Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #91 If This Man Can Turn His Life Around, So Can You with John McAvoy

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

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.  Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/91 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk 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 other qualified health care provider with any questions you may 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of

the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space, to hopefully inspire you, as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier, because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome back to the very first episode of 2020. This is episode 91 of my Feel Better, Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. I hope you are all having a good start to 2020.

If you need a bit of motivation, you've come to the right place. Before we get going in today's conversation, I just wanted to say a big thank you to all of you who have already purchased my new book, Feel Better in 5. It's fantastic to see such incredible feedback to the book on social media and I'm really touched with how many of you have kindly gone onto Amazon to give the book a five-star review. Please do keep sharing your stories, reviews and experiences with the new book on social media as this really helps to spread the word of what I know is a super practical and highly effective plan. If you have not picked up your own copy yet, you can do so now in all the

usual places. So, is this the year where you want to get your life on track? Do you feel motivated, inspired to make 2020 your year and the 2020s your decade? Is there a particular change you'd like to make in your life? Something you're desperate to overcome but can't see how? Or a goal that you're too scared to aim for because it feels too far off? Well, my guest on this week's podcast might just convince you to have a go. He is 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. Just how did he go from serving two life sentences to breaking British and world sporting records, giving talks to school children and being invited to 10 Downing Street for his views on the justice system? Well, in today's conversation, you are about to find out. You may be wondering why someone like John is appearing on my podcast today. Well, 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 Iron Man success,

or how he transformed his moral codes, or how he overcame adversity, or how he stayed consistent, this is a really compelling conversation. I actually recorded this conversation a couple of months back, but felt that it would be the perfect way to kickstart the new year. This is a long episode, but it is well worth your time. I'm pretty sure that once you get going, you will be gripped and I cannot wait to hear what you think. Now, before we get started, as always, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are absolutely essential in order for me to continue putting out weekly episodes like this one. Vivo Barefoot, the minimalist footwear company, continue to support my podcast. I'm a huge fan of Vivo Barefoot shoes and have been wearing them for many years,

well before they started supporting my podcasts. And I've seen incredible benefits both for myself and my patients with things like mobility, back pain, hip pain, knee pain and so much more. I really like this brand and everything that they stand for. Our sedentary, cushioned, comfortable lifestyles are making us and our planet sick. Our technology has changed exponentially but our physiology and psychology have not. changed exponentially, but our physiology and psychology have not. Vivo Barefoot, like me, believes that modern technology should help embrace nature and not disconnect from it.

For listeners of my show, they continue to offer a fantastic discount. If you go to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code for all of my podcast listeners in the UK, USA and Australia. Importantly, they offer a 30-day free trial for new customers. So if you're not happy, you can simply send them back for a full refund. If you're keen to get moving more this year, I would highly recommend that you consider investing in some minimalist shoes like Vivo Barefoot. You can get your 20% off code by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. 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 the setups? Over a year. Over a

year. 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. 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 literally 25 hours because it's the Equinox. It's just when the clocks go back. And it's how many times you can cycle around that 6 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 what I do today, I think that's probably why I went across into endurance sport in the first place because I think like 80% of it's physicality. Should I say, yes, physicality is in the context of the training and getting there.

But then when you do a sport like Ironman, the psychological element of the race is far greater than the physicality of your view 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 because your mind if your mind gives up and cracks that then obviously it doesn't matter how strong you are physically you you will stop or you'll slow down yeah it's interesting hearing you say that

in the context of your story um 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 who you become as an adult from your childhood. 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.

So what I do today, for instance, the sport I do and how I live my life, I've always been like that with the mindset um but what can 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 um in certain regards yeah 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 retired athlete now. He won a silver medal. He was a world champion in rowing and he rode at the same rowing club as 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 and 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 that way of life, he was exposed to sport, rowing. But the mindset was exactly the same.

The will 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 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 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 that that's it comes back to what i just said a minute ago it's like if if if when i was growing up as a kid i strongly believed this if if i would have had uh exposure to richard branson i was someone that was 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 was directed towards criminality and 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 um he spent 16 years in prison for armed robbery had five acquittals at the old bailey but he was similar to me i could i saw similarities in these people and they made that life and I attributed success to be money. It become very obtainable. Like it was a road in which to get it. And what I deemed as being successful as 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 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. 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 mom was eight months pregnant with me and he never woke up. He was undiagnosed, didn't realize he had a heart condition passed away so I get born into the world um I had my dad's name John and I had what you could class as quite a relatively loving childhood right Christmases were happy for me um my mum my sister brought me up and we had this big extended family. My mum had lots of sisters, my aunties, my cousins. And I was a happy child. I was a really happy child. I was really well-loved. I have amazing memories of my childhood. And then when I started going to primary school,

to me, not having a dad, 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 this 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 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 I wouldn't be alive ever. And I made this connection as a young age that 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. And it had this overwhelming effect on me.

And my mum 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 I just used to love learning about history. And she used to get me these magazines every month called Discovery. And in Discovery booklets, you used to get puzzles and you'd be like, it'd be about Henry VIII and Napoleon. And you'd learn about history as you did. And I was a little boy. like it'd be about Henry VIII and 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 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 again, I was a young boy and I'll never forget, we'd drive in my mum's car and I'd be in the back of the passenger seat and I'd 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 I'd run around and there'd 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 that's what

I was going to 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 going to 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 I and my mum was already coming and I was just in awe of this man 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 like my mum have dialogue with him my sister

and then as he was leaving he gave me a 20 pound note and obviously I was watching like 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 explained to me that was her ex-husband. So before my mum married my dad, when she explained to me um that was her ex-husband so before my mum married my dad um when she was growing up as a kid in south london um they lived with each other on the same council estate both irish catholics families were really close um they grew up as basically kids like babies and when they was 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. 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 we're 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 dad 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 new this bundle of newspaper clippings 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 how you 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 you know you start connecting it up and 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 I loved him. He looked after me. Christmas, like he became like my father.

He didn't live with us, but he was in my mum's life because of my sister. So he used to always come round and pick pick my sister up and then start picking me up and presumably your mum knew what he was up to um or his lifestyle my mum 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 yeah um that went to work every day um and 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 never

my mum my mum told me this month like he was he was normal like in regards of he he was a um 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 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 in the regards of and again it sounds i i 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 the the facts of like you you 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, learning, teaching me how to drive. Counter surveillance. You learned all this stuff.

Yeah, like growing up, like I started learning it. 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 park, you're learning about yourself and you're hanging out with your friends. And I remember one day, me and my friends were in a park. We've managed to get some cider, got drunk.

I've gone home, I'm being sick. And the cider was in my school backpack. And my school backpack was left in a bush next to where we lived in this little fields. And some old lady walking a dog, found the backpack, opened backpack open 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 can you bring your son down and obviously probably want to scare him a bit and

not drink so my mum takes me there to the police station sit in the 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 um stepdad comes around like he did every every now and again like every other week and stuff and and um 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 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 starts to have quite a big impact on your perception of the world and what people are and your perception of loyalty to other human beings. That becomes your normal, right? That is, 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 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 what was it too overwhelming i mean what can you remember what went through your

head i think at that age it's very exciting um it's very cowboys and indians yeah and then you're you're around these men because bear in mind this isn't just him now it's his other men that they're living their lives like a million miles an hour they've got a fragrant disregard for law it 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 i mean

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 and i didn't sucked into that mindset as a kid because I didn't have the maturity. And I didn't see anything else. And this is why I'm so passionate about today. I genuinely understand when young people make these poor life choices, where their mind's 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 on British Telecom. You only know what you know. And suddenly if your life life that lens gets bought in

and everyone else outside that world's abnormal yeah everyone else is abnormal like your life these people are normal and everyone else is abnormal 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 polsh 911 and it was a limited edition car. There was 200 of them at that point in this country. 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 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 they're sheep? And he said, they all like sheep and and I didn't know what he was what he meant and I 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 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 um 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 and that and again as a kid when i started doing 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, And your life becomes dictated to you 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 allowing 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. Burglaring someone's house, big no-no. 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 is the system yes yes so even within that

sort of I guess criminal activity there's a code yeah there is 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 are 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 treatment in prison compared to people who did lesser crimes? I don't know is that? Yeah a hundred percent like a hundred percent 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, 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, 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. 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 happened. We can't put you in a young offenders institution. You're going to go up on a wing. Are you 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. They're far more harder to contain.

They cause more issues to the prison service. So they were worried, I'm going to go into this prison wing 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'd go on there. Because again, I was taught how to conduct myself 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 but in many ways I mean it's fascinating to hear you say that because in many ways that 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, if 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. Obviously, your father wasn't there. So this is a new male figure in your life who is someone to idolize, I guess, someone to look up to.

Of course, you're going to end up. 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. except full responsibility for every decision I've ever made in my life,

good and bad. Like 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 um and it wasn't like, we wasn't Robin 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 like, and because again, you don't, my cop-out mechanism years ago was I've never hurt no one. Never physically hurt no one. No, I've never killed 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 hurting anyone 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 never forget, I was in a maximum security prison

in 2000 and it was like 2007, 2008 called Full Sutton, which is one of my, it is the highest security prison in the country. And I was on a victim awareness course and there was this old lady that come in, the chaplaincy was running victim awareness. And I and never forget

her name was called june and her husband or they they basically over christmas their house was burglarized the burglar stole all of their um 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 right because i was on june side and and that's how warped your mindset is.

Like, one of the guys said, if I would have seen him do that, I would have beat him up. If I would have seen him come around your house and I would have pulled him out and we all felt sorry for June because she was human.

Do you know what I mean? Like, she was an old lady of someone I was brought up to respect. She was a female and then I remember like, it's bizarre how when I look back on it.

It's a different set of rules, right? 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 he said, 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 analyzing your life and the destructive nature of what I've done. 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 that I look back at my life and like sometimes today, like people laud me as being an inspiration, and I'm not. I'm probably making up for all the wrong I've done in my life, and that drives me today because it's probably an inherent subconscious guilt I've got from the stuff I've done in my past. John, I've heard you speak before, and you must have, especially where your life is today, and we're going to get to all of that. 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 i want it's a real um there's real authenticity in the way you're telling it this 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, if I could define, like I was, 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 of my life and now i perceive the world um 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 that I was a grown adult I was like 25 26 years old I was sitting in maximum security prisons um the way I perceive life like I feel ashamed that I used to see life through the lens um like a hierarchy people weaker than others and people were stronger than others and and um like being in prison that like we 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 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 serving 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'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 uh like when when my life changed and i come out of prison i was so determined to um 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 want 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 the all the wrong that i've done in my life um and it was i remember i used to say yes to everything and my really close friend terry said like you you cannot keep doing it like you can't keep driving across the country driving a thousand fifteen hundred miles a month going to all these community centers doing all these talks every single day because you're gonna end up making yourself really sick and even if you crack it when 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 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 Just because you made certain decisions, whatever those decisions are, doesn't need to define you for the rest of your life. We have the opportunity to change. All of us do, no matter where we think we currently are. guess if your situation seems insurmountable I think change is always available to us and I guess for 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 we I don't know does that mean you thought you were going in for life that so so when um and what were you doing what 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 a hundred times worse than the man that was locked up. Come out, wanted even more money. To me, change, rehabilitation was was weakness so i can remember as a young boy growing up that they'd be casually having conversations about someone who went to prison that come out um they didn't see perceive it as changing they saw it as a person being broken

the system had broken them right 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'd probably going to end up going back to prison. So I made a decision to go abroad, which I did. I went holland and i went to spain because i had like friends and family there uh come back to united kingdom after like a year briefly it was only a week for a birthday party i come back and i i end up meeting up with one of my stepdad's best friends um 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 no but you said no initially i said no initially no because to me the risk and reward didn't work out it was like i didn't i i looked at it and i was like i i didn't like being in the united kingdom i thought the risks of the amount of money and 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 chairman of the parole board, I'll never forget it, looked at me and said to me in the interview, you could have come off, I'll never forget this,

you could have come off the campus of Cambridge University today and sat in front of me for a job interview. But no, 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 um 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 the one of the biggest surveillance operations that the Metropolitan Police was running in London. Three days later, I get arrested by 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 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 like it's a 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 and I go into this unit there was eight prisoners um sheikah buhamza who's fighting 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 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 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 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 um that that's how i witnessed perceived them at the beginning and as the and i didn't talk to them i didn't talk to them the only one that i spoke them. The only one that I spoke to was Sheikha Abu Hamza. And I remember like 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, like nothing at all. I had no clothes, like other than what I had that day

and stuff, what I got arrested in. And so I had a little bag of stuff because my mum, I remember, my mum dropped me some stuff off at a police station. But you've got limited stuff. You've got no shower gels or anything. And he said to me, do you want, 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 he put some cartons of milk, some Weetabix, prison issue Weetabix and a massive copy of the Quran on my bed. And it was one of the biggest books I've ever seen. And I took it out and I said, thank you very much. But I'm okay. Thank you. I'm like,

all due respects. 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 like the tiny little landing and they had a you had a pool table a rowing machine an excise 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, and I, I, I wanted to understand what motivates someone 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 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 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'd 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 and then i got sentenced and then i went to woodage crown court and i got two life sentences and the 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 20 i was 24 years old he said to my like 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 people from helping me break out. That had an effect on the judge. And the judge knew I was in that high security unit. He knew all the costs 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 say 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 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, they're looking and they're smiling at each other and they're patting each other on the back.

And I just didn't show any weakness whatsoever. Like, cause I just thought I'm not going to give you the satisfaction. And I laughed and I just didn't show any weakness whatsoever. Like, cause I just thought I'm not going to give you the satisfaction. And I, and I, and I laughed and I just smiled at them cause 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. Cause 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 um and i'm not going to sit in there for the rest of my life um 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. 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, because in my head, 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, 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 my freedom back. 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 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 haven't 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 going back to the cycling.

We're talking about the start, which you'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 two 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. 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 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 bullion at Heathrow Airport. So that massive cloud hung over me as a kid, as a young man, as a man. 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 that, because it's not your norm. That you would, like most people would. 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 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 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 was just another obstacle to overcome? There was another obstacle to overcome. I didn't like, 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 Yeah, that goes back to when I was 18, 19 years old. Well, I was 19. And it was all about... So basically the prison officers tried to take my clothes off me

to put me in a special suit when I was 19 years old in prison, which is bright yellow. So it's to identify you in the prison as you're walking around as an escaped 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 risk, 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 of rules and regulations so it's like the law

and the 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 got you've been allocated a wing cleaning job and again my my disdain for them I was like there's no way I'm going to be a wing cleaner so he said you refuse 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 the real world. So I used to listen to the radio and I used to read newspapers every day, staying connected 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 and and i wasn't going to be one of these people so i made that decision so i made sure that i stayed 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 and there was a book on the trolley it's about Nelson Mandela and I started reading it and there was a there was a passage in it when when he was in prison in robin 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 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 he stopped him from smoking so if he smoked yeah they could take that away and then he would yeah 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 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 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 and that was 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 um i didn't take exercise outside let's just just say that again so for one whole year i stayed in that room and if i i won't i won'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. It was me being defiant. And it's interesting. I'll tell you why this is fascinating, because this is something where my life's progressed. Two years ago, I did a talk to some students studying criminology at Nottingham Trent University. And it was funny because I didn't know this at the time. We was in this auditorium, it's pitch black. You can't see anything. 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, 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 um they the students and him found it very fascinating 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 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 um 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 in 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 um yeah it returning 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 see that as being it can be what 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 we need an element of control otherwise how would you have survived for one whole year in that room and 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 like I lost weight I got I got a six-pack that 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. 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 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 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 because you have no frame of reference, right? None.

But this is quite important as well because it's then you don't insert limitations on what you physically can achieve. So obviously when I did what I did in that cell, when I was in that segregation unit and I started working out, you got no, like you said, you got no frame, no point of reference. I wasn't training with other people. I didn't realize how fit I was.

I lost lots of weight. The exercises got easier. I didn't realize how good or where I was at. Get released from prison after that experience. Training just fell off a cliff. Stopped 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 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 through that prison system right 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.

Straight back in. Straight back in, million miles an hour. And then you go back into prison. And again, 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 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. 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. I'm focusing on my trial.

That's sort of that situation of the stress of that. 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 security,

maximum security prison. I'll get moved away from those eight people in Belmarsh and get moved to Full Sutton. So when I get moved to Full Sutton, 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 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 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 normalised to it.

And I wasn't involved in the drug culture. I didn't take drugs whilst I was in prison. 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, but in prison, it was very, very violent. In that prison in particular start training going through the process out in the exercise yard 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's 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 used to have a badminton competition.

They used to have a football competition. They had a powerlifting competition and they had a fitness competition. And the fitness competition, it was called Superstars. And 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 officer works on the on the

wings so he's a bit of a lad really really into his fitness and training. And he looked, he looked the part and he was the one, like 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. And 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 superstman competition, which was a powerlifting competition. I 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 bur 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 like i was you still had that mindset that you've grown up with yeah 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 really fit and stuff like you're the fittest guy in the prison but it didn't mean anything and the next day the we did the strong

man and it was um 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 in the whole business i was the i was the fittest in the context of the circuit and then when i did the when i did the strongman competition i was like the third strongest and bear in mind some of them men were male man it's like i was like a little dwarf midget in relation to them like some of them had biceps bigger than my head like 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 and 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 walked through it. Like no one, no one even come close to me.

And the strongman competition, same thing kind of happened again. But I'm just ticking off the days. I'm just ticking off the days. I'm just ticking off the days. I'm doing the cell circuits. I'm doing everything that's being asked of me. I'm going on all the courses. I'm ticking all the boxes. Are you going on all the courses that they ask 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 there. Yes, 100%. You tend to find when system. You want to play that game. I'm going to give you what you want so I can get out of there. Yes, 100%. I was, you tend to find when you're in that, because I'm in a maximum security prison.

I've been in, 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.

You've like- It's like school. Yeah, exactly like school. And I'm not, 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 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, it, 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 of that high security prison

and they moved me to a lower security prison. 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 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 and X, Y, Z, they have to progress you through 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 the judge and say, well, he's done everything that's been asked for. And the judge go, yeah, 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 it was working. You were getting downgraded. I got moved out of that high 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 a a now i was in

a b so i'm looking um at my tariff because you get a minimum tariff i'd serve a minimum of five years on that life sentence but when you 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 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. Just taking a quick break in today's conversation to give a shout out to the sponsors of today's show. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. To be really clear, I absolutely prefer that people get all of their nutrition from foods, but for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, and digestive enzymes. So if you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy

to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. 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 is such a fascinating story for I think 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 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 i would say in in my case it was it was trauma um because i had never lost anyone in my life so when i was growing up um and when i was a young man i heard people dying i heard of people dying people getting

murdered people going to prison um but predominantly deaf situations and i was immune from that that never happened to me or anyone that i cared and loved for that that was someone else and then when my best mate died or best friend from it being from from childhood basically um died in a car crash committing a robbery in the netherlands i'd never experienced emotion like it in my life. Like I could, 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, 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.

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 and I just remembered I had this gold Rolex watch on my wrist and it was a Rolex Daytona and it had a black doll face and it was worth £16,000 and I had it sitting 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 like 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, he 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 on ITV news. And I remember watching news and they showed CCTV clips of the final moments 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 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 for that life and and the following morning i come out and i went down for breakfast and no one obviously knew within prison what had happened um and i was sitting in this communal eating area and there was these other inmates um talking to each other and i and i was i was zoned out like i just i wasn't even engaged in the conversation and they was talking to each other and I was zoned out. Like I was 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 with 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. I was trapped. I was literally physically trapped. I couldn't just get up and get out. And before, it was the system. It was prison officers i didn't want to engage with and i i detested and i didn't like but now suddenly it kind of flipped and it was the people that that that were people in the situation with me as prisoners um where before i 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 generally, 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 that 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.

It's, you know, 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 current 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 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. want to be where I was at and I wanted to do something different with my life um 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 that that aided me um to to find that belonging and find 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 because you

don't know how you're going to do that. So walk us through what happens. 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 is actually in many ways got you out of prison and and completely transform your life and now you're transforming many other people's lives with this story it's incredible on so many levels but but what happens so i um when 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 conversation 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 with my life I don't want to be surrounded by negative people I want I want to dis something else with 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 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 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. I, um, 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 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. 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 fill. 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. Done a million in a month. So I wrote the first million a month because it was my therapy. 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 thought that's actually quite a cool thing's equivalent to run across the Atlantic on the rail machine. So I went back and I thought that's actually quite a cool thing to do, like run across the Atlantic, say I've run 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 two million meters over the two months I rode 10,000 meters um hard one day and I stopped and the screen paused at the 10,000 meters to 10k and this amazing man called Darren Davis which is a prison officer that works in the 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 came 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. I knew I could beat two of the records there and then. 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 coming to my life.

And I had this ability for endurance sport. And Darren gave me those pieces of paper and I went back to my cell and I don't know why, but he 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. 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 the story and told him, and he said, look, I have genuinely believed this could help John turn his life around. 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,

Darren said it 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 RAM machine and 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. 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 this 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, like 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 library, 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 wanted to become, 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 can relate to them. And I'd never seen this group of people before that I could relate to on a level. The only people I could ever relate to were people that did what I did years ago. And 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 ended 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, I've changed. Like, I've genuinely changed. So in your head, you've changed.

You've done all this great stuff in prison. Do 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, 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, like 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 I set, the more it encouraged me. But Darren, my relationship with Darren in his 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. 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 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 um 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 like the fact that he formed this relationship with me um 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 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 you can still be you can be a successful person I've got absolute confidence 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 he said darren said some stuff to me amongst the records and when i broke the world

record for the the most amount of meters rode in 24 hours um 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 to be able to suffer. And when you put those two things together in a sporting prowess and the ability to suffer, you'll be unstoppable. Do not come back.

And that lived with me to today. I always had that as a mantra. When I race 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 in my life 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 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 like that every as many prison officers as possible get to read my book um like last year or sorry this year at a pe conference for physical education um 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 I just want to be able to get that message out and let people know that. And with the judge, I just wanted to get that across to him that that day you was wrong.

I did change, 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. He saw I was a high risk to the public still. Even though I did all the stuff athletically, he still believed I was still a 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 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. 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? And I think there's a lot of risk aversion. And I think it's starting to change in regards to probation now, 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. If you would have let John out, if John wouldn't have changed in 2009 and John got released in 2012 as the old John, I would have carried on reoffending. And I would have.

I'm not going to lie. I would have because I hadn't actually changed. And there are people like that, but there are also people that have changed. It's a challenge. I understand it's very challenging because it's picking it. And again, that's what the difficulty is within the prison system. But reform in the regards of a broader picture, I go back into prison.

I speak to inmates. I'm a great believer in prevention as a cure 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 then when you go into prison and you, and I, 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 street so there's no rehabilitation going on um and that's why i've been such a big advocate of like i i think prison officers do a tremendously difficult job like with the resources they've got but you i i it's a challenge because you need to put that investment into these places but then also you need to put the investment in to prevention of stopping people from going into these places in the first time and then obviously you're going to 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 reoffending because i think if you go into 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 and and sport educational learning become personal trainers whatever that is into this this 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 nonsored Ironman triathlete. Is that right? There's one other now. There's one other now. There's one other.

You were the first. No, no, no. I was the second. We just transpired. There was one in America, but I'm one of very few. One of very few. The only one in Britain. The only one in Britain.

Okay. And so, 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? 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 walked out, 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 you get released, after being there for a long time, so I was in there for eight years. I served eight years. So eight Christmases, eight birthdays, eight summers. You'll be very surprised. It's quite a big anti-climax because you build these dates up in your head and you get it. And then bear in

mind, 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 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 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. 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 anticlimax. So I come out, I get picked up, I get in a car. I haven't been in a car for years. The first thing I always do is stop at a garage and go in and buy something. Because you don't have choice. Now, we went out for dinner that night after I got out of prison. And I was with my mom. We went out for dinner.

my mum and we went out for dinner and I remember one of my friends was very surprised by my social skills my social skills were quite good please thank you and the way I was I didn't seem thrown and I thought

I've adjusted, nothing's really thrown me, I'm cool, 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 like i was indecisive like what colour do I get because I wasn't used to being able to get by green or yellow

or red because you couldn't have black because it looked like a prison officer on the cut and it was little things like that

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 so straight away you're like right yeah straight on it I'm going to be an athlete. Now this, 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 realize the impact that 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 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. 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 the fat with them. In the changing rooms, going out. Now what they saw was this guy that just turned up, wasn't, never really rowed 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 that 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 but if i would have uprooted my whole life and gone abroad it that's what it felt like it felt like I just planted myself in this whole new community um in rowing um made all these amazing friends and and they basically become my sort of support um network like people that I'll go and hang out with and so my old friends are completely disconnected from them that 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 gonna have any friends when I first get out but then overnight I made this whole social circle I'm 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. And what was quite sort of, I'll never forget this. Obviously my dream when I was in prison was to be an athlete and wanted to be like the best athlete I could be. 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 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 rate 18. So you're going 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've got the Olympic champion sitting next 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 i 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, especially when I joined the rowing club and I made these amazing friends and they all did these incredible things. Like they won medals at the Olympics.

They traveled around the world. They worked in hospitals. They climbed Mount Everest. They rode across an ocean. Do you know what I mean? They did these incredible things and feats with their lives. And I've come out 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 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 a row of him maybe some people would have gone no i don't but

they built these friendships up with me um and actually i just become john 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. Again, I didn't, no one made me do it. I mean, John, it's incredible on so many levels. I mean, look, obviously I don't know the people you befriended in the growing 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, 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'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 a club all the way up to Olympics. And I was very fortunate. 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. And to go into that high performance environment and 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 it I'll 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 no one shunned you. They just wanted to help you. And I imagine you would have been very honest. But I'm looking forward to reading it. 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 rower. You've joined this club. You're training with these guys. But you don't be a pro rower 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 I I'm a realist um 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 through 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's 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 but i wish i'd learned this as a kid that's what i used to do i sit there watching right at night i'm in two hours a day and i'm watching oh that's how you get in the water that's how you catch the water you know i'm i'm obsessed it's it's you but you

don't realize how technical it is until you start doing it it's it's challenging and 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 olympics and you realize that like you're not a million miles off them um but technically I was light years um and I knew I I knew I took up the sport too late to get to that level so when I was in prison I used to watch trans world sport on trans world on channel four so I used to watch that program and on it one day was a sport called iron man which was a triathlon and they were showing the world championships in kona and i remember watching this program um 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. Right. Well, 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. But you row at a crew at your ability level, really. So I'm not going to be put on a boat with three other Olympic champions if I'm really bad novice. Do you know what 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 where you could row in a boat. 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. 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 um 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 there was an entry 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. 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 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

Sabatine, start watching videos. I teach myself to basically swim watching these videos and I'm in Ironman UK so Ironman UK six weeks out 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 Ironman UK, I had never ridden a bike for 180K in my life. The furthest I'd ever ridden a 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 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

you can't it's 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 now. And I did Ironman UK and I've 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 Ironman UK and I've finished across the finish line and and I loved it like 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 going to I'm going to be a triathlete I'm going to 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 Ironman told her how quick I did it and stuff and I said like this is the rowing history I've

had them in 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 train your body correctly. And that was all I needed to hear. And then I went off. I made a lot of mistakes though. Like it wasn't, it went, 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. I got really ill. Injured? Not injured, but more internally.

Like when I got sick and I got a virus, I raced, I did a full distance Ironman on a virus and it sent me over, 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. I didn't have the skill set 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 Achilles heel. So because I could suffer and because I could hurt myself, like 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 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 an ergo again. The splits get quicker and 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 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. I don't think I'm special at all. I think everyone is inherently gifted at something. Like I was having this conversation that while I go over secretary in an office, I'm in the receptionist. So I always like talking to people. I'm in 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's what you're doing and she's she's typing and she's talking to me and i said i'll do i'll

do triathlon do ironman she's. 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 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 a little while ago i had a meeting at 10 downing street

yeah and trees and maze policy advisors were there and we was talking about opening up schools over the six weeks 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 it 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. 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 quick. 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 in 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 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 over training got ill um fixed that got better at sport but then what really changed my life was when I started going into schools my my my my story

started coming out when I when I made my story come, 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. And then I got an offer from the opportunities to do a school talk in Essex. 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. And me and 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 so now you're standing 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 i genuinely didn't understand what he meant and he said my dad's coming out of prison like my mom's brought me up my sister i don't want to go to prison and he started crying and honestly i've i've i've never experienced anything like it in my life i genuinely haven't i've never it was 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 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 said you don't need to be good at sport you could be a messer you could be a physio you 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 and help you and stuff so and I stayed in contact with George Fryer and I used to phone up the school um and and Simon Cox had 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 yeah I'm not there like 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 um I realized then that that was my calling in life and and then I realized I had this awareness again in my life you you constantly having you 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 and influential position where not only could I have the 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 honour

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 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 and laud me these other people are capable of doing what I've done I'm no different to these people. I'm exactly the same as them. So if you think this about me and you look at me 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 said he's a piece of shit and 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 of going into prisons and, um, it's been a life-changing experience for me. It really has like when the story I was telling you about earlier, like when I, when I went into, uh, an STC, which is a secure training center. So it's, it's technically a prison, but they can't call it a prison and it's for children. And, and I walked into this, 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 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 tried to de-institutionalize it as much as they possibly can

so that 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. Yeah. 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 led her, again, only knowing what she knows and the behaviour she's expressed from the experiences that she's been through

from basically the day that she was born. Yeah. You know, I can see where this drive and why it's so strong, why you want to go and use your story, use your life for good. It's emotional talking about it because I think back to your life and you didn't have that, 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? 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 and so many have so little um to the degree where like children the 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 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 the mums and dads haven't got the money or they haven't got the food to eat. And then you start having all this stuff of, 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 um on incarcerating young people like the chairman of brentford football club coming on a visit to felt 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 offenders 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 tax

power 75 000 pounds 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 justice system over half. So how can it make sense? It costs 35, 40,000 pounds 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 when I speak to my friends, there's just no awareness of it in society that this is a problem. You see people that they're talking about when we leave the EU and it's going to cost £39 billion. And you think we're spending £18 billion a year on re-offending. And you look at this and you think, how do people not see these numbers? And 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 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 you know it's all 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. We're all on this earth at the same moment in time in history. 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 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 and exactly it's gets 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 I think we better start wrapping this up but I would love to continue this at some point and have like 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 maybe we can do that at some point but I think in terms of this conversation um you couldn't make up your story I told you this before you came in and I know it's 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 stuff um it's just it's a very strange sensation because i am me so it's hard for me to have look out yeah 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. 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 don't, I'm not bitter about anything. I'm not hateful, resentful. Has that been hard for you not to be bitter? At the beginning, like 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 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 I'm not a religious man but there was one event before we close up where I was at a

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 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 this, 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, 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?

As mad as that seems, what I'm trying to do 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 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. There's no doubt that your story is so powerful that it is making an 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 well-being. 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 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 I would always go back to it goes back to self-belief and not setting limits and 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 you've got life and if you've got life live it because if you 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, 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 um 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 um john do people want to feedback to you 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 yeah 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 on instagram and twitter well john look thanks for the time today good luck in your race next weekend. Thank you. 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 definitely do a part two. I think there's so much more to talk about, but good luck with everything you do. Thank you very much. You're making a huge difference, buddy. Thank you.

Thank you. Cheers, John. Bye. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. So what did you think? Is that not one of the most incredible stories that you have ever heard? There are so many things to take away from John's story, not least that it really does not matter where you are right now or how bad you think things are you can always turn things around as always do you have a think about something no matter how small that resonated with you in today's conversation that you can start to apply in

your own life immediately please do let john and i know what you thought of our conversation today on social media John is on Twitter at John McAvoy 2 and on Instagram at JohnnyMacAC3 please try and use the hashtag FBLM if you can so that I can easily read your comments to see everything John and I discussed today as well as some fascinating links, please do go to the show notes page for this episode, drchatterjee.com forward slash 91. On it, you will find links to the blog that John spoke about in our conversation today, that he wrote after joining the rowing club, where he explains his story, more interesting articles and videos from the media about him, his story, more interesting articles and videos from the media about him, as well as links to his inspirational book. You'll see all of that on drchastity.com forward slash 91. Now, if this

conversation has inspired you to make 2020 your year, please do consider picking up a copy of my brand new book, Feel Better in 5. It is a plan for you to take control of your life and your well-being in five-minute chunks. It looks after your physical, mental, and emotional health. And the world's leading expert in human behavior, Professor BJ Fogg, has said that it is simply one of the best habit change programs he has ever seen, deceptively simple but remarkably effective. The plan in the book works for absolutely everyone, whether you have an existing complaint you would like help with or whether you simply want to optimize your health and well-being. You can pick up Feel Better in 5 in all the usual places as a paperback, ebook or as an audiobook

which I am narrating. Don't forget to celebrate my new book this month I will be hitting the road and speaking live and doing book signings in various cities around the UK so do check out dates at drchatterjee.com forward slash events and don't forget that this conversation is available to watch in full on YouTube. So do check out my YouTube channel and please do subscribe. If you have friends and family who you feel would benefit from this conversation, but don't like listening to audio podcasts, please do let them know about my YouTube channel. The best way to find it is to go to drchatterjee.com forward slash YouTube. If you enjoy my weekly shows, please do consider leaving a review on Apple

Podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. You can also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Or you can simply do it the good old-fashioned way and tell your friends about the show. Your support is very much appreciated. A big thank you to Richard Hughes for editing and Vedanta Chastji for producing this week's podcast. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes.

Always worth it. Because when you feel better. You live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.