Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #262 If This Man Can Change, Anyone Can - Armed Robber to Record Breaking Athlete: John McAvoy (Re-release)

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

CAUTION ADVISED: this podcast contains swearing.   Is there a change you’d like to make in your life? Something you’re desperate to overcome, but can’t see how? Or a goal you’re scared to aim for, because it feels too far off? My guest on this week’s podcast might just convince you to have a go. He’s John McAvoy, endurance athlete extraordinaire, author and the man with one of the most inspirational stories I have ever heard.   John was born into a notorious crime family and has served a total of 10 years in some of the UK’s highest security prisons, for armed robbery. He was raised into a life of organised crime and, as a teenager, it was the only career path he could see for himself. In fact, he bought his first gun at the age of 16 and very quickly became one of the UK’s most wanted men. How did he go from serving two life sentences to breaking British and World sporting records and giving talks to schoolchildren? From violent criminal to opinion leader, invited to 10 Downing Street for his views on the justice system? You’ll have to listen and find out.   Not only is every part of John’s story worthy of a Hollywood movie script, the lessons and life advice he shares are relevant to each and every one of us. Whether you’re interested in his rowing and Ironman success, how he transformed his moral code or how he overcame adversity, this really is a compelling conversation. I know you’re going to be as gripped by John as I was. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.leafyard.com/livemore Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/262 Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

I was as bad as what you could get, like literally I was in the end, I was at the end of the road you could not go anywhere else from where I was, I was sitting in a double category A high security unit in a prison, told that I would never change, it was impossible so if I've managed to do this, anyone can, anyone can. Hi, my name is Romgan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. So this is the fifth conversation I've chosen to put out as part of this special weekend re-release series that I have to say is proven to be really, really popular with new listeners and old listeners alike. Now, you may have heard me say

over the past few weeks that there are a lot of new listeners coming to this show at the moment because of all the publicity surrounding the release of my new book, Happy Minds, Happy Life. And so, for new listeners, I really wanted to be able to showcase what this podcast is all about and the variety of different topics I try to cover each week. Having said that, I'm also getting inundated with messages from long-time listeners who are really enjoying re-listening to some of the classic episodes from the archive. Now, today's conversation is definitely an all-time classic. And it's with someone who I've spoken to on this podcast on three separate occasions so far. And I know there will be more conversations in the future

as we have become very, very good friends. My guest is John McAvoy. And I can pretty much guarantee that his life story is one of the most inspirational that you will ever hear. John was born into one of Britain's most well-known crime families and has served a total of 10 years in some of the UK's highest security prisons for armed robbery. He was actually raised into a life of organised crime and as a teenager, this was the only career path that he could see for himself. In fact, he bought his first gun at the age of 16 and very quickly became one of the UK's most wanted men. So how did John go from serving two life sentences to breaking British and world sporting records, giving talks to school children and being invited to 10 Downing Streets for his views on the justice system?

Well, in today's incredible conversation, you are about to find out. Not only is every part of John's story worthy of a Hollywood movie script, the lessons and life advice that he shares are relevant to each and every one of us. Whether you're interested in his rowing and Iron Man success, how he transformed his moral codes, how he overcame adversity, or how he stayed consistent, I think you are going to find this a compelling conversation. Yes, this is a long episode, but it is well worth your time. No matter where you currently are in your life, if you are looking for some inspiration, you have definitely come to the right place. This is a powerful conversation. I hope you enjoy listening. And now here's my conversation with Mr. John McAvoy.

So John, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me on. I have been so looking forward to this conversation. It's been, how long have we been trying to get this set up? Over a year. Over a year? Yeah, over a year. Over a year.

We finally managed to do it. Thanks for driving up. I think your story is so incredible and inspirational. It's pretty hard to know where to start. So I guess we should probably start with how your drive up was. I wasn't expecting that. My drive up wasn't too bad to be honest. I drove from London up to Derby and I stayed at Derby last night at my friend's house and I drove from Derby here this morning stopping at the gym on the way out to train. Do you train quite a lot now? Yeah I train

seven days a week. I've got quite a big block of training at the moment because i'm racing next weekend at the red bull time lapse race which is a 25 hour 6k loop do as many loops as you can on your bike in that time yeah so i'm in the last big block of training before that race next saturday so how many loops do you have to do well it's it's literally 25 hours because it's the equinox it's just when the clocks go back and it's it's how many times you can cycle around that that 6k loop in 25 hours and you get a power hour so at i think 12 o'clock at night they let you go into a mini loop and everything you do on that mini loop is double the laps it's like a computer game yeah it is it is there's i think there's 1000 people taking part in a relay

in relays um and there's 20 of us doing it as solo riders so just on your own so i i have to sort of work out the strategy and what i'm going to use to cycle for that 25 hours i mean it sounds to me as though of course that's about fitness but it seems to be more about mental strength oh totally uh yes 100% now you i i think in a lot of aspects of of what I do today um I think that's probably why I went across into endurance sport in the first place because I think like 80% of its physicality um or should I say yes physicality is hot in the context of the training and getting there but then when you do a sport like Ironman the psychological psychological element of the race is far greater than the physicality of you being strong, because at a point your body will start screaming for you to slow down.

And you've got so much time to process what you're doing. So for instance, riding a bike for 25 hours, I've got so much time to analyze why I'm doing it. It becomes past physicality. Like it's so long that it's not just about being really quick because your mind, if your mind gives up and cracks, that then obviously it doesn't matter how strong you are physically, you will stop or you'll slow down. Yeah, it's interesting hearing you say that in the context of your story

and your life journey is incredible because you appear to be someone to me who's got an incredible amount of mental strength and you know have you ever cracked has your mind ever cracked to the point where you couldn't go on um no not no no it hasn't um it's weird like because i don't know like environment as a kid and growing up and situations I believe obviously experience dictates a lot of of who you become as an adult from your childhood um like I often say this about myself I don't see myself as being unique in any which way like

that's how I've always been um so so what I do today for, the sport I do and how I live my life, I've always been like that with the mindset. But what can happen if you apply that mindset into something very negative, how detrimental it could be. Because how I am today is how I've always been in certain regards. but years ago that same mindset was applied in something very negative and it was then very destructive to how I led my life and and the sort of consequences of that behavior and what that obviously led me to being in prison for 10 years of my life that's incredible to think that the same mindset that can lead you to incredible athletic success is the same mindset that when applied to different choices and different ideologies can lead to you being in a prison cell. And that's quite fascinating for me. Well, I could tell you a very interesting story once. So a really good friend of mine went to

London 2012 Olympics and he's a retired athlete now. He won a silver medal. He was a world champion in rowing and he rode at the same rowing me and we were we were running along every day so he was training for the marathon and and i remember as we were running along we was we was having this sort of discussion about environment growing up and i was trying to explain to him the conversations that me and him were having that day i was having those conversations in a high security prison unit with people that were in there for organized crime but as young people that they had that exposure to crime and and that way of life he was exposed to sport um rowing but the mindset was exactly the same the world to win the wanting to be successful the wanting to achieve something the wanting to leave a legacy

those characteristics were exactly the same they were they were exactly the same as what both groups of people had but it was how this group of people applied it into crime and it become detrimental to their lives and the impact that had on society by their childhood and by the the lack of opportunity to do something else and have any awareness that that mindset what you could potentially do with that if it was applied into something else. So it comes back to what I just said a minute ago. It's like when I was growing up as a kid, I strongly believed this. If I would have had exposure to Richard Branson,

or someone that was involved in business or an athlete, my life journey would have been completely different. But when I was a young boy, my mindset and my exposure was directed towards criminality. And everyone that I saw that was like me, and they were like me, like my stepdad, when I was growing up as a kid, he was driven. He was very focused.

He spent 16 years in prison for armed robbery, had five acquittals at the Old Bailey. But he was similar to me. I saw similarities in these people and they made that life and I attributed success to be money. It become very obtainable. It was a road in which to get it. And what I deemed as being successful at that point in my life, which was having lots of money, they all had lots of money. So it become very tangible and I could touch it and it was real. And they showed me a direct path that that mindset that I had, how I could then go and obtain that success. Yeah. So in some ways it's a dedication to excellence. It's just depends on what your definition of excellence is, right? And if you're

driven by money and around you, you're growing up where criminal activity is leading people to having money and having all the, you know, the material success in life, of course, you're going to apply that mindset to that. So for a lot of people listening to this, they may not be familiar with your story, John, and the fact that you were in prison for 10 years, did you say? Yes. Yeah. So maybe you could walk us through that. I mean, what happens? What was your childhood like? How was it that you ended up with such a strong mindset in a prison cell so I will have to probably go all the way back to before I was even born so my real dad died of a

massive heart attack at 38 years old he went to bed one night and my mum's eight months pregnant with me and he never woke up um he was undiagnosed, didn't realize he had a heart condition, passed away. So I get born into the world. I had my dad's name, John. And I had what you could class as quite a relatively loving childhood. Christmases were happy for me. My mom and my sister brought me up. And we had this big extended family.

My mom had lots of sisters so that my aunties my cousins and and I was a happy child I was a really happy child I was really well loved um I have amazing memories of my childhood and when I started going to primary school um to me not having a dad didn't I didn't know I was missing anything because I didn't have a dad because it was just normal because there was no man in our lives as a kid and I and I remember the children at primary school used to tease me they say like where's your dad and obviously I didn't know my dad was and I never I remember as a little boy I went home and I asked my mum and my mum explained to me that my dad had died and obviously being a little quick kid and even as a man I'm very

acquisitive I always like to understand stuff I've always had that mindset as a kid um which we can go on how that played out later on in my life and my mum explained to me my dad had died obviously my question about what does that mean my mum explained that he's gone to heaven um then I made a connection from a very young age that my life was limited like I wouldn't be alive ever and I made this connection as young as one day I would not live and something ignited in me as a kid where I didn't want to be normal in the context of I wanted to achieve something in my life I didn't want to be average um and I and it had this overwhelming effect on me and my mum um used to take me to museums and like the HMS Belfast on the Thames like London Dungeons Tower London the British War Museum stuff and and I just used to love

learning about history and she used to get me these magazines every month called Discovery and in Discovery booklets used to get puzzles and used to like it'd be about Henry VIII from Napoleon and you'd learn about history as you did. And I was a little boy. And I can remember thinking like, these men and women were on earth before I was born and hundreds of years. And I was in this, my house in Crystal Palace Park Road in London, and I'm reading about them and what they had done.

And I was so young, I didn't understand it was legacy, but they had achieved something in life where I was now reading about them it was legacy but they had achieved something in life where I was now reading about them hundreds of years after they died and then that then sparked something in me that that I wanted that when I was older like I wanted to achieve something in my life that was significant and I don't know how this sort of happened but I just then morphed into this obsession with British Telecom and I used to sit there and love watching the adverts on TV. And,

and again, I was, I was a young boy and I'll never forget that we'd drive in my mom's car and I'd be in the back or the passenger seat. And I look out the window and every corner had a BT phone box. And then when I'd go around to my auntie's and uncle's houses, they had a complete monopoly on the telephone communication system. And everyone had a BT landline. And I remember like I'd run around and there would be a BT phone in the bedroom in the

living room and I said to my uncle one day I said how much money does British Telecom make and he said they make billions of pounds a year and then from that moment my dream when I got older was to own British Telecom and I was convinced that's what I was gonna do if anyone said to me what do you want to be when you're older? And I said, I want to own British Telecom. The reason I'm trying to, I'm explaining this to you now is because even from a little boy, I was like eight years old, I was so driven to do something with my life. I wanted to achieve something. And then you can only class as what happened next was like this perfect storm of this man coming to my life when I was eight years old. I didn't know who he was. He come into our house in Crystal Pass Park Road and men never

really used to come around my mum's house other than my uncle's. And he walked in and he was immaculately dressed. I'll never forget black hair, really white teeth, massive gold watch on his wrist, really clean black shoes. And I was just, I remember I was standing in the hallway and my mum had already come in and I was just in awe of this man, I was in awe of him. And he went into the living room and he asked me to go and make him a cup of tea. And I went into the kitchen and this little boy, I made him this cup of tea and I went back in. I was watching my mum have dialogue with my sister. And then as

he was leaving he gave me a 20 pound note and obviously I was a young boy it was the first time an adult never given me paper money and I was just in awe of this 20 pound note and I remember like obviously as a kid I'm thinking about going to Woolworths and spending on sweets and he left and then I asked my mum who he was and my mum mum explained to me that was her ex-husband. So before my mum married my dad, when she was growing up as a kid in South London, they lived with each other on the same council estate, both Irish Catholics. Families were really close. They grew up as basically kids, like babies.

And when they were 16, my mum got married to him. When my mum was 18, she fell pregnant with my sister, which was my half sister really, but I didn't see her like that. And that was her biological dad. And he was a bit hard for me to understand because I was so young, but he started coming around, taking my sister out, taking me out. He didn't have a son. I didn't have a dad. He's obviously got this warmth to me. He knows my real dad's dead. So he knows my mum's obviously struggled to bring me up. He started taking me out with my sister, stops taking my sister out, continues to keep taking me out. Then I'm nine, then I'm 10, then I'm 11. We're going out to restaurants. We're going out to bars.

He's all the trappings of wealth. He always used to tell me that when he was 21 years old, he was a multimillionaire. He had Mercedes, Porsches. He used to tell me he had an apartment on the Champs-Élysées in France, in Paris. He started taking me out to these restaurants, and there would be all these men. They were all his friends.

They were all very similar to him, always talking about money, always talking about money. Always talking about money. And my granddad passed away when I was 12. And when my granddad passed away, me and my mom and my aunties were clearing out my granddad's flat. And there was a big bundle of newspaper clippings in an envelope that my granddad had saved in a drawer. And I opened up the drawer, took this bundle of newspaper clippings, looked at them. And it was like headlines of the Sun newspaper, the bundle of newspaper clippings, looked at them. And it was like headlines of the Sun newspaper, the news of the world. And that man, Billy, my mum's ex-husband,

was one of the most prolific armed robbers in the United Kingdom. He had five acquittals at the Old Bailey. The police tried to kill him twice. They shot him twice. And when I met him, when I was eight years old, he'd literally just been released from serving a 16-year prison sentence for armed robbery. And you didn't know any of this? I didn't know any of this to the time. So he never used to talk to me about prison whatsoever up to that point.

So you just found out when you were looking through these clippings? Yes. And then as a 12-year-old, you connect the dots up. So the Porsche 911s and the Mercedes-Benz and this that the other like you you start connecting it up and you you probably start to isomize that all the money that he had now today and all the men that we were going out with his friends were all engaged in that behavior then I had the awareness of that's what was happening so how old were you then at that point I was 12 so you're 12 so for four years you've become very close I'm guessing yeah yeah

very very close like I saw him like he was my dad I treated him like like I loved him um he looked after me Christmas like you like he was he become like my father he didn't live with us but he he was he was he was in my mum's life because of my sister. So he used to always come round and pick my sister up and then start picking me up. Presumably your mum knew what he was up to or his lifestyle. Yeah, my mum knew probably what his previous lifestyle. I don't think my mum necessarily knew what he was getting up to because they didn't live with each other.

So he wasn't in a relationship. So they were very separated. Like my mum was a florist that went to work every day. And I often say this about my mum's situation with this in regards to this situation because my mum married him when they were little kids yeah and they grew up together and and i my mum told me this month like he was he was normal like in regards of, he was a painter decorator. And when he was 16 years old, his father got murdered in front of him. And my mum always said to me, when I got older, that was the trigger. And something inside him changed.

And then he ended up basically going off onto this path of becoming one of Britain's most wanted men and becoming one of the most high profile armed robbers in the United Kingdom. From that turning point of watching his dad get murdered in front of him when he was 16 years old. I mean, it's fascinating to hear how things that happen to us at various points in our life, it can completely shape us. It can change our viewpoint. It can change our perception of the world.

You know, had he not seen his dad be shot who knows what he would have been doing right yeah and it's and then and that yeah and then wanting that happening with him he started hanging out with the wrong groups of people that then showed him a different life um and and and basically schooled him. And then that then played itself out within my relationship with him. When I then started making that decision that that was the life I was going to choose, he started, and he used to reference it to me, like when he got taught how to engage in that lifestyle for being a young man, that then when I made the decision that I wanted to do it,

he then started becoming the person that schooled him. He started becoming to school me in the regards of, and again, it sounds, it feels very weird talking about this today because obviously my life's so far removed from that, what it was once before in the past. But like the facts of like, you never talk in your house

and you never talk in cars because the police can bug them. And you start hearing this stuff when you're 13, 14 years old, teaching me how to drive lorries, she teaching me out learning teaching me how to drive uh counter surveillance you learn all this stuff yeah like growing up like i started learning it like um and and one of the memories that really sticks with me when i was a young boy most teenagers you drink alcohol when you're growing up you're on that part you're learning about yourself and you're hanging out your friends and and i remember one day me and

my friends were in the park we've we've managed to get some cider um got drunk i've gone home i'm being sick and i the cider was in my school backpack and my school backpack was left in the bush next to where we lived in this like fields. And some old lady walking a dog, found the backpack, opened it up, all alcohol. She's gone down to the local police station. She's dropped the bag off. Then the police station opened it up, found my report card, phoned up my school,

got my house number. The police officers then phoned my mum up, said, your son has left the bag down here. He's got alcohol in it. Obviously they know I'm young. Can you bring your son down? And obviously, probably want to scare him a bit and not drink. So my mum takes me down to the police station,

sit in the room with the police officer. And the policeman says to me, who's you with? And I told him. I didn't think nothing more of it. Like, I'm 13 years old. Like, I just told him. I said, I was with my friends from school. I go home. Stepdad comes around. Like I'm 13 years old. Like I just told him, I said, I was with my friends from school. I go home.

Stepdad comes around like he did every now and again, every other week and stuff. And he found out that I had told the policeman about my friend. And he wasn't mad the fact that I was drinking alcohol in the park. He was mad because I told the policeman about my friend. And I'll never forget, he said, you said you never ever ever inform on your friends and and and that had a really again had a massive impact on my psychology um about loyalty my relationships towards people um he used to say to me as a kid never trust women he said to me all the time like pillow he used to call it pillow talk

like because you're susceptible to you tell a woman something you cheat on her or you get divorced and the next thing you know she's standing up in court testifying against you and i'm a young boy and you're absorbing all this stuff as a young kid growing up and it started that it starts to have quite a big impact on your perception of the world and what people are in your perception of loyalty um to other human beings that becomes your normal, right? Yes. That's what you know to be the norm and you're getting educated by your stepfather.

So this is what you think. You think this is the way to behave and this is the way to act. At 12, when you found out about how your stepfather was probably getting his money, do you remember a thought process at that time? Do you remember thinking, should I talk to someone about this? Should I have a chat with my mom? You know, or was it just too,

was it too overwhelming? I mean, can you remember what went through your head? I think at that age, it's very exciting. It's very cowboys and Indians. And then you're around these men, because bear in mind, this isn't just him now, it's these other men, that they're living their lives like a million miles an hour. They've got a fragrant disregard for law. Regulations law doesn't apply to them. So

if you're a teenage boy and you're around men that are 30, 40, 50 years old, and they've got that outlook on life and they're all incredibly wealthy and they've all got big houses and they've all got nice cars and they do what they want when they want and no one tells them what to do when to do it um they've they've completely taken themselves out of society like it's intoxicating yeah no it is as a young boy and it was like it generally was again like looking back on it i didn't have the awareness then to see and obviously i didn't have the maturity how you can get sucked into that to that mindset as a kid because i didn't have the maturity how you can get sucked into that to that mindset as a kid because i didn't have the maturity and i didn't see anything else um and this is what this is why

i'm so passionate about today like i genuinely understand when young people make these poor life choices why how where their minds at when they make it so it doesn't matter how driven you are how ambitious you are when you get older you want to do these amazing things own british telecom or you only know what you know and suddenly if your life that lens gets bought in and everyone else outside that world's abnormal yeah everyone else is a normal like your life these people are normal and everyone else is abnormal and and again i can tell you a story one day and again it had a profound impact on me when we was driving through an area of kent and my stepdad had this pol Porsche 911 and it was a limited

edition car. There was, there was 200 of them at that point in this country. And he, and he, and he was telling me this and we're driving along, we stop at a set of traffic lights and I'm sitting in the passenger seat, this Porsche. And, you know, he said to me, look out the window. And I looked out and he said, these people like sheep. And I didn't know what he meant. And I was, what do you mean the sheep? And he said, they're all slaves to the system. And he said, the system takes from them and we take from the system. And again, it really did have a powerful impact on me because then what then happened when I started going to school, my teachers become the system and they become my authority.

And how unfair the system was, like these people went to work every day, they paid tax and the system above them was corrupt. And these people did what they wanted when they wanted. And again, as a kid, when I started going back to school, I was like looking at my teachers and thinking you're part of the system or you're part of the state. And then as much as I love learning, which I did, like i love history i love geography i love i was inquisitive suddenly i end up hating my teachers um and then i started then completely disregarding my education completely started truing it from school um i had no interest in it because to me then it was like i'm not going to engage with the system like

getting an a in english or maths isn't going to get me what i want in life. So it was just ingrained in you that you don't engage with the system. You don't play by the rules of the system. The system is the enemy. Yeah. The system is the enemy. It doesn't matter who that is, whether it's the police officer, the school,

it doesn't matter. Anyone of official authorities aware is someone not to engage with. Yes. And you, and your life becomes dictated to by your set of, your moral compass. So like when I was growing up, it was instilled like I couldn't even, I couldn't even comprehend ever, ever, ever

lowering a finger on a woman. Like couldn't even comprehend it. Like that was a big no-no. Doing anything towards people that went to work every day. Big no-no. Burgling someone's house. Big no-no. Selling heroin or crack coke. A big no-no.glary in someone's house big no-no selling selling heroin or crack

coke a big no-no so you're governed by your own sense of morality but not what society tells you what's right and what the lawmakers tell you what's right and wrong on one level it's empowering to think well society's not going to tell me how to live my life right you know it's interesting that you wouldn't obviously you're taught not to touch women not to harm women not to harm people who go to work you know not to burgle people's houses but you can burgle a bank yes because the bank's the system yes yes so even within that sort of i guess criminal activity there's a code yeah there's a code of conduct which you're expected to abide by yeah 100% and and and that was and that sort of that that mindset even when you go and go to prison um

you you get treated differently because of this uh when when I went to prison like the the prison officers would treat people that they class as serious criminals like people that were involved in serious and organized crime completely different to how they would treat common criminals that were stolen or stolen someone's car or burgled an old lady's house. So there was a hierarchy. So within crime, with the people that I was associating with as a young man and as a man, were the top end of the hierarchy. So then when you then went to prison, you was then completely treated completely different to other prisoners. That's fascinating.

So just expand on that a little bit. So are you saying that you got preferential treatments in prison compared to people who did lesser crimes? I don't know. Yeah, 100%. Like 100%. So prison officers would treat you completely different to how they would treat normal,

what they would class as normal prisoners. And why is that? Is that a fear of retribution? No, it was respect. They respected you. And again, this is, so I remember when I went to prison when I was 18 years old, first time I ever got arrested, right?

Like properly. So forget about when I was a kid with a bag at school with a cider. But as an adult, 18, I'll say an adult when I was a kid with a bag at school with the cider. But as an adult, 18 or so, an adult, I was a teenager, go to prison. And because of police intelligence, because of my stepfather and all the people that they saw that I was hanging out with when I was under a police surveillance operation, when I go to prison, if you're under the age of 21 years old, you can't be kept with adults over 21 in prison

in this country you're classed as a young offender so you go to like a young offenders institution where it's like between the ages of 18 to 21 um but because the police believed that I had the means to escape from lawful custody because my stepdad and all of his friends most of them have tried to escape over the years and people I've been seeing with, I had to then be what they defined as being a category A prisoner, which was the highest level of security you could put a prisoner on in this country.

The problem then was there was nowhere in a young offender's prison estate where they could put a category A prisoner because it was so rare. So when that happened, they had to then put me in an adult prison because I was too high security to be kept with young offenders. So I go to this adult prison, I'm 18 years old, I'm in a segregation unit. When they moved me there, they explained to me what's

happened. They said, you're category A, this is what's happening. We can't put you in a young offender's institution. You're going to go up on a wing or you're going to cause trouble because you're a young man. And normally what you tend to find in prison the younger people because of testosterone the inability to be able to control their tempers and stuff they're more wild in prison far more hot they're far more harder to contain um they cause more issues to the prison service so they were worried i'm going to go into this prison wing um and i'm going to start causing those trouble of all these grown men that have been in there for years so i said i wasn't saying i'll go on there um because again i was taught how to conduct myself like i didn't want to show any weakness um so i didn't show any fear so when i get when i'm in that when i'm in that

situation um people often say well how did you feel or not but i had no respect for the system so when i go in there i showed it no respect i didn't i didn't fear it um it was already normalized to me in regards of like i'd heard men talk about what prison was like and stuff so when i go into this wing and straight off the bat prison officers are like lavishing praise on me because they're like oh you must be really serious like you must know some really serious people because you're so young and you're on this high level security and then suddenly all these men that are in on that wing and i'll never forget it like there was guys in there that were committed to drug trafficking and armed robbery and like serious serious criminals and they're lavishing this praise onto me as a young man saying oh you must

have a lot of bottle like if you're in this situation you're on this level security at such a young age like you must be really game like meaning i was i would do a lot of stuff um and and then that starts playing into the psychology and you you then you're getting you're getting praise off people as a young man yeah um it then it forms your identity even more and it reinforces that this is my life like not prison but this is my life these are the people that i look up to these are my peers and people that i respect and i feel embarrassed today saying this to you because it did it like look at when i put myself back in that situation how i used to idolize some of these men that now i'm saying when i'm growing up it meant a lot to have that

respect shown of them that now when i look back i find it embarrassing to say as a young person i respected those people and and i crave their admiration but in many ways i mean it's fascinating to hear you say that because in many ways, your story is really giving an insight to many, including myself, as to what it's like for some people in terms of your norm is your norm, right? It doesn't matter what someone else's norm is, that's your norm. I mean, what do young men crave? You want acceptance. You want, you know, to be seen as something, you know, people are lavishing praise on you. If you're, you know, to be seen as something, you know, people are lavishing praise on you. If you're, you know, if you didn't, you know, obviously your father wasn't there. So this is a new male figure in your life who is someone to, you know, idolize, I guess,

someone to look up to. It's, of course you're going to end up. So it's, you know, yes, I guess it's interesting to hear you say it's embarrassing now reflecting back, especially given the changes that have taken place in your life. But in many ways, how can people blame you for doing that? Do you know what I mean? In many ways, how could you have gone any other way?

And again, I wholeheartedly accept full responsibility for every decision I've ever made in my life, good and bad. wholeheartedly accept full responsibility for every decision I've ever made in my life, good and bad. No one ever forced me into doing anything I ever did. I chose to do it. What I did wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. They were poor life decisions based on what I thought was right at that moment in time. But like you've said, you only know what you know. And for the people listening to this today some people might listen to it and might not like me and but i'll be honest with you and and that was how that was what my life was like and and i everyone that i saw outside

of that world was abnormal to me and i couldn't fathom it i couldn't fathom how other people functioned in that system that i thought was so unfair. And it wasn't like, we wasn't robbing hoods and I didn't see myself as such a person because inherently doing what we did or what I did is incredibly selfish. And it's all about you. And it's all about you being successful and you achieving what you want to do. And I, and cause again, you don't, my, my, my cop-out mechanism years ago was I've never hurt no one. Never physically hurt no one. No, I've never killed anyone.

I've never done anything like that. But the psychological damage you do to people can be far greater than the physical damage. And that took me years. Honestly, it took me to where I went for that moment of change that you start in looking at your life and how destructive that is to other people because you just feel like well i've not actually hurt no one and i remember i used to sit there with psychologists and we'd sit there and and and that's your cop-out like well i've not i've not i've not actually had a victim so as part of your and that you're the people who were engaging the activity with you as part of your moral code we don't hurt people we don't harm people so you were actually living up to that moral code you're like well look yeah we're taking money from the

system but we're not hurting anyone but but but physically we're not physically but the person that still has to do that role in which to take that money into a bank or to do that person that person you start seeing them as an extension of the system and they're not yeah they're going to work but that's that's your cop-out and i know i'll never forget i was in a i was in a maximum security prison um in 2000 and it was like 2007 2008 um called full sutton which is one of my it is the highest security prison in in the country and i was on a victim awareness course and there was this old lady that come in um the chaplaincy was running victim awareness. Yeah. And I'll never forget,

her name was called June and her husband, or they basically, over Christmas, their house was burglarized. The burglar stole all of their, a lot of their Christmas presents and her husband's insulin and it caused a massive issue over Christmas for them

and it destroyed, it ruined their Christmas. So I'm sitting there, there's about four or five other people in the room with us and and they were all convicted of serious events it's like these some of these men were like multi-millionaire drug traffickers right and we've all got our arm around june because i'm saying what a scumbag but i couldn't make the association between me and that person yeah because i was on june side and and that's how warped yeah your mindset is like like one of the guys said if i ever seen him do that i would have beat him up if i'd have seen

him come around your house and i would have pulled him out and we all felt so sorry for june because i she was she was human do you know i mean like she was she was an old lady of someone i like i was brought up to respect she was a female and and then i remember like it's bizarre how when i look back yeah it's completely different set of rules and then on the flip, it's bizarre how, when I look back on it. It's a different set of rules, right? Yeah, it's a completely different set of rules. And then on the flip side, I sit with a psychologist writing my sentence plan and we're talking about victims

and you say, well, not really, I've not got none. And they're like, but you have. And again, when I went through the process of really changing, that then you start analysing your life and the destructive nature of what i've done and and it's and i and i think inherently subconsciously that's why i think that's why i'm so driven to make as much change as i can today because it's something inside me

like i look back at my life and and like sometimes today like people lord me as being an inspiration and i'm not like i'm not i'm i'm doing i'm probably making up for all the wrong i've done in my life and that then that drives me today because it's it's probably an inherent subconscious guilt i've got from the stuff i've done in my past johnny i've heard you speak before um and you must have especially where your life is today and we're going to get to all of that um you know you must have, especially where your life is today, and we're going to get to all of that. You know, you must have shared various aspects of your story many times on many interviews. But I still feel for me, there's a real intensity.

There's a real, almost shaking as you're telling the story. And I want, it's a real, there's real authenticity in the way you're telling it there's real emotion and I get the impression from you know we're sitting what two feet away from each other it feels very much like you're still affected by that you're still do you feel you're still coming to terms with some of the things that have happened yeah yeah because obviously my I say obviously it isn't obvious if you didn't know me but where my life's gone to such a dramatic u-turn um and what i'm doing today like as it as driven as i still am and the inherent characteristics that i've still got my outlook on life's changed so if if i could define, I was probably someone of the mindset like Donald Trump years ago.

And now I've gone the complete opposite way around to where I'm at today in my life. And now I perceive the world much more liberal. So then obviously when you've got that mindset now, it's challenging when you look back to what you was as I was a man. So I was a grown adult. I was like 25, 26 years old. I was sitting in maximum security prisons. The way I perceive life, like I feel ashamed. I used to see life through the lens, like a hierarchy.

People were weaker than others and people were stronger than others. And like being in prison, we used to sit there in prison and i remember having these conversations with people i can't even dream about this now because my life i see life so differently but like when when i would be in prison and like we we would think that society we were the higher part of society in regards of like the system fears us so much it has to take us out of society because we take from it and i look at this now and i don't see anyone being any different and i mean that i genuinely mean it like i i wouldn't treat the queen of england any different to how i treat a kid

that was growing up in a council estate or a kid that was sitting in a young offenders institution to having a license for murder i would treat them equally as the same that we're all equal as human beings and i don't see anyone any different and so when I then can take myself back to that point in my life, when I thought like that, it does make me feel ashamed that I used to think like that. And that's probably why I'm so passionate today. We're trying to reiterate the message that I do, that we are all equal as people and everyone should be given an equal opportunity in life to have success because we're no different from each other. We're all one person. We we're human beings we're on the planet at the same time um and i and i feel again i don't really i don't often sit there and really think about it

like this but as we're talking about now it that is probably one of the big reasons why um i'm so passionate about doing what i'm doing today and and i can remember like, when my life changed and I come out of prison, I was so determined to make up for my past. I'd say yes to everything, right? So if a school wanted me to go in, yes, I'll do it. If a charity wanted me to go in, yes, I'll do it. And I said, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything. And I dug myself into this massive hole, right? I got ill. I kept getting sick and cold. I over-trained. I was trained as a full-time athlete,

but I felt so obliged and obligated to be known as this different person that I was a good guy, that I wasn't that scumbag that spent all these years in prison, that it was a detriment to my own health. And that was how passionate I was about when I come out, about making up for all the wrong that I'd done in my life. And it was, I remember I used to say yes to everything. And my really close friend, Terry, said like,

you cannot keep doing it. Like you can't keep driving across the country, driving 1,000, 1,500 miles a month, going to all these community centers, doing all these talks every single day because you're going to end up making yourself really sick. And even if you crack, even you're no good to anyone,

you have to look after yourself physically and mentally. But because you're so determined, so driven by my, my wrong past, I wanted to close a chapter on that. And I didn't want to be defined by that. I wanted to be defined as the person I am today. But I mean,

and that in itself is so relevant to every single one of us. Just because you made certain decisions, whatever those decisions are, it doesn't need to define you for the rest of your life. You know, we have the opportunity to change. All of us do, no matter where we think we currently are. Even, I guess, if your situation seems insurmountable, I think change is always available to us. And I guess, you know, there's so much to your story, but, you know, I think I'm remembering right, it's that you were once, I think, were you given two life sentences?

And you thought that was, I don't know, does that mean you thought you were going in for life? So when- And what were you doing? What did you get put in for at that point? So when I was, like I said earlier on, when I was in prison when I was 18, I got a five-year custodial sentence.

I served two and a half years of it. I come out, I was 100 times worse than the man that was locked up. Come out, wanted even more money. To me, change, rehabilitation was weakness. So I can remember as a young boy growing up, stepdad, they'd be casually having conversations about someone who went to prison that come out.

They didn't perceive it as changing. They saw it as a person being broken. The system had broken them. So my mindset when I was in prison the first time was they will not break me. Like I'll come out and I will not change and I will be even worse and I want to make even more money. So I come out, continue to commit crime. The police started watching me.

I was under surveillance after a couple of days of being out of prison. So I made a decision. I thought if I lived in this country, the United Kingdom, I was probably going to end up going back to prison. So I made a decision to go abroad, which I did. I went out to Holland and I went to Spain because I had friends friends and family there come back to the United Kingdom after like a year briefly it was only a week for a birthday party I come back and I end up meeting up with one of my stepdad's best friends he basically asked me if I wanted to commit a conspiracy to commit a robbery I said yes greed overcome me again initially I said, yes. Greed overcome me again. Initially, I said no.

But you said no initially. I said no initially. Why did you say no? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains

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keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Because to me, the risk and reward didn't work out. It was like, I didn't, I looked at it and I was like, I didn't like being in the United Kingdom. I thought the risks of the amount of money and stuff. So is this the first part of you changing potentially? Or was this, were you? No.

No, this was just more that particular job you thought risk reward doesn't add up. I'll give you an example. When I sat my parole board, the parole, the chairman of the parole board, I'll never forget it looked at me um and said to me in the interview you could have come off i'll never forget you could have come off the campus of cambridge university today and sat in front of me for a job interview but not you're

not you're sitting in front of me today trying to get released from a custodial prison sentence and she said you treat crime like a corporate venture. You do a cost analysis to everything you do, the risk to reward. And when he asked me originally, my risk to reward was it wasn't worth the risk. It wasn't the fact I didn't want to do it because I was frightened to do it. It was just literally,

I didn't want to do it because of that. And I said, no. But then I agreed to do it. And then I would then tell you today, that was the best decision I ever chose to make in my life. Because when I agreed to do it, what I didn't realize, there was a hundred man police surveillance operation watching that individual that I said yes to. And I just walked into one of the biggest

surveillance operations that the Metropolitan Police was running in London. Three days later, I get arrested for that guy. Then when I got arrested with him, the game had completely changed this time. The Metropolitan Police made an application to the Home Office, and they made me a double category A prisoner, which is the highest level of security you can be on in the United Kingdom. And that meant that when I got put in prison on remand, I had to be kept on a HSU, which is a high security prison unit. And I didn't know what that was at the time, but it's a prison prison within a prison and it's the most secure prison institution in the whole of western Europe

it was built in the 1990s for the IRA um and I go into this unit there was eight prisoners um Sheik Abu Hamza who's fighting a tradition in the United States of America and the 21-7 attempted suicide bombers that tried to blow up the tubes um and that that was then my life you were in there with them yes you saw them yep i was with them every day for two two and a half years um there was literally that was my life um you were having food with them having lunch with them i mean well again like it goes back to my moral compass again and what my moral code was so like initially when i went on that unit um it's very claustrophobic we used to call it the bat cave because it was like banks of floodlights very tiny no natural sunlight um

you know it felt like you was underground basically um and i remember walking on the the exercise yard when i first went on the unit and i saw these guys walking around and i recognized them all from the newspapers and stuff and i kind of really understood how much trouble I was in. I knew I was in trouble, but then when you go on there and you realize the lengths to which the police want to keep you in there and not let you out, I've realized that I was probably not going to get out of this situation. And then to me, what they had done in my moral code was,

was as bad as a sex offender. That's how I perceived them at the beginning. And I didn't talk to them. I didn't talk to them. The only one that I spoke to was Sheikha Abu Hamza. And I remember when I went in off exercise, he come up to me and he asked me, because obviously you go into prison, you haven't got nothing, nothing at all I had no clothes like other than what I had that day and stuff what I got rested in um and so I had a little bag of stuff because my mum remember mum

dropped me some stuff off at a police station but you got limited stuff you got no shower gels or anything and and he said to me do you want um do you need any milk and I said no I'm fine thank you he said do you need any food I said no I'm fine honestly thank you and I went to the shower and I come out and I went in my cell and um he put some cartons of milk some Weetabix prison issue Weetabix and a massive copy of the Quran on my bed and it was the one of the biggest books I've ever seen and and I took it out and I said thank you very much um but I'm okay thank you I'm like all due, I'm good. And he took it and he was fine. And I used to have limited conversations with him, but the guys that tried to blow up the tube,

I didn't talk to at all. And I remember one day, obviously we're living in such a small claustrophobic environment in this unit. So when we had association, that meant we was out of our cells for one hour. We had to be on the tiny little landing. And you had a pool table, a RAM machine, an exercise bike, a telephone, shower, and a washing machine.

But we had to be out in that area of space so the cameras could see us. We wasn't allowed to sit in our own cells. And I remember sitting there and I was listening to two of the guys that were arrested for the suicide bombing talking to each other. And they were talking about their kids. And I'll never forget, I was just listening to them talk about football and North London and areas that I knew. And I just remember thinking to myself, I'm never going to be in my life in a situation where I'm ever going to meet these sorts of people ever again. And again, that acquisitive nature of me come out and I want you to understand them. I genuinely want you to understand.

I want you to understand like, cause I've always been very interested in politics and political, like current affairs. And I wanted to understand what motivates someone. So to get to a point in their life where they're willing, they believe in something so much, they're willing to kill themselves and kill other people. And I found it fascinating.

And I made a decision that I would start talking to them. And then I did. And we would talk about a mixture of different things, sport, football. And then it's bizarre because what then ends up happening is like, you're in this situation where you're all on the same side because we're in prison so you've got the prison officers on one side and the prisoners on the other so it's a very weird situation that you're in with these people

because even though you don't agree with what they've done you're on the same side of the fence as them if that makes sense and and i just made a decision to start talking to them and and it and it was it was very fascinating um to they all denied what they done they said they didn't do it which I found was quite interesting um because I didn't I think I couldn't understand if someone was willing to do something why they would then deny it when they got caught uh but they did and but that was my life for two and a half years. And then I got sentenced. And then I went to Woodage Crown Court and I got two life sentences. And the reason the judge gave it to me was because he said that one of the biggest factors was because of my age at this point.

And I was 24 years old. He said my links to the criminal underworld were so extensive at such a young age. And obviously the effects of coming into court and there was armed police around the courthouse to stop from stop people from helping me break out um that had an effect on the judge and the judge knew i was in that high security unit he knew all the the cost that was incurred by that um so obviously that's already filtering his lens of of this young man in front of me and he said whatever sentence i give you so you're going to come out a young man.

And he went, I believe you always pose a risk to the public. And he went, so I'm going to impose a life sentence for conspiracy to rob. And I'm going to impose another life sentence for possession of firearms with intent to commit robbery. And I remember like I stood there and I didn't, all the Metropolitan Police were like, the robbery squad were down in the footwell.

And obviously they're looking for a response from me they want to see like you know that are they looking and they're smiling at each other and patting each other on the backs and i just didn't show any weakness whatsoever like because i just thought i'm not going to give you the satisfaction and i um and i and i laughed i just smiled at them because i didn't have any and i didn't have any i had no doubt that i wasn't going to sit in prison for however long that judge thought I was going to sit in prison for. Because my mindset back then was the first opportunity I get to get out of this place, I'm going to take it. And I'm not going to sit in it for the rest of my life. So you're not going to let the system beat you?

No, no. And the first opportunity I had to get out, I'm going to take it. And they take me back to the high security prison unit and every um 28 days someone from the home office used to come in on the unit because there was obviously very high profile prisons on them people that were threats to national security they would the the person from home office would come on every 28 days and just speak to everyone um i wasn't a threat to national security but i'm there but they obviously know who all these people, the men are, because this has to be signed off at a very high level in government

to justify keeping you on here. And I'll never forget, this lady sat down and I'm moaning and I was saying, I went to get on the main prison block. I didn't want to be on this unit. I said, like, I want to go on the main prison. Because in my head, I'm thinking, the quicker I get out of this unit,

the quicker I'll get over there, the quicker I'm going to progress through the system and the quicker there's going to be a little chink of light for me to get out and get back get my freedom back yeah and she sat there and she had this smile on her face and she said to me we're not stupid she went i know people like you do not change and she went the first opportunity you get to run for that wall you'll take it and she said you aren't going to get that opportunity and she was 100% right like obviously I didn't acknowledge that and I sat there and um she left and then a couple of

days later they transferred me to a maximum security prison in Yorkshire which was full sun you know you said you wouldn't show any weakness externally did you feel a little bit broken internally did you feel oh man you know i've really done it this time i'm stuck here now i mean what was you wouldn't show it outside but were you at all crumbling on the inside or were you you know the thing that gets me about your story john is that it's going back to the cycling we're talking about at the start which we're doing next weekend right it's this strong mindset that you can apply i guess to anything and back then you're applying it to you know the criminal world you're applying it to how do you know look if someone like me for example

if i got sentenced to life sentences i'd probably crumble and crack like you know the thought that you don't have your liberty your freedom for you know when you haven't because but that's environment again isn't it it's because your life isn't normal to you my life that was normal yeah like my my my uncles my cousins my uncle spent 25 years in prison for committing the biggest armed robbery in the world sold 26 million pounds worth of gold building at heathrow airport so that massive cloud hung over me as a kid as a young man as a man um went into the prison system everyone's always talking about my uncle the prison officers because they know who he was so it's a bit of notoriety and a bit of kudos in some ways but it's but that because it's it's not your norm that you're you

would like most people would most most most people that go to work every day if you put them in prison if you give them a parking ticket it has an impact on the effects on their life but when that's your life and that's what you know that's what you know it comes back again it's environment and it's it's exposure to events do you think with hindsight any part of you was cracking on the inside or do you think you were totally okay with it you thought there's just another obstacle to overcome there was another obstacle to overcome i didn't like because i didn't like i said when he said when he sentenced me i had no i had no desire and i didn't anticipate whatsoever for one moment I was

going to end up spending whatever time he thought I was going to end up spending there I would not spend in there because you knew you'd play the game that you had to play to get out or because you wanted to escape yeah no I went to get out as quick as I humanly could so it didn't matter which way I did it it was I just wanted to get out I wasn't going to sit in there for the rest of my life that was not going to happen um did i read a story once that you were in um solitary confinement and you voluntarily stayed in there even though you could have come out yeah to prove a point yeah like that that was when i was that go that goes back to when i was 19 18 19 years old when i was 19 um and it was it was all about, so they basically,

the prison officers tried to take my clothes off me to put me in a special suit when I was 90 years old in prison, which is bright yellow. So it's to identify you in the prison as you're walking around as an escape risk prisoner. So there wasn't that many people in the prison, but basically it's because obviously

everyone's wearing gray tracksuits then someone's walking around in canary yellow tracksuits. So all the prison officers know we need to look out for that guy because he's highly got the potential to try to escape. I refused to give him my clothes in my cell. So they escorted me down to a segregation unit. I then went in front of the prison governor the next day.

And in prison, you've got to conduct some rules and regulations. So it's like the law. And I refused a lawful order in prison so the governor said to me you refuse to give your clothes over you wouldn't go into the escape so at this point i'm in it now because when you're in the system you can't beat it because you're in their world they're not in yours um he said i'm going to give you seven days confined to cell which is basically in a segregation unit away from all the other prisoners at the end of that seven days they come to me they open up the door and they said, when you go on the wing, you've been

allocated a wing cleaning job. And again, my disdain for them, I was like, there's no way I'm going to be a wing cleaner. So they said, you refuse another lawful order? I said, yes. Then they took me back in front of the governor again. The governor gave me another seven days confined to cell. And he smiled at me when he gave it to me. And then he took me back to segregation unit. And when I was in prison as a kid, I never wanted to be institutionalized. And I remember I asked my uncle this one day, I said, how did you not become institutionalized? So to me, in my mind, prison was not going to be my world, right? So I made sure i stayed connected to real world so i used to listen to the radio and i used to read newspapers every day staying

connection to current affairs so life wouldn't just pass me by so i wouldn't sit in prison and for two three years life would just carry on and that's where the issue stems with a lot of people like their life goes on pause and in their reality and in this little cocoon bubble of like of it's not reality like you in this little cocoon bubble of like of it's not reality like you in this little cocoon bubble and and i wasn't going to be one of these people so i made that decision so i made sure that i stay connected to current affairs and i read and i went to it i went to read i was like again because i love learning so when the librarian come around with a with a trolley you was allowed to take two or three books off a week and then she come around next

week and then you could put a request in or she would just have whatever she had on the trolley, you was allowed to take two or three books off a week and then she'd come around next week and then you could put a request in or she would just have whatever she had on the trolley. And there was a book on the trolley. It was about Nelson Mandela. And I started reading it and there was a passage in it when he was in prison in Robben Island that he used to smoke tobacco, cigarettes.

And he realized that the prison officers was using the fact that he smoked tobacco as a punishment because they was able to take something away from him. So he never smoked a cigarette ever again. He relinquished that power to them. So they couldn't take it off him because he didn't smoke no more. So it stopped him from smoking tobacco. So if he smoked, then...

They could take that away and withdraw it. Yeah. So he gave it up. So he says, you can't take that from me anymore. Now, I'm not professing to be like Nelson Mandela here. So he says, you can't take that from me anymore. Now, I'm not professing to be like Nelson Mandela here, but what I'm saying is when I read that,

I then thought in my mind as a 19-year-old boy in prison, if you think by putting me in this tiny little six by 12 foot space is a punishment, I'll take it away from you. So when they then come to put me on the wing, I said, I'm not going. Because they put me in there for 14 days thinking they were punishing me. So then I refused to leave it. And I said, no, I'll stay there. And that was something where when I look back retrospectively,

because I spent literally 365 days locked in a room. I didn't come out to use the phone. I didn't take exercise outside. Let's just say that again. So for one whole year, I stayed in that room. And I wouldn't come out, like even Christmas day. And you were 19 at the time.

I was 19. You see, I can't, I cannot, like, of course I can't get my head around that because it is, it's so alien to my norm. I guess even for you, that was alien. That wasn't even your norm, but you took it within your moral compass. That was your way of not letting the system take you. was me being defiant and it's interesting it's i'll tell you why this is fascinating what i'm about to tell you now because this is something where my life's progressed three two years ago i did a talk to some students studying criminology at nottingham trent university and there was and it was funny because i didn't know this at the time

we was in this auditorium it's pitch black um you can't you can't see anything um and at the end the professor when it was all done all the students were leaving the professor said to me that's absolutely incredible and i said what do you mean because normally when i stand up and talk even all you see is this little glow of white where students are just on their phones when I'm talking. But with you, when I stood up and talked, it was black. Everyone was listening to what you were saying and no one was on their phones or anything. And then we were talking because obviously he heard me saying what I'm saying to you now. The students and him found it very fascinating.

Again, how the mindset can be redirected and changed. saying again how the mindset can be redirected and changed and he was talking about the um the the sort of defiance is that me regaining control of my environment and not letting the environment control me and then he then said do you think and it was something i never processed and thought about before when you started exercising why did you choose to do it and i said it made me feel alive which it did so I never I wasn't athletic I wasn't driven by sport as a kid I had no interest in like being an athlete but when I was in that prison cell for that 365 days I had to develop a coping strategy of being in that containment of being alive like feeling like I was a human like someone said to

me once when you go to prison you don't live you just exist and I wanted to feel like I was living so I started training and that was how I used to see that situation and he said but do you think it was more of a defiance in you saying to them they can't stop you from doing that like you've regret you've created your control in that space by you reading what you want to read you training when you want to train and them not being able to tell you that. But when I learn, look back on that situation now and I think what I've done the last year of my life, like in 2000, since 2008 and 2009,

I realized what a massive chunk of time that is. But when I was in that mind space as a kid, as a young man, yeah. Were you training every day for a year? Yeah, yeah. I mean i you know on one level i totally get that i mean obviously i can't i think i'm quite good at empathizing when people are struggling but i it's so hard for me to understand that you not quite voluntarily but yeah many of us voluntarily put yourself in a tightly confined

space for one whole year as an act of defiance. But I do absolutely get this idea that if you read what you want and you train when you want in the way that you want to, you've got control. And I think for any human being, when we feel we've lost control over how our life goes down over the little things that we want to do day in day out you know i'm a doctor i've said many times before i see an issue with patients who are chronically unwell when they feel that they can't do anything to influence what happens to them and they're just they have to be at the beck and call of their illness i i see that as being it can be, it can be very problematic. I'm always trying to give my patients control where they feel, even if they've got a really, you know,

they've got something like cancer, but they've got some things that they can do in their own life to actually influence the way that they're feeling. I think that's so, so important. So although it might seem quite distant, I think what you're talking about is something universal for humans. We need an element of control. Otherwise, how would you have survived for one whole year in that room? And again, like, this is when all the stars align because what motivated me

to start that process of exercising, I didn't realize because I didn't intentionally do it for the reason where I'm at today. But if I did not make that decision back then with that mindset that I had as a kid, I wouldn't be sitting here in front of you today because that triggered something inside me physically. And it was like this ability that I had that I didn't know I had. I lost weight.

I got a six pack. I didn't do it for that reason. I didn't do it for aesthetics. I did it because it made me feel like I was a six pack. I didn't do it for that reason. I didn't do it for aesthetics. I did it because it made me feel like I was a human being. But what happened when I made that decision back then, I never anticipated that nearly a decade later, because I made that decision back then for a different set of reasons, that that would then allow me to then go and break three world records and 10 British records on the indoor rowing machine. go and break three world records and 10 British records on indoor rail machine. And that's something I've even struggled with because I didn't set off on that journey to do that. But because I had that mindset and that defiance and that regaining control back of my environment and that hatred towards the system and that wanting to feel like I was a human again and feeling like I was alive, if I didn't start that process and being locked in that room room for 365 days I would not now be sitting in front of you with all the stuff I've achieved

as an athlete um and that's been something for me that it's been hard for me to even come to terms like and then you're going to start saying is there something else in life where your life's mapped out for you and you make these decisions and you which you don't anticipate and it leads to to a different road for you to travel yeah so john is just saying that it's making me think so john is just saying that it's making me think if you never had confined yourself to solitary and therefore you had to come up with a strategy to deal with that. And so you never started working out as you're just saying, would you be here today? You know, did you know when you started working out, Hey, I'm pretty good at this.

Because I guess on one level, if you had never been athletic before that, did you know you were any good? I mean, did you just, cause you have no frame of reference, right? None, but, but, but this, this is quite important as well because, um,

it's then you don't insert limitations on what you physically can achieve. So, um, so obviously when I did what I did in that cell and I, I was in that segregation unit and I started working out, um, you got no, like you said,

I got no frame, no point of reference. I wasn't training with other people. I didn't know how fit I was. I lots of weight exercises got easier i didn't realize how good or where i was at um get released from prison after that experience training just fell off a cliff basically doing it because i didn't need to anymore because i was out of that situation and then when i went back the second time when i was in that high security unit you re-kickstart the coping strategy.

So again, half past six in the morning, six o'clock, cell circuit, 90 minutes, two hours, read books all day, read books all day. And that then was my coping strategy for that prison system. So you said two sentences, like you were in prison once, first time around, you can find yourself into this room this box for a whole year you start training you don't know how good you are you don't know how bad you are you've got no frame of reference

you've lost a bit of weight as you say you come out with a six pack but then you go back to your old ways and you don't train once you're out start taking drugs

partying drinking high octane lifestyle everything straight back in straight back in million miles an hour and then you go back into prison and again lifestyle everything straight back in million miles an hour and then you go back into prison and again you you click straight back into the lessons you learned last

time this is how i cope yes this is going to be how i get through this sentence so it just kicks back off first day back in there i start training again um again i'm unfit it's like getting back on a horse yeah i'm unfit because i've not been exercising so i start training again again my body starts to morph and shape um i'm focusing on my trial that's sort of that situation of the stress of that um and then at some points thinking i'm probably i might be able to get out then obviously coming to the realization i'm not going to get out but the exercise the reading continues and continues and continues get sentenced then i'll get moved to a high the reading continues and continues and continues get sentenced then I'll get moved

to a high security maximum security prison I'll get moved away from those eight people in Belmarsh and get moved to Fulton so when I get moved to Fulton

I'm in a high security prison the highest security prison in the country like convicted prison men in there been in there 20, 30 years some of them

for murder like it's the real end of the line sort of place like violent I've never seen violence men in there, been in there 20, 30 years, some of them for murder. Like it's the real end of the line sort of place. Like violent, I've never seen violence like it in my life. Like for nothing. People stabbing each other for- In prison? Yeah, for like, for nothing. Did that scare you?

It didn't scare me. It was, again, you become normalized to it. And I wasn't involved in the drug culture i didn't take drugs whilst i was in prison um i didn't so i didn't have i just i kept myself out of all those situations with all the gang i was involved in a gang um but in prison it was very very violent in that prison in particular start training going through the process out in the exercise yards and i remember a couple prison officers said to me like they thought i was in the army before i'd gone to prison because of where I was it was very regimented sell very

clean they used to see I was out in the exercise yard doing circuits and then Christmas come around um want to get off the wing a little bit extra because it's Christmas so you have competitions in the gym and you get a box of quality street and roses for winning the competitions and they had they used to have a badminton competition they used to have a football competition um they had a powerlifting competition and they had a fitness competition and the fitness competition it was called superstars and um the prison officer that used to run it was a man called mark elliott mark elliott was from yorkshire um and we used to call him like playboy he was a he was tanned really muscular really tight t-shirts.

He was the prison officer that works in gym, but prison officers in the gym weren't like prison officers that worked on the wings. So he was a bit of a lad, really into his fitness and training. And he looked the part. And he was the one, he loved fitness, loved it. And he put on the superstars competition. So he said, McAvoy, do you want to do it?

So I said, go on then, I'll do it. And he gets me off the wings to come down and do a competition. So anyway, I signed up for that, signed up for the strongman competition, which was a powerlifting competition, put my name on both lists. And then just before Christmas, we go down the gym and I do the superstars competition. And when I mean, so bear in mind, a lot of these men have been in prison for a long time. And they did exercise as much as me.

And I absolutely walked away with this competition. Like no one even got close to me, right? It was kind of like CrossFit. It was like burpees, step ups. You would get power butt. Like you do all these different exercises, run around the machine, jump off, run on a treadmill with an incline of 15. And no one got close to me. And I remember when I finished,

he went to me like, because obviously the circuit he put on, this was like a competition outside. So he looked how quick I did it and was like, that is really quick. Like if you would have done that outside, like you would have been up there with like some of the top guys in the country.

I had no interest. Like it didn't bother me then because my mindset was still criminal. You still had that mindset that you've grown up with. Yeah I'm just doing this to pass time and get out of here yeah and it was like you felt good you you got a box of chocolates and you you had like you took the crown of the fittest man in that prison and I was down everyone was saying oh you're you're really fit and stuff like you're the fittest guy in the prison but it didn't mean anything and the next day we did the strongman and it was

it was squats bench press and deadlift and it was all power to weight so it was like for your weight they did the calculations of how much you could lift

and in the whole prison I was the third strongest man and I didn't hardly really do weights the third strongest strongest in the whole prison so I was the fittest in the context of the circuit

and then when I did when I did the strongman competition I was like the third strongest and bearest in the whole business. I was the fittest in the context of the circuit. And then when I did the strongman competition, I was like the third strongest. And bear in mind, some of them men were male mantis. I was like a little dwarf midget in relation to them. Some of them had biceps bigger than my head. They were massive. And I'm saying this to you today. Now, I would have looked back now,

and if I look back on the situation, you said to me someone could do that. I would say that person is very athletically talented um but back then it and it didn't mean anything it was just like a bit of bravado in the gym like you being the strongest and you being the fittest it wasn't like oh actually I'm quite a good athlete at this like I'm very I'm better than most average people like I'm the fittest I'm one of the strongest in the prison so anyway following year comes around, obviously in prison,

you get this bit of reputation, you're the fittest guy in the prison. And again, I just walk through it. Like no one, no one even come close to me. And the strongman competition, same thing kind of happened again. I'm just ticking off the days. I'm just ticking off the days.

I'm doing the cell circuits. I am, I'm doing everything that's being asked of me. I'm going on all the courses. I'm ticking all the boxes. You're going on all the courses. I'm ticking all the boxes. You're going on all the courses that they asked you because you want to rehabilitate. No. Or because you want to play the system. You want to play their game. I'm going to give you what you want so I can get out of this.

Yes. A hundred percent. I was, you tend to find, um, when you're in that, so I'm in a maximum security prison. I've been in that at this point, I've been in custody for four years. I need to get out of this high security prison because I know I'm not going to get released if I stay in this prison because you'll never get released from a high security prison onto the street. But because I've been such a high level of security going in, they were so cautious to move me out of that environment in case I tried to escape. So you have to do everything you're asked to do to get out of that place as quick as you can.

So you have to meet all your sentence plan targets that they set you every, and to be honest with you, it's given me a different perspective about prison reform, if I'm honest, of what this work I do today, because I've seen it, like I've done it. I've been, when you do some of these courses

like enhanced thinking skills and you're given your homework to do and you go back to your cell and your mate has done the course the month before and you copy everything he's done and you just change the index offense to your offense and you hand it in and they give you a mark and they say, oh, it's amazing.

It's like school. Yeah, exactly like school. And I believe overwhelmingly a lot of people do want to change. I do think that. I think like you always get the minute few, like in my regards, in my case back then, my lifestyle of organized crime,

it was all about change was weakness, but not everyone was like that, if that makes sense. There's a lot of people that made poor decisions and lack of opportunity again, where if you guide them and show them, like if you sense. There's a lot of people that made poor decisions and lack of opportunity. Again, where if you guide them and show them, like if you would have showed me a lot of opportunities I got today back then, I probably wouldn't have took them. I would have continued committing crime. And I'll be totally honest with you,

where a lot of people, if you were to give them opportunities, and I'd say the vast majority, they would change the direction of their lives. But I was doing everything that was expected of me and it worked and it did work and they moved me out that high security prison and they moved me to a lower security prison. Do they do you think they knew do you think a lot of some of the prison officers knew John is just playing the game he's not changing but there's nothing we can do about it because

he's ticking the boxes? Well but this is this is the this is like the catch-22 situation for them then because then they acknowledge their own system doesn't work because if they ask you to do everything and you do everything they ask you to do how can they then turn around and say well you still not changed yeah so you're you're in their system and now and people realize that so when you're in that situation you know you back them up into a corner where they have to progress you they can't sit there so if you're fighting every day and you're taking drugs and you're going against the grain and and and you're you're doing everything that's they they can then justify doing it and keeping you in that situation keeping you in that place if you're going through the process

and you're doing everything that's been asked from you and they're saying their courses work and xyz they have to progress you for that system and then you have to then be transferred out because if they don't most people would take them to court they go in front of a judge and say well he's done everything he's been asked for and the judge go yeah like if you've said that's what he needs to do and he's done it you can't legally keep him in that situation and and it was working like you were getting downgraded yeah i got i got moved out that high security situation um prison after four years and then i got moved to a lower security prison in nottingham which was a category b prison so before i was in a category a so double to a lower security prison in Nottingham, which was a category B prison. So before I was in a category A, so double A, now I was in a B. So I'm looking at my tariff because you get a minimum tariff. I had to serve a minimum of five years on that life sentence. But when I say that, people get confused sometimes. A life sentence is 100 years, right? 100 years long or 99 years long. And then the judge sets a minimum tariff of whatever that is.

That could be 20 years. That could be five years, depending on the severity of your offense. So the judge warranted that I had to serve a minimum of five years in custody. But when that five years comes to an end, that's then up to the parole board, whether they release me or not. So, but they don't have to. And if they don't, you could technically stay in prison for 99 years or the remainder of your life. So you have to demonstrate

you're no longer a risk to the public. So when I was at four years, I had the year left of my tariff before it expired. I'm in a lower security prison. I start doing everything again that's expected of me. And then my life completely changed in 2009. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the

habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there.

is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three

most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check

it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app. So this is interesting. I mean, the whole story, frankly, is interesting. I'm, you know, we've been chatting for over an hour, and I'm, there's just so much I'm thinking about. It is such, it's such a fascinating story for, I think the vast majority, the vast majority of people, everyone's got a unique upbringing, right? But I think very few people have got your upbringing and have got your story. You have such a strong mindset, John, that you've applied to everything, whether it was in prison, whether it was outside prison, whether it's what you're doing now.

I'm really interested with someone who's got such a strong mindset, how does it change? I'm not going to say what broke you, that's the wrong word. What was the trigger? What was the catalyst for someone who is that fixed in their mindset and has been exposed to that sort of upbringing? As I think the judge or one of the officers said to you before, people like you don't change. So what caused people like you to actually change? In my case, it was trauma because I had never lost anyone in my life. So when I was growing up and when I was a young man, I heard people dying. I heard of people dying, people getting murdered, people going to prison, but predominantly deaf situations.

And I was immune from that. That never happened to me or anyone that I cared and loved for. That was someone else. And then when my best mate died or best friend from childhood, basically, died in a car crash committing a robbery in the Netherlands, I'd never experienced emotion like it in my life. Like I could, I, I, hand on heart, I could not remember a time in my life from being a kid to when I was 26 years old. So I found out my dad died. I'm sorry, my friend died

where I had literally cried. I couldn't, I literally couldn't remember a time, but from being a kid. And then when I found out my friend died on the phone, I phoned up my cousin. It was a football match on TV and I phoned up my cousin at halftime and I just went to see if he was watching the game

and he said, I've got something to tell you. And I said, what? And he said, are you on your own? And I said, of course I am. And I'm like, what's wrong? And he said that Aaron's died. My mate died. And I said, how? I am. Like, what's wrong? And he said that Aaron's died. My mate died.

And I said, how? And he told me, and at the time it was a little bit sketchy. Like, no one really understood anything. He died in a car crash in the Netherlands. And I was in disbelief at the beginning. And I just like, I just, I thought something's wrong. Like, it's not him. It's a bit of confusion.

And I remember I put the phone down. And yeah, I was sitting there um and i just remembered i i had this uh i had this gold rolex watch on my wrist and it was a rolex daytona and i had a black doll face and it was worth 16 000 pounds and i did sit in in prison and and it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't it was defiance why i had it like it was it was it was me being defiant towards the system even though you've taken my freedom and you've put me in this environment i'm still me but i've still got money and i've you can't take that from me and and i remember sitting in this cell and and i realized how one our precious life is and

and my friend's life had just literally gone out like a light. And he never had children, never got married. And I realized how pathetic it was, the situation. I thought I was winning some sort of war in my head against the system and the state. And actually, I was just basically pissing my life away. It was like someone switched on a tap, and my life was literally going down into a drain every day,

every breath I was taking. I was literally spending my life on earth locked in this tiny little box, thinking that I was winning some sort of war in my head against the system and being defiant. And the following night, because it was quite rare that these English people that were committing crime were in the netherlands it made news at 10 it was it was on itv news and i remember watching news and they showed cctv clips of the final moments of of my mate's life and he was in some shitty

supermarket in the Netherlands, spraying a can of CS spray into the lens of the camera. And it froze, the camera froze. And there was a picture still. And I could see it was him because I could tell by his eyes. And I just remember like looking at that TV screen and I was like, I don't know, it just hit me. I looked how pathetic it was, like the situation that I was in. And it made me look at my own mortality.

And it made me look at my mate that I saw where I was at. It was pathetic in that context. But how that could have been me and I could have been that person, how lucky and fortunate I was because I could have been that person, how lucky and fortunate I was because I could have been shot dead back in 2004 when the police tried to arrest me and my life would have ceased to exist that day in that car park in South East London. And I saw the fact that I was alive as a blessing

and I made a decision that night that I was done. I was done with that life. And the following morning, I come out and I went down for breakfast and no one obviously knew within prison what had happened. And I was sitting in this communal eating area and there was these other inmates talking to each other. And I was zoned out. Like I just, I wasn't even engaged in the conversation.

And they was talking to each other about when they got out, they was going to do this and do that. And this person was a police informant. And I just sat there and I thought, I can't be around these people no more. And I try to use the analogy sometimes. It's like being addicted to drugs and being locked in a crack den

because I made a decision that night. I didn't want this life no more and I wanted to do something else in my life I didn't know what that was but I didn't want this life I wanted to get out of this place get away from these people um I was trapped and I was literally physically trapped like I couldn't just get up and get out. And before, it was the system. Like it was prison officers I didn't want to engage with and I detested and I didn't like. But now suddenly it kind of flipped and it was the people that were people in the situation with me as prisoners

where before I saw myself like them. And then suddenly I'm like, I don't want to be around you people no more either. And I was, yeah, I was lost because I didn't know what to do. Like I did genuinely, it was my identity. Like everything that I was as a person was defined by who I was in the context of people respecting me because I was in prison and I kept my mouth shut and I got a massive prison sentence

and the way I did my prison sentence, sitting in segregation unit and stuff and people lauded me for that. And then suddenly I realized what nonsense it all was and the people that I looked up to and people I respected, the fact that they'd spent their whole lives sitting in prison rotting and my best mate that I loved, they had lost his life down to some sort of bullshit dream that

doesn't exist it's nonsense like and and I and and I was like I need to do something else. Did you always feel in some ways that you woke up on that day in the sense that you suddenly could see life for what it was and actually you look back at your previous life up to that point and you feel who the hell was i kidding like it almost as if you had a blindfold on i don't know is that an awareness yeah you suddenly got awareness and then once you've got it you can't go back because you can now see your life in a very different way but until you can see it that way you can't see it right so you're stuck in that box the way you are. You know what's fascinating for me is that it often takes tragedy or real suffering on some level to force many of us to

change. This is a recurrent theme on this show and many people's stories around the world. You need a pain point before it actually kicks us into action. And, you know, certainly one of the most life-changing things for me was when I lost my dad. You know, that, I think that was the first point when I realized, you know, I knew he was sick for years. I helped care for him. But when he was no longer there, it was like, oh my God, like people do go away. I mean, you know, he's literally not here anymore. I know it sounds ridiculous, but when you're confronted with that, it suddenly makes things real. And certainly for me, that was a huge turning point. Like that has been the start of

the next phase of my life. You know, all the things I'm doing today, I don't think I ever would have done them until I'd lost my dad. You know, I needed that to start questioning me, my life, what I was doing. And what's interesting for me about your story is that you had a moment that suddenly put everything into sharp focus and made you realize what a story that you'd created in your head that actually wasn't real. But then you were still stuck in that place. So yes, you've had the awareness, but when I had the awareness, I could go and start making change immediately. I wasn't stuck in an environment where I couldn't make those changes.

But you were, you were still in, as you said, with your analogy, you're still there. And it doesn't matter if you go up to the prison and governor and you say to him, I've changed. Yeah, I get it now, buddy. I get it. You know, I'm different now.

He's going to be like, what? You sit there and you've still got X amount of years left to serve of that sentence. So it was, to say I was in that moment lost is an understatement because I genuinely didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Other than I didn't want to be where I was at and I wanted to do something different with my life. And then I probably meet the most remarkable human that I've ever had the privilege to ever meet in my life. And that was the prison officer that aided me to find that belonging and find that sense of worth

and change your direction into something and put that energy and drive that sense of worth and directly and change your direction into something and put that energy and drive that I still had as a human in something productive and positive so what happens you're lost you know you want to make change but it's difficult you don't know how you're going to do that so walk us through what happened you know who is this prison officer that helped you and how did he help you? And how did you discover this talent that you have, which has actually in many ways got you out of prison and completely transformed your life.

And now you're transforming many other people's lives with this story. It's incredible on so many levels, but what happens? So when we go back to that story i've just told you about the inmates i needed to escape them i needed to get away from i didn't want to engage in that negative conversations you don't want to hear it around you i went shut down from it right so i'm locked i'm confined in this situation or environment i want to do something else my life i don't want to be surrounded by negative people. I want to disengage from them and disconnect. I go down to the prison gym.

There was an inmate called Mickey. He's a little bit overweight, wasn't fit, wasn't like athletically fit. In prison, you get three gym sessions a week. Mickey had seven. And I asked him, I said, how are you getting all these extra gym sessions? Because normally they do it, your win gets one day, the other win gets another day. And it's just stop gangs from going in the gym and fighting each other. And he said, I'm rowing for a children's charity hospice in Nottingham. And I'm around a million meters over the course of however many weeks or months it took him. So I asked him, I said, who did you ask? And he directed me to the person that run the prison gym, Craig. So I go to Craig and I said to Craig, Craig, can I do what Mickey's doing?

And can I basically raise money for the charity? So he said, John, if you get sponsorship, so prisoners could sponsor me 50 pence and pounds, and you could have money sent in from family and friends to sponsor you for stuff in prison. He went, you can do it. So he gives me the sponsorship forms. I go back up on the wing. Some inmates sponsor me a pound. My mom sent me some money in for sponsorship. So I give it to him, hand it in. He writes me a note and it's basically a gym pass so i could go off the wing go down to the gym every day so get on the round machine first time 26 years old never really been on one properly like in regards of like i did it in a circuit but not like how this this relationship with me and that piece of equipment sort of played out. So I get on it.

I start rowing 20 miles a day, 32,000 meters. And when I was on the rowing machine, I was in this prison gym, everyone in that place left me alone for that two and a bit hours. And I'd look at that monitor and I'd go up and down the slide the slide my technique was horrific i didn't know anything about technique at that moment in time and i just watched the numbers and obviously i didn't understand about endorphins i didn't really understand about this before doing that sort of length of exercise and then suddenly you're getting this massive wave of like endorphins because you're continuously exercising for like two hours um and i didn't have any heart rate monitors or nothing i was just doing it on phil

and went back down the next day the next day the next day 20 miles a day 20 miles a day 20 miles a day um done a million in a month so i wrote the first million a month because it was it was my my ferret it was it was therapy it was getting me through again this situation like when i was in that segregation unit for that year training exercise but now it took on a whole new significance it completely transcended me out of prison and i asked craig if i could do another million he said yep and then i did another million which was three months and then the prisoner said to me you do know five million meters is 5000k and that's equivalent to run across the atlantic on the rail machine so i went back and i, that's actually quite a cool thing to do. Like

run across the Atlantic, so I rode across the Atlantic on an indoor rail machine. So I go back to Craig, I said, look, can I do another 2 million? He said, John, if you keep raising money, you can keep going. So now I'm working out in my head all the maths. And I'm like, if I keep doing this, this is going to get me near to my release date. So anyway, as I'm starting to go for the last 2 million meters over the two months, I rode 10,000 meters hard one day and I stopped.

And the screen paused at the 10,000 meters, the 10K. And this amazing man called Darren Davis, which is a prison officer that works in a gym in Loudoun Grange in Nottingham, he was standing behind me. And again, you'd think I was making this up. There wasn't someone else to say this actually happened. And he looked over my shoulder and he went, that is really, really quick. And again, you're in a little cocoon bubble. You don't know, like, I didn't know what was good, what was bad. And he left. Next day I went down, rode again. Next day I went down, rode again. And he come up to me the second day, he come back to work and he left next day I went down road again next day I went down road again and he come up to

me the second day he come back to work and he just basically handed me those pieces of paper and on it was was all these indoor rowing records world records and British records and I looked at them and and I could like basically beat two of the records I knew I could beat two of the records there and then and and I had unconsciously woken up this ability in my body that I didn't even know I possessed and I possessed it since I was a little boy I was eight years old I set that come into my life and and I had this um ability for endurance sport and Darren gave me those pieces baby and I went back to my cell and I don't know why but it just planted a seed in my of paper and I went back to my cell and I don't know why, but it just planted a seed in my head and I went back to him

and I said, look, I'm in prison. I probably didn't even think at the time it was realistic. I said, do you think it's possible if I could do one of these records? And he went to the governor and as mad as life is, he went to the governor called Gareth Sands.

Gareth Sands was a deeply religious Christian man. And Darren went to him in his office and Darren told me this story and told him, and he said, look, I have genuinely believed this could help John turn his life around. Right. And Gareth said, if they will let you validate those records from prison, he can do them. So Darren went away, got all the information. He explained the situation about me being in prison and I couldn't do it in a public setting so I couldn't do it outside

and they said as long as you get two independent verifying witnesses that were police officers that were prison officers that's fine and you weigh him because I was doing it as a lightweight man under 75 kilo and you take photographs and you put a special memory card into the machine you send it all to us we validate the records as being legitimate. So the first record I attempted to break was for the marathon and it was 42K. And I remember like we had to basically make our own energy drinks

because I couldn't have sports nutrition. I had no heart rate monitors or nothing. So like I was literally, I was eating raw sugar cane as we was doing it, like the sachets that they would give out in the prison for tea and stuff in the tea packs. They give you once a week with tea bags. And I was doing it on the whim.

Like I didn't really know what I was doing. And I broke that record by seven minutes. Seven minutes? Seven minutes. That's insane. I broke it by seven minutes. And honestly, this was a very powerful moment in all of this. Because again, I tried to get this across to young people today.

When I was growing up as a kid, when I went back and we go back to the beginning of the story where I talk about legacy and I talk about not wanting to be average and reading all those history books and then developing this fascination with British Telecom and having lots of money. I attributed success to money and wealth. That's what I thought in life that defined you as a human. I thought the more money you had in your bank, the bigger your house was, the more watches you had, the bigger the car you had, that defined you by the level of success and what value you was as a person. When I broke that record that day, everything I'd ever craved as a little boy I felt that moment on that gym mat in that gym and the satisfaction to like work towards something and not being average and not being normal like an average and achieving something with my life and a legacy for that

moment I was one of the best people in the country at what I had just done and in the world. And it made me feel incredible. And that's when I made the decision that I was going to use sport and my body to be a vehicle to get me out of that life. And I become absolutely consumed with being an athlete. I went down to the prison library again. We go back to the beginning of the story in the segregation unit. And there was this little old lady that worked in the library and she was sending out because she had to put special questions to the outside leverage sending books on sports nutrition on training on heart

rate zones i started to understand what a protein was what a carbohydrate was glycogen i understood about the heart i i wanted to become i I studied being an athlete. But the most important part of this was Darren started bringing me in books of athletes, of Olympic athletes. Now I'd never had no exposure to these sorts of individuals as a young person or when I was in prison. So everyone that I ever saw with my mindset did what I did. They were all driven, they were all focused. Suddenly I'm reading books on James Cracknell, Steve Redgrave, Lance Armstrong. I'm reading through these books and all the characteristics that I, I can relate to them. And I'd never seen this group of people before that I could relate to on a level.

Like I didn't, I, the only people I could ever relate to were people that did what I did years ago. And, and it even, it reinforced more that that is what I was going to do when I got out of prison. I was going to be an athlete. So within the next 16 months, I end up setting three world records in prison in prison and eight British records on indoor rail machine or multiple different distances and I got my first parole board I think it's a given I think there's no way they're not going to let me out and genuinely like I've changed.

Like, I've genuinely changed. So in your head, you've changed. You've done all this great stuff in prison. You think I've stand a really good chance here being released. I thought it was a given. I didn't even contemplate that it wasn't a given. I thought, like, even the probation officer that sat with me was like, she was remarkable. Like like your application for release what you've managed to achieve is remarkable so i'm thinking i'm going to go in front of the judge

it's just going to be a tick the box exercise they're going to sign the thing and they're going to let me walk out the gate and and we sat there and the judge said to me um he said what are you going to do when you come out of prison? And I said, I'm going to become a professional athlete. And he looked at me and he was old. He was 75 years old, maybe a little older than that. And he put his glasses on the bridge of his nose and he leant back in his chair with a smile on his face. And he said, of all my years of sitting on parole hearings,

you are the first person that's ever come out and said to me that you want to come out of prison and be a professional athlete. But I absolutely categorically believed in what I said I would do. I honestly, I was so convinced, like I would visualize it. When I was on that round machine and I would train, I'd visualize when I got out, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be an athlete. I'm going to be the best at what I choose to do.

I'm going to be successful. And I used to go through this process of visualizing it. And then the more the records are set, the more it encouraged me. But Darren, my relationship with Darren in this part of this journey was, I'd never had a male in my life that had an interest in me to be successful for no gain. He didn't have no gain whatsoever. Like he used to come in on his days off when no one was paying him back into prison to sit with me to do records because he believed in me as a person. And we would sit there and we would talk about his family, my family,

and he'd become like a confident, like I would enjoy going down to the gym, not just to train, but to actually sit there and talk to him. And he'd bring me in books. And I actually think like in some regards, being in prison, it was quite frowned upon on his side. Like he was a prison officer. And I don't think necessarily some of the prison officers liked the fact that he formed this relationship with me. Because when I got transferred out of that prison,

I went to another prison and obviously like a prison officer writing a letter to a prisoner is a big, big no-no. Like, because staff corruption and so on and so forth. So he wrote a letter to the prison that I got moved to,

gym department, to pass on to me. So that meant it went to, from department, to pass on to me. So that meant it went from prison officer to prison officer to me. So then it wasn't directly to me. So it kept it in official channels to wish me all the best, say, look, I know you can go out and you can still be, you can be a successful person. I've got absolute confidence in you. And I remember when the prison officer gave it to me, he laughed. And he said, he went, why on earth is he writing you that letter? And he thought it was funny, like, because I was in prison and he was a prison officer. But he said, Darren said some stuff to me amongst the records.

And when I broke the world record for the most amount of meters rode in 24 hours, I remember when I was on the mat, there was like blue gym mats in the gym and it was just me and him left. And there was a couple of other prison officers and they went out. And I'll never forget, and this stays with me to today. And he said, if you come out of prison and you come back, it will be the biggest travesty I've ever seen as a prison officer. Because you've got the ability, not just physically, but you've got the ability even not just physically but you've got the ability to be able to suffer and when you put those two things together in a sporting prowess and the ability to suffer even you'll be unstoppable even do not come back and and that lived with me to today i always had that as a mantra like when i raced today in ironman i always remember what he

said to me about having a gift and not wasting it and doing something with it yeah so at that first meeting where you were convinced you were going to be released were you no no they they when i got the parole board um because the judge said i've never heard that am i right but but he said he actually said to me my release plan wasn't based in reality and he said um that he thought i was setting myself up for failure. And do you know what? I don't hold any hard feelings towards him whatsoever. And I made a deliberate attempt when I got out and the way my life's unfolded, and it wasn't arrogance, and it generally wasn't. I made sure that all the police officers or the main police officers that arrested me and the judge and all the people on the panel got a copy of my book right and it was an arrogance and I wrote in with

the police officer arrested me and I genuinely said this isn't me being arrogant I like you to read this I just want you to know people can turn their lives around and people can change and and I thank you for what you did by by what you had to do your job by putting me in there because it was the best thing that's ever happened to me and i just want you to know that people can change and it wasn't the end and to be fair to him he did get back in contact via the publisher and just said tell john i'm really proud and i'm glad that he's done something constructive with his life and And I made sure that as many prison officers as possible get to read my book. Last year, or sorry, this year, at a PE conference for physical education,

the 180 prison officers that work in the gyms across the country were all given a copy of the book. Just to reiterate to them, I was as bad as what you could get. Like literally I was in the end, I was at the end of the road. You could not go anywhere else from where I was. I was sitting in a, in a double category, a high security unit in, in a prison told that I would never change. It was impossible. So if I've managed to do this, anyone can, anyone can. And I just want to be able to get that message out and let people know that. And with the judge, like and I just want to be able to get that message out and let people know that and with the judge like I just wanted to get that across to him that that day you was wrong like I did change um but I understand why you made that decision because I can see it you saw a man

sitting in front of you that had been in prison for at that point seven years was he he saw I was a high risk to the public still um even i did all the stuff athletically he still believed i was still a risk to the public and that was his duty to make sure the public were protected but i just wanted to let him know but i genuinely did change when you saw me that day and i just want you to know that people do change do you think there was anything that people around you apart from from the prison officer, Darren, like in terms of thinking about other people who are in prison now

and maybe are playing the system or doing what they have to do to survive, is there any way with hindsight that people could have identified, hey, you know what? John has changed. Something is different in him. I think a

lot of the time a lot of these decisions are based on fear yeah because if you're the man that signs that piece of paper and you let me out and I go out and I kill someone it's on your head and it's you that's going to fall it's going to be why did you let him out why and I think there's a lot of risk aversion and I and I think i think it's starting to change in regards to probation now um where before it was very very much more if there's any risk don't let them out but you don't let no one out and that was what was happening you had a bottleneck people going into prison no one getting out because everyone was so fearful it's a challenge because obviously sometimes some people don't want to change yeah um if you

would have let john out if john wouldn't have changed in in 2009 and john got released in 2012 as the old john i would have carried on reoffending and i would have i i'm not going to lie i would have because i i hadn't actually changed and and there are people like that but there are also people that have changed it's a challenge i i understand it's very challenging because it's it's picking it and again that's that's that's what the difficulty is within the within the prison system but reform in the regards of the broader picture um i go back into prison i speak to inmates um i'm a great believer in prevention for a start the cost the amount of money that's put into prisons and reoffending like reoffending alone costs a tax about 18 billion pounds a year like just people coming out going back 18 billion

pounds a year which is staggering and in when you go into prison and you and again you go into a lot of prisons you look at the work that's going on like rehabilitation and they're not able to even do it because they haven't got enough prison officers to unlock people to go to classrooms so like they can't let the young people or people out of their prison cells down to education they're locked up all day so you're locking them up all day and then eventually their sentence runs out you just let them back out into the streets there There's no rehabilitation going on. And that's why I've been such a big advocate. I think prison officers do a tremendously difficult job with the resources they've got.

But it's a challenge because you need to put that investment into these places. But then also you need to put the investment into prevention of stopping people from going into these places in the first time. And then obviously you go into a bigger social issue with school exclusion and so on and so forth. But as things stand now, I think that sport, which I'm a massive advocate for, and I've been part of a wider movement of getting more sports organizations to enter the UK justice system as a way of helping to lower re-offending. Because I think if you go into a lot of prisons, you tend to find, if you said to most inmates, what do you value? They will probably turn around and tell you it will be food, gym, visits.

Education will be at a very, very distant lower fifth or sixth on that list. Now, if you can interlink education and sport, educational learning, become personal trainers, whatever that is into this area, you can then engage some of the most disengaged people because like I've seen when football clubs go into prisons, because they've got the badge on, they're instinctively drawn to it and they're more susceptible to learning.

And it does have an impact. Like I've seen it with my own eyes and you speak to prison officers the difference between you going into a classroom and being again people that have had horrifically bad experiences the education system you lock them up in a classroom and say you need to learn about William Shakespeare that's not going to happen and it doesn't happen when it does happen because a lot of the time there's not even enough prison officers to let them into the classrooms yeah you say when a football team comes and they've got the badge on and it does something and people want to listen while sitting opposite you now you've got another badge on you a badge that is a logo that is known all over the world the nike logo and to my knowledge you are the only nike sponsored ironman triathlete is that right there's

there's one other now there's one other there's one other no no no i was i was the second we just we transferred there was one in america um but i'm on a very few one a very few yeah and one the only one in britain the only one in britain okay and I mean, that in itself is incredible. And another incredible part of your hero's journey, as it were, is you get out of prison, you finally do get released. You know, before I move on from that significant moment, you've obviously been released from prison before, but the last time you hadn't changed. This time you were a changed person. So, do you remember what was it like walking out you know you're walking out into the world this time a different john last time you was how you

weren't you were the same john this time you were different john i mean walk me through that how was that for you so when when you get released after being there for a long time so I was in there for eight years I served eight years um so eight Christmases eight birthdays eight summers you will be very surprised it's quite a big anti-climax um because you you build these dates up in your head and you get it and then bear in mind like you you I got I got arrested in 2004 and I got out in 2012 right now you come out and

you've been fixated on time all this time like dates people got dates on calendars and like everyone's date and suddenly that date comes and you they open up the door

they walk you down to reception you sign some pieces of paper and they basically take you to the gate and they and you walk out into the street. That's it.

And you look around and you think, is that it? Like, as quick as it starts, as quick as it ends and that's it. Like,

and it is quite, it throws you a little bit because you're like, well, what do I do now? But when I got released, it was quite an anti-climax. So I come out,

I get picked up, I get in the car. I haven't been in a car for years. the first thing I wanted to do was stop um at a garage and go in and and buy something because I you don't you don't have choice now we went out for dinner that night after I got out of prison and I was with um I was with my, and we went out for dinner, and I remember one of my friends was very surprised by, like, my social skills. Like, my social skills were quite good. Like, I said, please, thank you, and the way I was, and I didn't seem thrown.

And I thought, do you know what? Like, I've adjusted. Like, nothing's really thrown me. Like, I'm cool. Like, I'm good because obviously you hear these stories people coming out and they don't know what to do and stuff and they get really anxious and it was only the next day i went to go shopping to buy some clothes because i didn't have anything um that i went into a shop and and it was choice you don't have choice

and i remember i was indecisive. Like what color do I get? Like, because I wasn't used to being able to get by green or yellow or red because you can have black because it looked like a prison officer on the cut. And it was little things like that. Um, and then I joined a rowing club, London rowing club.

So I got out on the Friday. I got released. And on the Saturday, I joined a rowing club in London, in Putney. Straight away. You're like, right.

Yeah. Straight on it. I want to on it I'm going to be an athlete now this was quite this is quite an important part of this because I didn't intentionally do this it was unintentionally but I didn't realise

the impact it was later on going to have on my life so I get released on a Friday athlete do you want to be a sportsman

do you want to join one of the best rowing clubs in the country so go down to London Rowing Club high performance centre there was all these Olympic athletes at best rowing clubs in the country. So go down to London Rowing Club, high performance center. There was all these Olympic athletes

at the rowing club when I joined. And it was quite weird because I just got released after the Olympics. And you're seeing all these like pictures of these athletes up on the wall in the rowing club that have been at the Olympics. So I joined this club because it was high performance, lightweight rowing.

My dream was to be a pro athlete. I wanted to be a pro rower. So I joined this rowing club was high performance, lightweight rowing. My dream was to be a pro athlete. I wanted to be a pro rower. So I joined this rowing club. Now, what I didn't realize, I thought I was going to join this club and it was all about sport, but my whole social circle completely changed overnight. Like I come out of prison. Now, no one knew I'd just been released from prison when I joined this rowing club. So this was quite important because I think what this did, this broke down people's preconceptions of what people in prison would have been like.

Because I started forming really strong friendships with people. Some of them were barristers, they were lawyers, police officers, judges, multitude of different skills. They did multitude of different things. You're hanging out with them and you're chewing your fat with them. Yeah, in the changing rooms, going out. Now what they saw was this guy that just turned up wasn't never really rode on the water at an amazing erg times indoor rowing machine times i didn't tell any of

them about the records i had because i knew if i told them people would go online because rowers if you tell people stuff within rowing in context of your ability people will research if you big yourself up and you start pretending you're really good people will start going on and actually going actually you're not that good your results aren't good so i kept it really i just said oh yeah like just keep fit in the gym just want to try to get rowing a go so no one knew anything about me so i built up all these amazing friendships and like i said like i it was like i basically the easiest way i could have turned my look that changed the direction of the amount of my friends that i would have ended up having would if I would have uprooted my whole life and gone abroad.

That's what it felt like. It felt like I just planted myself in this whole new community in Rowan, made all these amazing friends and they basically become my sort of support network, like people that I'll go and hang out with. So my old friends, I completely disconnected from them. Most of them didn't even know I got released from prison because I stopped writing letters and stuff. So so my old friends, I completely disconnected from them. Like most of them didn't even know

I got released from prison because I stopped writing letters and stuff. So when I come out, I didn't expect, I thought I'm just not going to have any friends when I first get out. But then overnight, I made this whole social circle.

I'm rowing early in the morning at half past five. And then I'm rowing again in the evening with the same group of people. Next day, I'm going to the gym with the people I'm around in the evening. So I was with them basically nearly every single day um and what was quite sort of i i never forget this obviously my dream when i was in prison was to be an athlete and went and wanted to be like the best athlete i could be in there was a female rower called sophie hoskins and sophie won a gold

medal at the london olympics and on a tuesday night at london rowing club we would do like a all the guys would be on the rowing machines together and we'd all be doing the same session so everyone's in synchronicity so everyone's bang like right so you're going down up and down the slide 18 strokes per minute and i had the olympic champion sitting on my left and i remember thinking like my god like two weeks ago i was sitting in a prison gym and two weeks later I got the Olympic champion sitting next to me around next to me um and it and yeah it it threw me a little bit like because that was what I wanted with my life and and as I said this my relationship with all these people carrying and developing and then um because I was really ashamed

of my past when I got out i didn't want no one to know um especially when i joined the rowing club and i made these amazing friends and and they all did these incredible things like they won medals at the olympics they travel around the world they worked in hospitals they climb mount everest they rode across an ocean they do you know they did these incredible things and feats with their lives and and i've come out and and all i've done in my life has caused misery and destruction to people. And I felt really ashamed because what I was worried about was kind of being shunned

and them actually going, actually, we don't really want you here. And it was a real worry for me at the beginning. I really didn't want people to know about my past. Did they find out? They didn't. Why isn't that happening? I kind of got the sense that some people had found out

and I went to take the initiative and I went to be the one to sort of tell my own story and me take control of it. So then I made a decision to write a blog and I wrote the blog and it kind of went viral within rowing. And it was good because the way the rowing community accepted me and it broke preconceptions of what someone, they thought someone would be like in prison. And I think maybe, I don't know, if I would have joined, people would have known there's this guy who's a convicted armed robber and he spent eight years in prison and now he's joined this rowing club.

Do you want to row with him? Maybe some people would have gone, no, I don't. But they built these friendships up with me. And actually I just become John. And people, when I explained, like I said, I wrote the blog and people when when I explained like I said I wrote the blog and people read it I think people could understand why I did what I did um again I didn't no one made me do it I mean John it's it's incredible on so many levels I mean look obviously I don't know the people you befriended in the Roman club but if you're talking about barristers and doctors and Olympic athletes, a lot of those guys,

I'm sure, you know, had amazing experiences growing up, like amazing opportunity. You know, as you've demonstrated with your story, how you brought up, what you're exposed to, that defines your reality. You know, I became a doctor, right? My dad was a doctor, his family were doctors, all my parents' friends were doctors, right? So for me, I became a doctor, right? My dad was a doctor, his family were doctors, all my parents' friends were doctors, right? So for me, actually at that point, getting into med school was actually no big deal in the sense that that's all I was surrounded by. Again, I'm not saying I don't, I'm not very proud to be a doctor, I am, but I'm just, I'm simply saying that actually what we're surrounded by, it very much limits or defines what we think is possible right so it's it's so it's so lovely the way you did it where you got to know them they got to know you

for who you are befriended you rowing with you and then it comes out was there any backlash did some people shun you after that you know what not one person not one literally the the way it was received um and the support in which i received after it i would say that people were more willing to reach out and help me even more on the quest than what i chose to do which was be an athlete and i mean like a lot of them bear in mind some of these were olympic champions but were willing to come down and row with me on the water to teach me how to row because they wanted me to be successful and that went all the way from like amateur rowers at the club all the way up to olympics and i was very fortunate like two years ago i got asked to go to cavisham which is where the gb rowing squad train and i got asked to go

down and speak to all the athletes which to me was a massive honor because like that was something i wanted to do like and to go to go into that high performance environment meet the people that you look up to um but that that was the level of in the british rowing that the whole sport just was supportive of me and and and they have been up to up to this day yeah is that blog still online today yes it is yeah i think it's still there somewhere we'll find before finding our link to it in the show notes I actually want to read it because I'm super interested as to what you said in that blog to the point where all no one shunned you they just wanted to help you and I imagine you would have been very honest and uh but I'm looking forward to read that we'll definitely link to that so you were training you know you've come out of prison you're a changed person you want

to be a pro row you've joined this club you're training with these guys, but you don't become a pro rower, do you? You go into a different sport. So, you know, what happened there and what happened to end you up being sponsored by Nike? So, I'm a realist. I was 29 years old when I got released, nearly 30. So I was literally just touching 30, basically. When you go into a sport like rowing,

you kind of realise it's kind of like swimming to regards of, if you've not done it from a young age, it's very, very challenging to take it up as a grown man and get to that level in which you want to get to, which I wanted to get to. So it's technique driven, right? It's highly like, people think rowing is a very easy sport and you use your arms you don't use your arms rowing is a rowing is very technical it's it's like swimming and i'm getting

to swimming at the moment and i'm learning and i'm obsessing on youtube videos i'm trying to watch i'm thinking man i wish i'd learned this as a kid that's what i used to do i used to sit there watching right at night i'm in two hours a day at the moment. I'm watching, oh, that's how you get in the water. That's how you catch the water. You know, I'm obsessed. But you don't realize how technical it is until you start doing it. It's challenging.

And even though physicality, my heart and lungs, and my mindset, I had the attributes to do it. Like I would train with people that went to the Olympics and you realize that like, you're not a million miles off them. But technically I was light years. And I knew I took up the sport too late to get to that level.

So when I was in prison, I used to watch Transworld Sport on Channel 4. I remember Transworld Sport. So I used to watch that program and on it one day was a sport called Ironman, which was a triathlon. And they were showing the world championships in Kona. And I remember watching this program and actually I'll find you this blog

because I say it was a blog. When I was in prison, me and Darren drafted up what my aspirations were when I got out of prison. So just to show you that this isn't me making this up as I've come out and then suddenly it makes a better story. So I watched this episode of Trans World Sport. I see Ironman and I thought to myself, I'm going to do one of them one day. So I was in prison. When I come out, no desire to do triathlon or Ironman. It wasn't what I was after. It was rowing. So anyway, I'll get to a point, rowing for six months and I thought, right,

I am not going to get to that level in rowing that I want to get to. What other sport can I do where it's not team-based so I can't slow other people down? Because the problem is with rowing, you row in a crew now, but you row at a crew at your ability level really.

So I'm not going to be put in a boat with three other Olympic champions if I'm really bad novice do you know i mean because obviously i'll kill the boat speed so when you do an individual sport it's all on you so if you put the hard work in and the discipline and dedication you can't slow anyone down if your technique's not that great so it was either me rowing my own which i wouldn't be able to get to the level because obviously you limit yourself then to how what where you could row in a boat like if you only ran on your own you can only do a certain amount of races and stuff so it was like right I have to do something else so I'll go on the internet I went on google I typed Ironman in and I'll never forget this there was the only Ironman race

I could do was Ironman UK because I wasn't allowed to leave the United Kingdom because I had a travel ban when I got released from prison. So I couldn't travel without asking permission. And so Ironman UK was the only one I could do and it was in Bolton. So I go into the entry, sold out. There's no entries left. So I'm thinking, how am I going to do this? So then there was at the bottom of the um at the link there was a there was an entry for via charity so i clicked on that and i got in on a charity entry like six weeks out from the race so i enter it and then i went

and bought a bike i hardly had any money when i got out of prison so i bought this bike it was way too big for me it was like two sizes too big on ebay um got the bike bought a wetsuit i had six weeks to train for this ironman now i'm very fit still from rowing and all the training i've been doing in prison because i got released from prison i'm still training i'll come out start rowing um like professionally so i'm doing 20 plus hours a week training so i'm aerobically i'm really fit so basically i'll go down to sepalt, start watching videos. I teach myself to basically swim, watching these videos. And I'm in Ironman UK.

So Ironman UK six weeks out. Hold on. So you couldn't swim? Couldn't swim. Like literally, like literally, because again, sometimes people might listen to this and go,

there's no way he's done this. So I get released in November, 2012. I was rowing for like six months. And then I did Ironman UK in July of 2013. So within that space, I was rowing on the water. Then I made a decision to do Ironman UK six weeks out. So I turned up at Ironman UK, teaching myself to row six weeks previous. So when I turned up at Iron ironman uk i had never ridden a bike for 180k in my life the furthest i'd ever ridden the bike was 80k 180k was the bike leg and then you obviously have to run a marathon and i've never swum further than 3.8k so i've never done that

so i turned up to ironman uk and and i'm not saying this arrogantly i'm genuinely i'm not saying arrogantly whatsoever but there was a couple of emotions that happened when I completed the race. Right. So when it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, it wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't mega fast. Like I did the Ironman and Ironman is very hilly. So I did it in 12 and a half hours. And I think I was in the top like 150 or 200.

And I remember, but when I run down that finishing shoot in Bolton Town Centre, it was smashing down with rain. But I got so emotional because it was like, my God, I feel like I've just achieved something so great. Because it was something I'd done since I'd been out of prison. And where I thought about that in prison, I thought, I'm going to do one one day, and I never expected it was going to be as soon as it was.

And I thought, right, that's what I'm going to do one one day and i never expected it was going to be as soon as it was and i thought right that's what i'm going to do now and i did iron man you can i've finished across the finish line and and i loved it i felt really emotional and i felt this wave this sense of accomplishment and achievement so i thought that's what i'm going to dedicate my life to i'm gonna i'm gonna be a triathlete i'm gonna be the best triathlete i can possibly be um and then i went to a human performance lab in essex and they did like some testing on my heart and lungs and the woman said to me um so i explained to her i just did iron man told her how quick i did it and stuff and i said like this is the rowing history i've had them out of hours she did this vo2 max test and all these lactate tests and she said you've got the ability to get to an elite

level in triathlon if you teach if you train your body correctly and that was all i needed to hear and then i went off um i made a lot of mistakes so like it wasn't it went when because what become detrimental to me because i was so driven and i was so determined to be successful at something i end up not being coached and i trained myself into the ground like literally i over trained and i got virus post-viral fatigue um i got really ill i turned injured um not not injured but more um internally like when i got sick and i got a virus i raced i did a full distance ironman on a virus and and it and it sent me virus and it sent me over a cliff and I had to have an ECG. But again, it was a learning process. It was having the awareness. So I didn't have the

skillset to coach myself because I was so blinkered. Because again, to me, being successful as an athlete was my way of proving to the world I wasn't a piece of shit that I wasn't some scumbag that spent his whole life in prison and I was actually good at something and I was so consumed and intoxicated by that it become my kiddies hill so because I could suffer and because I could hurt myself like I I went and again it's not arrogant but i went from basically being a non-runner to being able to run like a sub three-hour marathon in training within about eight weeks i mean i used to run around battersea park i used to run a marathon every sunday around battersea park and every day i did it what ended up happening or every week i'd get quicker and quicker and

quicker and it was like being on a no-go again the splits get quicker but the problem is i wasn't recovering no and i just kept thinking when I felt like crap, I just got a man up. Like I don't want it. Like if I'm not suffering, if I don't wake up feeling like I've got a hangover because my body's so depleted that it means I don't really want it

and I'm being lazy today. So I'd go out and I would do it again and I'll do it again. And eventually you start digging a massive hole and I couldn't get out the hole and I ended up overtraining and got sick. For me, it really strikes me that your mindset hole and and I couldn't get out the hole and I ended up overtraining and got sick for me it really strikes me that your mindset has always been critical in anything you've done whether

good or bad I don't like the terms good or bad the choices right aren't they everything's just a choice and every choice has a consequence but there's something about you and your mindset that is it's just incredible really, in terms of yes, how much you'll suffer, how much you'll push yourself. What I love about your story, John, is I think it's empowering for anybody. I think it just shows what human beings are capable of. But do you think you are special in the sense that you do have some, you do appear to have some superhuman physical abilities? You know, you do an Ironman when you can't really swim. You're in six weeks, you teach yourself how to swim and you do it. You're not a runner yet in

under eight weeks, you're running marathons in under three hours. These are just incredible feats. And so have you ever thought about it? You know, that you are like a genetic specimen in some ways. And you are special. No, I don't think I'm special at all. I think everyone is inherently gifted at something. Like I was having this conversation a while ago with a secretary in an office. I mean, the receptionist.

So I always like talking to people i'm in the yeah i love it but i love finding out yeah it's just like i'm sitting down and the lady's there she's working and i'm waiting to have this meeting and they've kept me in the foyer and she's chatting to me and she said what you doing and she's she's typing and she's talking to me and i said i do i do triathlon do ironman absolutely incredible. Like, I could never do that. I said, but I could never do what you're doing now. And she said, what do you mean? I said, you've not looked at me once

and you've just typed for like minutes. Like she's just, I said, it's a learned skill. It's a learned ability. You've learned to do that. Like I've learned to be good at what I do because I do it every day. Like you do that every day. And I just think, again, like,

I think this comes back to, I know I might be going on subjects a little do that every day and I just think again like um I think this comes back to I know I might be going on subjects a little bit here but I often say this to kids when I talk to them about imposter syndrome so when I go into a situation um where like a little while ago I had a meeting at 10 Downing Street and Theresa May's policy advisors were there and we was talking about opening up schools over the six-week holiday to make them into community centers and when I left that situation I remember quite a few of my friends said like do you do you not feel nervous like you're going to 10 down the street and you're talking to all these people that are political aides and I said but why should I like why should

I feel like that then they're humans they're no different to me and you they just they've gone to university they've learned the skill set which has allowed them to have a job that works in politics like i'm good at what i do because i do it every day they're good at what they do we've all got skill sets we're all good at something and i just think in life um i think we've all got talents and abilities and skills um and and the ability and i feel like as well um everything that we've spoken about here there was never no self-limiters so i didn't i didn't limit myself because i had no limits to gauge off what was good or what was bad i just did what i could do um i never sat there and gone oh i can't do that because sub three hours is

really quick because that's how many percentage of the population can do that because i didn't know that it was really it goes back to that story when you were in solitary confinement and you're training every day to get through to give yourself that control you don't know what's good you don't know if 20 press-ups is is crap or world class you just do what you can do and actually if you have a blank canvas if you don't know but by you not engaging with the athletic world you don't know what's a good time so you just do the best you can do i think that is so empowering you shared a story um when we had a bit of lunch just before we started this conversation about young people

about um was it an underage prison you visited and the things you said to that girl i wonder if you could just share that it's like when so um just just to go back a little bit because everything we've spoken about so far today, I would always say that it's always, it has always been about me. Like before it was about money when I was a kid, then I realized I was good at sport. It was about medals.

It was about Ironman. And I believed, even when I changed, that I still wanted to achieve something in my life. And I thought legacy then was by being really good at sport and winning medals and having all those records and having all those placards on my wall indoors. And that would define me as a person by my legacy. And I was consumed by it.

Overtrained, got ill, fixed that, got better at sport. But then what really changed my life was when I started going into schools, my story started coming out. When I made my story come out within the rowing world, but then it started breaching out into the wider world, I got opportunities to go into schools. And at the beginning, I was like,

I don't really see what value I'm going to have. Because again, you don't really understand. I don't feel what I've done is exceptional. And I don't, I'm me, like I'm John. I've gone through the journey that I've gone through, my experience I've gone through, and I'd never realized the impact that could have on other people's lives um and then I got an offer from the opportunities to um a school talk in Essex and I and I took it and I went and I did this talk and at the end this young boy his name was called George followed me

and head teacher out I mean head teacher went to his office to have a debrief. And George followed us out. And he said, sir, can I speak to John? And Simon Cox, their teacher, said, look to me. And he said, look, do you mind talking to me? I said, no, I stand in earshot just in case. I don't know what he's going to say. So I said, let's go.

So George looked at me. Then he was 14 years old. And he went to me, I'm like you. And I said, what do you mean you're like me? And he went, I'm like you. And I said, I genuinely didn't understand what he meant. And he said, my dad's coming out of prison. My mom's brought me up with my sister. I don't want to go to prison.

And he started crying. And honestly, I've never experienced anything like it in my life. I genuinely haven't. I've never, it was such a powerful moment to know I had impacted on that young boy's life where now, whatever I said to him, he was highly susceptible to listen to what I was about to say because he could relate to me. And I said to him in life, you've got an awareness that I didn't have at your age. You realize all the triggers and all the warning signals now, but you don't want that life, which is good because I didn't see that at your age.

What do you want to do with your life? And he said, I want to work in sport. I'm not good at sport though. And I said, you don't need to be good at is good. Cause I didn't see that at your age. What do you want to do with your life? And he said, I want to work in sport. I'm not good at sport though. And I said, you don't need to be good at sport. You could be a messer. You could be a physio. There's so many other occupations within the sports world that you can do. You're in a school, it's geared up for sport.

They want to encourage you and help you and stuff. So, and I stayed in contact with George and I used to phone up to school. And Simon Cox, our teacher, used to put George on the phone in the office. And we used to, I used to chat to him school um and and Simon Cox said he used to put George on the phone in the office and we used to I used to chat to him in the car on the way to the gym um every now and again just to keep him in and and the most and honestly man like it's like Simon Cox phoned me up when he did his GCSEs and um he was walking around the uh the hall and I'm not there I'm not there. I'm not there. I don't know this.

And George puts his pen down in the GCSE hall and sits back. And Simon goes over to him and says, what's wrong, George? And he says, I can't do it, sir. He went, I can't do it. He said, why can't you do it? He went, I can't. He went, I can't. I can't do it. And he said to him, George, what would John tell you to do now?

And Simon said, I walked away and I looked back and he picked up his pen and started writing again. And when he told me that story, mate, honestly, man, it got like, even now it was so powerful. It was so, so powerful. And then he sat his GCSEs and he ended up getting a C in that grade. And then he signed on to college. But to have that impact over a young person's life, where they listen to what you're saying, I realized then that that was my calling in life. And then I realized that I had this awareness again in my life, you're constantly having, you're developing, growing, that legacy is actually, it isn't about money and it isn't about winning stuff. It's about you having a positive impact on other people's lives and lifting other people up. And by me impacting on George's life,

if George now doesn't go to prison and he has children and those children don't go to prison and their lives are good because George's life's good and their kids' lives are better, all because he interacted with me, that's what legacy is about.

It's about reaching back and lifting people up. And I realized I was in such an incredibly powerful position, an influential position where not only could I have that impact over a young person's life, but I was able to go and have meetings at 10 Downing Street and go and have meetings with politicians and go and meet big brands and corporations where they wanted me to go in. What that then did for me was able me to unlock opportunities for other young people to have a better life, which I'm happy to say that I'm able to do by the proxy of using my life. Because let's be honest, lots of people, it's the story. And I have always said this,

like I was very fortunate. I got asked to go to the Conservative Party conference a couple of years ago. It's irrelevant what my political beliefs are, but the fact of being able to have an audience of people that can make decisions that can affect the lives of millions of people, to me, that was an honor and a privilege to come from where I've come from, to be able to address those people and to have that platform, to be able to influence change. And then politicians come up to me at the end and say, I can't believe you sat in prison for 10 years for what you did by the way you conduct yourself and the way you are and what you've done. And what, I don't see it like this,

but what an inspiration you are now. You're an amazing person. You're an amazing athlete. And I say, but you must remember, I'm no different to the 90,000 people sitting in prison. I was given an opportunity and I chose to take it. So that's why it's fundamentally important that those other 90,000 people are able to change

and turn their lives around and be given the right opportunity to turn their lives around so it allows me to connect up the dots to people because they can relate to me so when you sit in front of them they can look at me and relate to me on that level and I'm like one of them and that's what's important because then when you can connect the dots up and show them that I'm not different to these people I'm exactly the same as them. So if you think this about me and you look at me now and laud me, these other people are capable of doing what I've done. I'm no different to those people. I was once that scumbag that was sitting in a maximum security unit with suicide bombers. If you looked at me then, you would say,

these piece of shit, never let him out of prison. Where now you don't say that. So it's connecting up the dots. And as I've gone through that journey of going into prisons, it's been a life-changing experience for me. It really has. The story I was telling you about earlier, when I went into an STC, which is a secure training center. It's technically a prison, but they can't call it a prison. It's for children.

I walked into this environment. I had never seen children in prison under the age of 18. I've seen young offenders, like young men. I'd never seen girls in prison. So I go into this STC and it's a mixture of girls and boys mixed together, but they're on different housing units. And I was asked if i would like to go on the housing unit um and look where the children slept and i agreed i said yeah i would like to i was interested to see what it looked like and we walked on this spur they try to de-institutionalize it as much as they possibly can so that they it doesn't look like it's a prison but you can quite clearly see there's bars on the window and stuff and they got a sofa and they got a big TV.

And then the prison officer was like walking me down with the governor. And we stop outside a massive metal door. Like I was put behind and he puts the key in and he opens it up and he opens it. And then I walk in and it was literally like a little girl's bedroom. And it threw me mate. Like, honestly,

like it's so hard to verbalize how it made me feel. I looked on the wall and there was pictures of a mum, there was letters that a mum and nan had sent. And I was upset for her, but then I was enraged when I left that how young people have failed so bad like oh the sexual abuse and stuff that I heard that happened to some of these young girls and and and it just driven me even more I thought I need to do more to help provide young people with opportunities that are in those situations

to have a better life because it was it was just so sad seeing such a young girl in that situation and being fouled so bad throughout the care system that's led her again only knowing what she knows and the behavior she's expressed from the experiences that she's been through from since basically the day that she was born yeah you know i can see where this drive and you why it's so strong why you want to go and use your story, use your life for good. It's, yeah, it's emotional talking about it because, you know, I think back to your life and, you know, you didn't have that, you know, your father wasn't there. You didn't have a strong male figure. So of course, if your stepfather rocks up and he's going to fill the

void it's like that boy at school who sees you and actually he can relate to you so now he's got a male role model who he can relate to if you don't have that well of course you're going to make maybe some poor decisions do you know what i mean it's i i was genuinely again like i was genuinely surprised but the further along the journey I've gone since I've been released from prison, the social difference in this country is and how so few have so much and so many have so little to the degree where like children,

like a headmaster once phoned me up when it was snowing. I remember when I was at school, snow day, I was loving it. Didn't have school. I didn't have school. Like you'd be at school for three or four days. I was loving it. And headmaster phoned me up in Essex and I developed a really close relationship with him. And he said, we've had to close the school.

And I said, I bet the kids love it. And he said, he said, John, he said, I feel so bad because I know today for the next two or three days probably that probably about 70% of my school will not eat a meal for breakfast or lunch. Because they're solely reliant on the school providing those meals because the kids aren't eating when they're home because they haven't, the mums and dads haven't got the money or they haven't got the food to eat. haven't got the money or they haven't got the food to eat and then you start having stuff with i never understood for a moment like not being a female but then there was problems with with girls with tampons they were truanting from school when i was on their periods because they couldn't afford tampax and you think how on earth is it that bad and then and then obviously you go into the prison service and you look at the cost that gets spent on incarcerating young people. Like the chairman of Brentford Football Club coming on a visit to Felton Young

Offenders. And he was standing with me and he's a businessman. He's a very intelligent man. And I said to him, I could halve the cost of the Young offender's prison estate like that overnight, straight away, one decision. And he said, how could you do it? So I said, so each one of these kids today running around cost the taxpayer £75,000 per year to incarcerate in this place. He said, yeah. I said, if I got that young boy over there and put him in Eton into the best private school in the country, I've just halved the budget, the UK system over half so how can it make sense it costs 35 40,000 to send the kids to the best private school in the country there's 75,000 pounds to incarcerate them in a young offenders institution if that's not lunacy I do not know what is and I don't

understand for the life of me why this has been allowed to continue and continue and continue. And it's like, and when I speak to my friends, there's just no awareness of it in society that this is a problem. Like you see people that they're talking about when we leave the EU and it's going to cost 39 billion pounds. And you think we're spending 18 billion a year on reoffending. And you look at this and you think, how do people not see these numbers?

And it's, we build more prisons. And we we just we're so judgmental as a society we we look down on so many people in terms of where they've ended up in life and we don't realize that that could absolutely be me or you just for life circumstance and a few little minor decisions here or there can absolutely influence the outcome. And it's something, you know, I obviously talk a lot about health and health inequality is a massive thing. Depending on where you grow up in this country, your health, your lifespan will be different.

Maybe up to 10 years, just depending on your postcode. I mean, this sort of inequality is staggering. And it's not something I typically talk a lot about on this podcast, but I think it's an important topic. And as I try and talk to more and more varied people about different things, about ultimately how to live better, how we can all live better lives. And I think we live better lives, not only when we feel better individually, but when society is happier and healthier around us.

It's very hard to be happy when yes you're individually doing well but people around you are struggling yes but we are all on the same rock you're all on this earth at the same moment in time in history like we're all here together and we're all going to end up in the same six foot hole at the end of it so again my belief is the fact we should work together and we should help other people. And that's what life should be about. It shouldn't be about profit constantly, like selling you stuff constantly. It should be about working together and helping you, helping your fellow man. Because like you said, society, community becomes so much better by living that sort of existence. And when we don't live it, you see all the disharmony that's going on in the world today

and all the hatred. Exactly. It's getting to that point now where we can't keep doing things the way we've always done them it's getting more and more toxic and it is about that it is about that compassion i think that's what is really missing in society but john this is by far the longest conversation i've ever had on the podcast and i actually feel we're just warming up so yeah um i'd love at some point as we i think we better start wrapping this up, but I would love to continue this at some point and have maybe an in-depth conversation on the work that you're currently doing.

You know, you're talking to government, you're talking to school. So maybe we can do that at some point. But I think in terms of this conversation, you couldn't make up your story. I told you this before you came in. And I know it's hard. I don't mean this in a disrespectful way,

but if your story was being made into a Hollywood film, I don't think you'd believe it. I have been told that a few times. I have been. I mean, how does it feel to you to hear that? It's hard, isn't it? Because I've lived the experience. So I've gone through it.

And I feel like you do compartmentalize your life. You do. You do do it. And I suppose that's how you overcome stuff that goes on, like traumatic experiences and stuff. It's just a very strange sensation because I am me. So it's hard for me to look out and look back in and go, like, yeah, sometimes you do have to pinch yourself.

Like before Theresa May stepped down as prime minister, I got invited to 10 Downing Street and I'm in 10 Downing Street. Like we've 200 people that were the heads of charities across the country that are working in youth violence across the United Kingdom. And I'm standing there and Theresa May, prime minister on a podium at 10 Downing Street starts referencing my story, saying to them about we as a society can't give up on people.

And then referencing me and saying, because of John McAvoy, like what he's managed to do with his life, he's gone on and he's accomplished what I've done. And it was surreal. Like, and I would say that's probably one of the biggest moments of this whole journey in the context of it being was surreal. And I would say that's probably one of the biggest moments of this whole journey in the context of it being quite surreal,

that you look and go, the prime minister of the country stands up and references me in a room for the people in it. Yeah. And actually references what I've done from where I've come from. That was quite a surreal experience. But it is hard. When you've lived it, that's my norm.

Given that it is your norm and it's got you to where you are today, do you regret anything? I regret what I did deeply, but I don't regret the experiences that I've gone through and I don't regret being in prison for 10 years. I regret what I did to go in there,

but I don't regret being in there. I'm not bitter about anything. I'm not hateful, resentful. Has that been hard for you not to be bitter? At the beginning, not now, but when I was in there, I was quite bitter, hateful, resentful towards the system and everything that it stood for.

But since I decided to change the course of my life around, no, like I've, yes, I've just moved on with my life. And I just believe it's a journey. And do you know what? I'm not a religious man. I'm not a religious man. But there was one event before we close up where I was at the Wells Book Festival down in Somerset.

And before I went and done it, I asked the organisers when I was there that day, I said like, what's like the demographic of the audience? And they said, very white, middle-class. It's probably one of the most affluent areas in the country you can live. It was very like, Nick Clegg was talking before me. And then I was like, okay.

And I thought I'm really going to be in for a tough time after I've stood up. And so all these old people have come in and we do this talk and then hands are going up. And these old people were like like we want to give you money we want to give you money to help you doing what you're doing like and i was blown away and then when i was standing around a couple of them introducing themselves saying hello and stuff and and um i used to be a roman catholic when i was growing up the irish family and i stopped

believing in god when i went to prison and this priest come up to me at this Welsh Somerset Book Festival and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, the book Redemption, because that's what it's called, he went, has that got a religious connotation to it? I said, no. He said, are you religious? I said, I was, I was a Catholic. But I stopped believing in God, ironically, when I went to prison

because I thought if there's a God, why am I in this bad situation um as mad as that seems what i'm trying to is that justification i said if there's a god why has he let me come to prison and he put his hand on my shoulder and and this will live with me for the rest of my life and the hairs on my neck stood up and they will now and he went to me i have never seen a man put on earth to do what you're doing more clearly than what you've been put on earth to do. And he went, you might not believe in God, but Jesus believes in you. And I'm not saying this,

I'm not religious now, but it was very powerful when a man of, because I respect other people's religions. It's very powerful when a man that does believe in God believes that there's some greater being for you. And the reason why you're doing what you're doing is for a calling in your life. And I don't believe in God, but I believe that what i'm doing today was my calling and i

believe that was what i was put on earth to do and that's why like again someone once said to me like do you ever get nervous if you stand up in front of 2 000 people and speak and i don't because even if i tried to mess up what i was about to say it would be impossible because i can't because i'm speaking from my heart yeah i don't have to memorize stuff i don't have to go up with notes because what i'm saying i believe in and it's my it's me being true to myself if it was fake it was artificial i would have to go up with notes and prompters and i don't and and and that's why i believe that i'm able to stand up in front of big groups of people and talk and just tell your story and influence yeah i mean literally i was getting tingling at the back of my neck as

you were saying that because i can see from here clearly that you are here for a reason you there's there's no doubt that your story is so powerful that it is making impact it is going to change people's lives and yeah you had to go through it that was your journey we've all got our own paths right but i think there's something powerful about it that will inspire thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people as your story gets more and more well-known. It shows the potential of any human being that no matter where you're at, you can make change.

You can turn your life around. A lot of people listen to this podcast for health and wellbeing. And although we've not technically spoken about health and wellbeing, what we have spoken about is mindset, belief that you can change. And I think those things are just as relevant to my audience as they might be to a school audience or, you know, young offenders who you're trying to inspire. John, this podcast is called Feel Better, Live More, because as I say over and over again,

when we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of lives. I always love my guests where possible to leave the listeners with some actionable tips for you or things that they can think about applying into their own life immediately to improve their lives. And I wonder, I appreciate you've not had any prep on this, but I wonder, have you got some closing thoughts for people that no matter where they're at in their life, they can think about applying to improve the way things are? I would always go back to, it goes back to self-belief and not setting limits on what you're able to achieve and what you're able to accomplish. I'm a great believer in positive thought, visualization,

and working towards something. And it's not about being the best. It's about being the best version of you. I might not be the greatest Ironman athlete in the world, but I just want to be the best I can be. And that's what's important in life, like you being the best version of you and believing that there's a possibility, you can always get better, you can always overcome. And it's never the end until it's the end. So until you take your last dying breath,

and they're going to put you in that casket, you've got life. And if you've got life, live it. Because if you're on this planet, and it's such a short period of time, like we're like a blink of an eye on the planet. And I just think you have to maximize every day of it you have to go out and you have to live your life to the fullest and and that sometimes we all have bad days i have loads of bad days but you have to be so appreciative of the fact that you can you can breathe and and you can live and that's what life is about it's about it going out and experiences enjoyment and not getting bogged down on stuff that isn't that important. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for so openly sharing your story. Incredible. I've heard it before, but to hear it over the table from you, literally, I could feel it inside. I could feel tingles. John, do people want to feedback to you?

Do they want to get in touch with you can they find you on social media if so where would you like them to find you i'm on twitter and instagram um yeah so i've got an internet site some website and stuff so there's an email address so if anyone wants to email they just go into the website and you click through like the message section on it yeah i'm on instagram and twitter well john look thanks for the time today good luck in your race next weekend thank you i i find it hard to believe that anyone can compete with your self-belief and your ability to suffer so i look forward to seeing what happens there well let's let's definitely do a part two i think there's so much more to talk about

but good luck with everything thank you very much you're making a huge difference, buddy. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers, John. Bye. So what did you think? That is a pretty incredible life story and transformation. And one that I hope has put a spring in your step and left you feeling inspired and motivated. Do you have a think about one thing or one idea that you can take away from our conversation and start applying in your own life. Now, one powerful idea I took from this conversation

is I guess this idea that you can always change the story and narrative you put on your life anytime you like, just as John did when his friend died literally overnight. John changes his story and with that new story comes a new outcome. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week.