect that that could have and the impact. cascading downstream effects, secondary, tertiary effects of, like you said, marriages, people in their sexual prime who have no idea that they are passing something along.

And the impact that that can have on the continued families, and it just grows and grows and grows and grows. And what was it all about? Money. What a surprise, right? Yeah, shocker. And how much sooner could it have been sorted and people looked after? Probably the second I realized it was a issue. shitty idea, which should have been at the inception. Or if not that, when they realized there was a

problem, do you fix it or do you just take all the files and throw them away? I feel like, unfortunately, most people, especially in an organization like that, were culpability is going to be massive. They look at it from an economic perspective, not a moral perspective. Yeah. How do we protect ourselves from the financial fallout from this? Not the ability to sleep at night as a human being knowing you did the right thing. I've never been in a situation like that. I'm not saying it's an easy choice to make. But damn, people, like, let's try to be better than that.

Yeah. Fuck. So when is it right now projected that the inquiry will come out? Reports due 20th of May. Okay, so just went into March, March, April, May. Okay, so we're under 90 days away from that. What do you think would be the best case? scenario outcome. It sounds like, and again, this is one article that we have found, talks a little bit,

though it does bring us up to full speed in 2022 the payments. What would be the best case scenario? There's no good scenario, is there? I mean, money can't bring anyone back. Money can't, money can't fix decades of what people have gone through. There's a justice element to it, I guess. that, you know, people being held to account and some kind of redress. But I feel like it might be tough to find some of these people still being alive. Right. Yeah. There are a lot that, and this has been part of the inquiry, a lot are elderly.

Yeah. But take their fucking applesauce away. Right. If it can be, I would say, sufficiently painful and sufficiently damaging financially, then maybe the next time we have another idea like this or next time they realize there's a problem, they'll do something different. I feel like they realized there was a problem with this almost immediately.

And it went on for 50 years. Yeah. Well, it didn't go on for 50 years. We're now getting to the tail end of what happened to it at the end of a 50-year time period. There's also a point. I can't remember whether I've got it here. Yeah, mid-80s,

they started heat treating these blood products to try and fry whatever viruses. But we pasteurization basically? Yeah, pasteurized blood. The questions about how much was known before that. But they, from that point, they knew there was bad stuff in circulation, but products still remained in circulation. So recall was not effective or didn't happen. I was going to say it didn't.

And it probably didn't happen because they would have had to educate as to why. Yeah. And I'd need to check whether this is UK or worldwide. Screening began in 1991, which is a long time after screening was possible and should have been taking place. When I was first infected, I think the message was that, we couldn't screen for this before. We can now screen for it, so we've gone back and screen for it. And sorry, bad luck.

You were unlucky. Whereas clearly from what's coming out and has been known about for some time, there was and should have been the processes in place to screen. I mean, regardless of whether or not any of this was a good idea. I think, Michael, scroll up a bit. I think it mentioned this in here. Some people were excluded. Hold on.

Okay, yeah. The problems with the prison plasma program were Legion. Yeah, they were selling the right to bleed to fellow mates who had been excluded because they likely were infected with hepatitis B. They had to have been some level of screening in place or ability for them to know that. I don't think, I mean, fuck, I'd like to think we're super advanced. I mean, let's be honest, we've become light years like every generation. Michael, look up when they could start testing for hepatitis. in general and HIV.

What do you think that was, actually? So here's HIV. 85. And then let me look up hepatitis. Okay. What year were you infected? 1990. Okay.

So that's five years past that. And then it looks like 69 and became mandatory in 72. Yeah. Doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility, does it? No. It does not. There you go. I might want to be a blood broker.

I'm just sharing my thoughts with you. I try sometimes to not share my inside thoughts, but I'm not saying I'm going to do it. But what a fucking weird job. Yeah. Right? Yeah, I wasn't fat. I wasn't daydreaming about actually doing it.

I was just thinking about what that. Yeah, I got 50 gallons of AB negative here, ready to roll. You know, like, what the fuck? There's also, I mean, there's also something, I guess, again, something anyone could take from this is, if you can, donate blood. A lot of this came because there wasn't, there wasn't enough. Yeah. So there went somewhere else, you know, demand outstrip supply. And I also don't want to turn people off against receiving blood transfusions because they can save lives.

I would love to believe that in the modern era, there is a robust. screening protocol that is going on at all times. Let's actually be sure of that too, Michael. Sorry, I wasn't listening. What did you say? If you weren't listening, what the fuck were you doing? I was looking at a blood type chart. Okay.

Look up what the modern protocols are in place. What I don't want to do in this conversation is turn people off or make them unwilling to get a blood transfusion. I'm just curious what the current mechanisms are in place to protect people from that. Yeah. I mean, my hope and understanding is that, things have been in place for a long time to make sure that this particular mistake never happens again. I've been let out many times.

I would hope that, yeah, I wouldn't want this to be sort of scaremongering for people avoiding appropriate treatment. Yeah, let's educate them on what is currently available so we can make sure of that as well. What'd you find? Or were you not listening? Yeah, sorry, what? Okay. Since the institution of blood baking, safe for pot donors and blood recipients, been continually and significantly improved.

What year is this article from, do you know? This is from hematology.org. Fuck. All right. Yeah, I'm not sure. It's not up there. Maybe it's at the bottom. Scroll down.

Okay, recipient safety. So there's blood type matching. Obviously, go down. Some more. Oh, boy. These are all the blood types. What blood type are you, Michael? I don't know, actually.

Fuck, you're useless. How about yourself? I was hoping you might get a mask. I don't know either? No. God. You know what you guys need? You need a blood type patch that goes on your shoulder at all times or on your backpack.

I think by this point, my blood's luminous. I have A-B-positive. I'm compatible with all blood types. If you guys need me, I'm there for you. All right. But I'm going to suck it out of my vein and spit it in your mouth. That's how we're going to. All right.

Keep scrolling down. It's not actually showing a lot about the safety. But, okay. Let's assume it's there, I think. I'm going to, you know, testing ability has obviously increased over time. Yeah, let's just assume that there's not some shit like in the 1960s and 70s going on from an Arkansas prison. Or should we say, with informed consent, if anyone is worried about receiving a blood transfusion, maybe they ask before they get it, just confirm that this doesn't have killer viruses in it. Yeah. Please. Did this blood come from an Arkansas prison system? Did this come from a drug-using convict that was unscreened? Yeah, that was paid for their blood in drugs.

Yeah. Fuck. What, uh, I know you mentioned your email. You never lost the desire to follow down your previous path. Right. This is another one, and I don't want to sound like a sycophant here, but it is one about perhaps benefits of what you do

that you might not be aware of. And it's a bit like the story you had around your blood pressure. But I had, you know, you write this off and you kind of go, right, it's not on the cards for me. Military first responders,

anything like that. And also something, and I think this isn't, uncommon with people of our age as well. When you've got all the things you're fighting for and life isn't coming easy, you've always got that thing of when we get this, we'll be all right, you know, whether that's earning enough money or working towards something.

And I certainly got to that point when you kind of go, oh shit. I really got nothing to really worry about or complain about anymore. Everything is kind of perfect. And I think a lot of people go through that, well, now what? A bit sort of at this stage in life. But there was still that I never got to. I might put my hand up or would have put my hand up, but I never got to do the thing.

And again, 9-11 happened when I was in my last year of school. So I knew that anything that happened off the back of that, I wouldn't be part of. And regardless of whether anyone should want to be part of that or whatever, I went through the decades after that feeling like I'd missed my war. You know, I saw photos of people I knew, you know, standing in front of the cross swords in Baghdad holding machine gun. you know, and you kind of go, I wanted to be there, you know, doing that. Do you see the pictures of the coffins though, too? Right, yeah.

And that's something I was going to speak to you about, because there is, there's that image of actually what you want and what you think it is. And then all these things around questioning whether wars just or whether it's not. and I think a lot of people's expectation of war is I don't know being one of the ones that's in that final scene of band of brothers where they're all playing baseball at the end and they've all got nice

happy sort of this is where they ended up stories everyone wants to be the ones that have been in that sort of perfect story really gone through the shit distinguished themselves but then come out the other side of it Also not someone I knew, but someone that was known to my wife through a friend. I forget whether her friend was married to or was girlfriend of a guy called Matty Hull, who was in the British Army and was killed by a strike from an A-10, you know, blue on blue.

Yeah. Again, it happens. Yeah, a whole rabbit hole. There's a, there's a BBC podcast series in terms, around that one, in terms of how that happened. But no one goes off excited to war thinking that that's going to happen. But it happened, you know, no means to do it. It happens. You don't think you're going to be that person.

You don't want to see bad things happen to your friends. And so there's a little bit of feeling a bit dirty about kind of wishing for that kind of stuff. But I don't think it's necessary. Maybe it's the difference between wanting to do the stuff, but or compared to holding your hand up and say, I will do you know what I mean? There's the third variable, though, too. You raise your hand, you volunteer to do the thing and the world never presents you the opportunity to do so. So then you leave service after however long you do it.

I don't know what the enlistment time periods are for the UK, but you enter with the best of intentions and the desire to serve and do the thing, and you never get the chance to you. So you exit service feeling unfulfilled. So what do you do then? You know, you went after the thing that you wanted or the occupation that you wanted, and it didn't provide the fulfillment that you hoped that it would. And that can be a tough road for people at the end of it as well.

Yeah. And I'll maybe have that question, Because I think getting back to the question you actually asked in terms of where I am and what it means and that kind of thing. So, I mean, the world's moved on since, whatever it was, 9-2,000, when I was told no. Treatments have evolved. Awareness and stigma around these things have evolved.

So actually, the regulations don't seem nearly as clear cut as they did before. If you read the fine print on the sort of the use. UK Armed Forces medical, what do you call criteria? It's that you can't be a carrier of the hepatitis C virus. Okay. Which I'm not. You must have been in remission if you've had any kind of cancer and malignancy for whatever it's five years plus. Well past that.

Right. So it kind of thing. well, do you give it another go? And so that's something that I've started doing. And again, getting knocked back from stuff because since then, I've lived a life. I'm 40 now. I've played rugby for most of that time.

So my medical history is full of stuff that has resulted in rejection after rejection. But part of the process, is you can appeal it. But the cool way certainly that our process works is you'll get rejected for something. You can then go to your doctor to write a letter. The NHS is supposedly free at the point of service, but for things like writing letters and things like that,

they'll charge you a hundred pounds of time. And my experience has been you'll wait a long time for that letter. So I've been rejected a number of times for stupid stuff. So something that flashed on the file, a back injury from the gym, showing as being unresolved. The reason it was unresolved is because I went to the doctor once to get it looked at. It was then fine. So I didn't go back.

Also known as being resolved. Yeah. So I didn't go back to say, hey, can I get an appointment to tell you my back feels better? after two weeks of, you know, stretches and anti-inflammatories. But on the file, it was never shown as resolved. So going through the computer says no box-dicking exercise of a back issue that exceeds 12 weeks or whatever. No, rejected, fine.

So that comes back around. And you go, right, so let's do it again. Okay, fine. Your appeal's been accepted, but now we found the next thing on the list. It's, I don't know, whatever it was. injury. Fine. Yes. That was never resolved. Yes, it was resolved. Fine. Each time, talking 100 quid and from the point of getting the response, to getting the letter, to sending it back, maybe another eight weeks. So I can't have been at this point where I'm just working through

the broken bones at this point. They haven't even got to the, you know, to the cool stuff we've been talking about. If they would take you, would you go? Well, this is the question. up until very recently I'd have said without a shadow of a doubt and I'll get to that in a sec but I've developed a fairly just bloody minded point of view to this that I'm not going to stop until until it's done and a lot of that and some of the inspiration from that has come from conversations you've had with people where they've said that you know it wasn't just a knockback once. It was two years of getting people to write waivers and do all this. So actually, why should I? It doesn't affect my life other than it being annoying going round. It's not like I'm waiting to start a career. It's just waiting to see whether I can add this on. So I've just been doing this for years. I'm just going, okay, another one. Speak to you in a few months with the appeal letter. And it's gone round and round and going down the list of things because, you know,

waybetide, they could look at it and go, right, you've got these seven issues that we need to get resolved. Get them all resolved, written on a letter and send it back. No, send us a letter. Then we'll go to the next one on the list. Then the next one on the list. So kind of assuming that by the time this all happens, I'll be too old. Last time I tried to push through, I knew I was ineligible for some of the things that I would have been keen to have a go at, like, for example, The Royal Marines is, I'm too old.

Parachute Regiment, I'm too old. Irritatingly by, I think, about eight months from the point of entry. What if you weren't? Then I'd do it. What's the most valuable thing you have in your life? Yeah, I get it. I'm just curious. My family, everything.

Okay. So we'll get to that little quandary in a sec. So that's been going round. And then also then paused that because I then started thinking about police. I never really thought about it too much. But playing to that consideration, and it goes to exactly what you say, what's important and what is reasonable in terms of times away.

And that picking and choosing of what you're putting your hand up for and the realities of that. And also being realistic about what your actual sphere of impact or influence is in terms of what you're doing. So I also looked at the option of, we call it special constables in the UK because of our historical, unique nomenclature, essentially volunteer police officer. So same training, same qualification, same powers and responsibilities as full-time police officers. Only you just do it, you do it when you can. And you don't get paid for it. So there's a really small minimum monthly requirement in terms of what you do.

The expectation is you do it, do it when you can. And assume locally too, so you'd have an impact on. Yeah, right. Exactly. local community. You can specialize in most of the same areas bar firearms response and that's just the training thing.

It's just the sheer amount of obviously input to that. But yeah, so you can do that. And it placed that question as well of if things like, if the financial drivers behind something aren't there, then what is it that motivates you to do something? And I think once I'd started thinking about that and thought, well, actually, you can be something and do something

without it having to be tied to your source of income. And then you kind of think, well, you've got the service there. You're doing something frontline, changing things, actually changing the world around you and the place you care about. it's really important to me that my kids see good role models and recognise the importance of if you see things going on in life that you don't like whether that's how society is heading

or the bad bits around it you can either you know hide in your house and be upset about it or scared about it or intimidated by what's around the corner or you can do something about it. So put myself forward through that. Again, went through medical, you know, medical screening process. Pretty shockingly light touch physical fitness test for it.

And, you know, interviews, you know, interviews security background checks or all that kind of stuff. And when you know, I got an email. from the police force where I live saying, great, you're in. Same week, I got an email from the Army Medical Board to say, right, okay,

we've had your most recent appeal letter. What we need from you now to complete the process and I get you in is for you to fill out a three-month exercise diary, basically to show us

that all these sports-related injuries aren't stopping you from, again, fulfilling some pretty basic requirements. And we just need a sign letter from your doctor saying that you haven't relapsed with leukemia since you were discharged and evidence of PCR blood test

showing that you don't carry the hepatitis C virus. So after 20 years, I'll then get those two opportunities in the same week. So the question, then plays back to exactly what you're saying. It's what's most important. What does putting your hand up and doing something really mean?

What does it look like? The questions around impact versus that thing at the back of your mind of, you know, can you ever put it to bed unless you've done it? Then balanced with, and also there's other perks with the army, you know, like you get paid. to be in the reserves. You've got the opportunity to go and do stuff. You've got all that training that goes with it

and all the other benefits other than just doing it. But yeah, I wouldn't want to do it just for the sake of doing it to say, yeah, I put on the uniform when I'm a reservist and I do that. Whatever I do, it's got to mean something and it's got to have an impact.

So that might be just being there and trained up in case it's needed. And who knows over the next decade, whether it might be, whether it's going away to some far-flung place or whether it's on a doorstep, who knows. I'd certainly, if it did kick off properly, and there's all sorts of stuff in the news, particularly in the UK at the moment, about talks about the need to, you know, conscript people into a, you know, into a reserve army with the Russia, Ukraine stuff. I'm not hugely convinced that that that's, realistic. I think a lot of it is, you know, media messages and political stuff.

The military industrial complex is a real thing. Yeah. So they're all very real thoughts. Would I want to leave my family for six months? Absolutely not. If it was clearly the right thing to do, would I do it? I think I'd, yeah, I'd have to. I don't think there's a wrong or right answer. I think you have different variables presented to you depending on what phase of your life. Right. And these are the things that I'm playing through. Again, there's that question of what do you think it is and what is it really.

And also certain other things like, even if I did put my hand up, unless something was massively kicked off, would I, even if I put my hand up for deployment, would I, even if I put my hand up for deployment, would I, even get to go. You know, I'm at the, definitely the, the older side of, you know, a newly qualified private soldier. And although I certainly think I've still got it physically, you know, there are questions there. Life experience counts in that environment too.

Yeah. There's, there's also whether I, whether, because budgets are a real thing as well, they're going, well, actually, if we're picking down the list of these people, because with the reserves, if you go and deploy, it's not the same for your, kind of your duty time, but if you go off on a deployment,

essentially they'll pay you what you would be getting paid in your day job. And again, I certainly, I certainly know millionaire. But you're doing okay. But yeah, I don't think they go, right, what can this guy do? Well, take the guy that works at McDonald's over. Yeah. Okay. We'll let him guard a gate on a base.

Or we could pay a lieutenant colonel to do something with some decision-making powers and hopefully some intelligence. I would say grind these systems until they put the option in your hands. Well, that's exactly what I'm doing. So the answer is kind of due to come back. I also have to put it on hold because there's a conflict between the police and the Army Reserves because there's a percentage. I think it's only 10% of a police force can be also on the Army Reserve thing. Because I guess everyone gets called up.

yeah, you then lose everyone. So I'd then need to go on a waiting list for that. But yeah, essentially, and because I've made that decision, I am now in training, in police training, that I'm certainly going to answer that one and push that option. In reality, if the answer did come back and say, yes, I would then need to put that through the force

and see whether I fit into that capacity quota, all of that. In theory, in terms of reasonability, I work full-time, I do other things. I care very, very much about being around for my family and my kids. If I'm then going, hey, I'm doing the police side and, by the way, I'm doing this as well. So I don't think it could be an and. It would have to be an either-all. And I think I'm probably 90-10 in terms of a ratio, thinking that actually at this stage in life,

in terms of ticking all the boxes, in terms of serving and making a difference and being on a frontline position, and also with everything that's going on in the world at the moment, I mean, who knows, maybe everything does kick off. Certainly people are still off doing stuff and people are still paying the ultimate price for it. But it's not what it was in 2003

where you're going to necessarily go off and do all the stuff you think you are. So it could just be, you know, do I want to volunteer just for, I don't know, 10 years of Barrack's life and saying, hey, I got to do it and I put my name up, but never actually did anything.

I don't know. Or would I rather actually know that every, whatever I'm doing, every Friday and Saturday night, I'm actually out there doing the job, not just training for it, never doing it. There's part of the Army Reserves bit,

and this certainly isn't a comment on the Army Reserves as a whole, but in terms of the position that I think maybe I'd end up playing in it, is yes, being on that reserves list, but there's something that sort of almost feels like, you know, lopping, just kind of playing the part. If you kind of go, well, realistically, oh, no, I probably wouldn't want to deploy until

then, and then maybe they're not. My suggestion would be, don't think about that stuff. Push these systems until they give you the choice so you can put it to bed where people stop telling you you're not qualified. Well, that's exactly what I want to do. Ultimately, I push it, and then it's my choice. Correct. It's not their choice.

It's not the choice of some shit. hand I was dealt when I was five years old. It's my choice, my decision, and... And then what you do with it from there is what you do with it from there. But at least you're back in control. Right. And I think then it can then be the right decision for me and sit right in my head. And if you decide to not action that decision, you at least know you're no longer being told that you're not qualified, you're not capable. I think it would be easier if you were to go down that path to put it to bed for you. Yeah.

So it sounds like you're doing what you can and should be doing, man. Yeah. What, uh, we've been at this for almost three hours. I did not expect that. Where can people find, what would you, what resources would you point people towards? And again, this is obviously your own opinion here. And there's people can do a voluminous amount of research. But where would, if you wanted to take anything that could come from this podcast, any attention

or awareness, what would you? push it towards. Pay attention to the news on the 20th of May. Until they push it until like August. There's a website for the public inquiry that is there now that is infectedbloodinquiry.org. And I'll add it to the show notes as well. Thank you. You can email that to me. All the, you know, interim reports are there. All the all the evidence submitted is there. People can dive into, no doubt,

a whole ton of stuff that either I haven't mentioned or gone into enough detail or screwed up some of the detail on. It's all there. It's awareness. And then from then, I guess what would be good?

Because with podcasts, people might pick this up at any time, I guess. Yeah, you never know. And I hope that's the case because what I think would be the worst outcome is that this is big news on the 20th of May and on the 21st of May everyone's moved on to something else. Yeah. This has got to, if lessons are going to be learned from it, it's got to, you know, it's got to keep going and going.

Well, it has to hurt to people or systems involved in some regard for them to change them. Yeah. And obviously we can't control, you know, on September 10th, 2001. I'm sure whatever was leading the news that day probably wasn't trending the next. So there's some level, you know, absent large terrorist event or catastrophe, I feel like the only way systems like this change,

it just shocks me this goes all the way back to the 60s and now in, you know, almost the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, it is just now coming to a head. Absent it stinging and, I mean, hurting, nothing's going to change. Yeah. So, yeah. I know you, you're going to allow me to pick your surname for this episode and an attempt to be less front-facing.

I was thinking Cockburn would be a good last name. Sounds excellent. Fuck yes. Anything else you want to close out with, Mr. Cockburn? Completely unrelated, but maybe on a slightly happier night. And maybe this is the bit that I will do that's completely self-serving. But there are three other guys that will kill me if I don't. I also play in a band.

And if I don't give them a shout out and send people to our Instagram to go and have a listen, they will kill me. Is it the Cockburns? Maybe we should change the name. It is the truth-seeking missiles. Okay. That's not bad. It's tough on a T-shirt.

But okay. What kind of music do you guys play? PSM works. Yeah It's indie rock It's a blend We're all into different things Influences from

Bowie through Chili Peppers to muse To what instrument do you play Bass Okay do you sing it all too Do backing Okay Do backing

It's all original stuff So Costumes Feather beaas Ascotts Do you know what Our singer is very artistically minded.

I am not. Okay. And he pushes us into uncomfortable positions. He would have us doing all sorts of shit. Okay. And does.

But, what is the handle for truth-seeking missiles on Instagram? It is the truth-seeking missiles. Okay. All right. That's not a bad ending point.

Mr. Cockburn can be seen at the truth-seeking missiles. Fucking pay attention to what your government is doing. may you think thank you yeah thank you man