How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Ade Adeptian - ‘At 16 I’d seen more violence than anyone should ever see’

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

TW: contains references to racist abuse and racially-aggravated violence. This is probably one of my favourite episodes of all time, and I don’t say that lightly.  The former championship wheelchair basketball star turned TV presenter, Ade Adepitan, came into the How To Fail studio with an open heart and a moving story to tell. He blew us all away. Ade talks about growing up working-class, Black and disabled and how the intersection of these left him feeling he had to prove himself twice as much. He talks about letting his parents down and a family estrangement that lasted 10 years. We chat about the impact of leaving Nigeria, aged three, and how that has continued to shape his outlook on life and we talk about his own self-perceived failure to protect his friend from a racist attack as a teenager - and how what happened changed all their lives. We also talk about a 2005 BBC documentary where he broke down in front of cameras while trying to climb a volcano and his fear that he had let himself and the disabled community down. AND - in a first for How To Fail -his failure to take a compliment You can catch Ade presenting Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympic Games this summer. As always, I’m desperate to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio and Mix Engineer: Gulliver Tickell and Josh Gibbs Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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abuse. Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast that flips the traditional interview format on its head and asks its guests to talk about the things that went wrong rather than right. Would you like a celebrity agony aunt or uncle helping you? What? Of course you would. Each week my guest and I answer your questions and celebrate your failures in failing with friends.

It'll be something like this one with Adi. I want to say to my son, you know, I'll be there. If you mess up, I'll be there, you know, and I'll still love you and I'll still care for you and I'll still find a way to make it work. And we need to have that arm wrapped around the whole of society. Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes or look out for my call-outs once a month on Instagram. Adi Adeputan is a TV presenter, documentary maker and championship wheelchair basketball

player. He's been awarded an MBE for his services to disability sport and in 2020 earned himself a place in the power list of the most influential black British people. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, he contracted polio at 15 months. He lost the use of his left leg and sustained damage to the right, ultimately leaving him unable to walk. In search of a better future for their son, Addy's parents moved to the UK when he was three. He grew up in East London and was determined to become an international athlete, initially against the wishes of his mother and father. But by 2004, he was part of the great British basketball team that won bronze at the

summer Paralympics in Athens. The following year, it was his winning shot that scooped the British team the Paralympic World Cup. He later moved into TV presenting where his confident, engaging energy made him a natural. His travel programmes and documentaries have seen him climb a Nicaraguan volcano, almost be kidnapped in Mexico, and narrowly escape a fatal shooting in Nigeria. His sports punditry is arguably less fraught with danger. And from the 28th of August, he'll be back on our screens presenting Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympic Games. I feel I have to prove myself in every room I enter, he says. As a black, working-class person in a wheelchair,

people have made assumptions about my intelligence and my capabilities for my whole life. Ade, welcome to How To Fail. Elizabeth, that was amazing. Where did you get all that from? I'm just blown away listening to it. I'm so relieved because I feel nervous every single time I read out an introduction that I've got some salient fact horribly wrong.

No, there was stuff that you put in there that I couldn't even remember. And as you were saying, it was like, oh yeah, I did say that. The one thing that did make me chuckle actually is when you talked about the black power list, because there's a black power list and there was a disabled power list. And every time I think of them, I'm always like, I should have been way higher up on those lists. What number were you? How dare they put me so low on those lists. The Black Power list, I think I was quite low. I was probably in the 30s or 40s.

Outrageous. And I think I just made the top 10 in the disability power list, but that's the competitive side of me. But that was so interesting because actually before we started recording, we were talking about that competitive mindset and how as an elite athlete, you have that mindset to go to when you are engaged with the sport that you're playing, but how it doesn't always serve you in other aspects of your life. Can you expand on that a bit? Yeah, sure.

I think we were talking about it because we mentioned about how I met Michael Jordan and how he can, as great a basketball player as he is, you can feel that he can be quite closed off. And I get that. I remember when I was at the height of competition, one of my friends used to say to me, you know what happens every sort of like year before you're about to go to a Paralympics, you usually end up splitting up with your partner because you just turned into such an asshole. And I was like, nah, that's not right.

And then I split up with so many partners just before tournaments. But it's, you go into a place that's quite selfish. It's really intense. A deep place where it's all about winning. It's all about doing what it takes to win. But what I would caveat with is generally, certainly with myself. I wouldn't expect anything from the people who may seem, who I may seem hard on that I wouldn't expect from myself. You push yourself to such limits where, you know, I've come off training with my hands bleeding, you know, throwing

up, shooting until I was almost in the days. You just, you do everything to get yourself to that level. And it's only when you come out of the sporting world and you hang around with everyday people, hopefully that doesn't sound like I'm putting people down, but you hang around with people in everyday people, people in Zivvy street that you just kind of realize, actually that sort of way of living is not normal. It's just not a place that's conducive. You use it in small amounts, but if you want to have friends and have relationships, yeah, it's not, it's not the right place to go to. And you are married now.

So there's a good relationship that has survived and you, and you're a father. So you've got a toddler. Yes. Do you sometimes have to catch yourself and wind yourself back in if you're playing games with him? Not really. I understand where he's a toddler and where he's at. There are moments where he does things that are just like, you know, what toddlers are

like, they'll wind you up. He's got so much to say for himself, which is great. He learned it off his mother and myself. He actually is probably more competitive when we compete, when we do stuff now than I am. I used to think these things were learned behaviour, but actually I'm starting to wonder whether it's genetic because he is madly competitive. I want to come back to the younger version of you, but before I do, I wonder if I can ask you about the Paralympics and how excited you are to be returning to the commentary box. Is it something that you can now fully enjoy rather than feeling the stress of actually

participating? Yes and no. I mean, it's still nerve-racking presenting and being a part of where the Paralympics is at now, because I feel like I've been on this incredible journey with the Paralympics. When I was like 11, 12 years old, I'd never heard of the Paralympics. I didn't know it existed. When I started competing and learning about it, me and my friends all dreamt of going to the Paralympics. But one of the things we were always frustrated with is the lack of coverage, but more so the lack of respect that we weren't being given as just athletes. It was that usual tokenistic stuff of the guys in wheelchairs. When we had training sessions and we would go to sports centers or youth clubs and we'd

have to beg for spaces on the court and compete against that or try and convince people to say, yeah, okay, I know you've got badminton, but we're basketball players. We play serious sport. Let us have our game there or in a youth club. Getting people to just take us seriously. You go through that whole stage of like, we train really hard. This is a great sport. This is an exciting sport. To suddenly, fast forward the clock 20 years later and you get to 2012, and suddenly we're getting millions of people watching the Paralympics and presenting on Channel 4 with Claire Balding, the nation's sweetheart. You've got Oscar Pistorius at the time, one of the most well-known Paralympians in the world, it's bonkers. I mean, Elizabeth,

can you imagine? It was literally like going from the Stone Age into Stella, into another universe. And sometimes for me, when I'm working on the Paralympics, even today, I feel like it's an out of body experience. We're at the launch for the Paralympics and Channel Forward spent all this money on it. You've got all these big sponsors and you're just like, wow, I can't believe I'm seeing all of this. But then you've also know you've got a job to do. But I feel a little bit of pressure in the fact that I want the Paralympics to do well. I want people to really love it. I want people to enjoy

it as much as I enjoy it. And so in those terms, there is a little bit of pressure. Still putting pressure on yourself. I mean, I love it. It's part of what makes you great and not an asshole, because there's that constant sense of, is this good enough? Your first failure belongs to your youth. And so before we get into it, because I know it must be a difficult one to talk about, I'd like to know a bit more about your parents coming to London from Nigeria and how much of a difficult choice that was for them. I contracted polio when I was 15 months old and I was born in Lagos, Nigeria. I've got an older sister, she's just over a year older than me, and she was born with Down syndrome.

When I contracted polio, my parents realized they went from having one kid with special needs to suddenly two in Lagos, Nigeria in the 70s. No infrastructure, no real knowledge of how to take care of kids with disabilities. And my parents realized that in order for us to get on, we had to leave Nigeria. And so the first difficult decision for them was to leave their careers behind. Both of them were teachers. My mum was in a primary school, my dad, I think, was in a secondary school, and he had an opportunity to become a head teacher. He gave that opportunity up because his sister had fallen ill, and so he took a year out to look after his sister.

She'd recovered. He was trying to get his career back on track again. And then suddenly I'm born with polio. And so, yeah, again, he has to put that on hold. They just thought, look, we have to get out of the country. We have to go to a country where there's going to be more opportunities. There's going to be a better infrastructure for children with disabilities. They used all the resources they had to move us to the UK, but unfortunately they didn't have enough to get both of us over. I think there were problems with visas, also once you come to the UK, trying to get a house that was big enough to have all of us there. And in the end, it was decided that they could only bring one of us over initially

and that they would at some point bring the other one over later. And so they had the agonizing decision to choose between their two children as to who to leave behind. Whoever was going to be left behind would stay with my dad's sister and my dad's family and they would be looked after. But still, you know, to not trouble with your family. And I was the one who was chosen because my disability was physical. My mom said I was crawling around on the floor.

It was really evident that I wasn't going to be able to walk. And it was developing country at the time. Lagos was, you know, the floor was extremely dirty. Everywhere you'd go, there was like open sewers and stuff like that. The sewage system was still open. You know, it was just a place where if someone like me spent so much time on the ground, I probably wouldn't last that long because of all the kind of diseases that I was going to catch. So from a practical reason, I was chosen to come to the UK, but that weighs heavy. It weighs heavy on you as a family, really, really heavy.

My parents, in a way, I mean, I don't blame them, but they would always say to me, you can't mess up, you can't fail because we've left your sister behind to give you this opportunity. So you've got to make it. And they wouldn't say it in those direct words, but I know that was what was required of me. I knew that from probably four or five years old. I knew that I couldn't fail. You come to East London, to Newham, and a heads up now for any listeners that your first failure involves a racist attack. I can only imagine how racist that environment was. So we're talking late 70s,

early 80s. Yeah, early 80s. Will you tell us about your first failure? Yeah, tough times, very, very different times. I mean, racism was far more overt than, you know, it was commonplace for people to shout the N word or the P word when you were out in the streets. And I had quite a tight group of friends, a tight friendship group. There was three of us, you know, that hung out all the time. You know, one of my friends was Pakistani, the other one was West Indian, but he looked Indian and I'm African. And we hung out, we had a laugh, we were just quite

quirky, but you knew on any given day, you had to be prepared that you were either going to get into some sort of physical altercation, or there was going to be some sort of verbal abuse. And you had to be prepared for that. I knew by the time I was probably 16, I'd seen more violence than anyone of that age or from those years should ever see. But on this one particular day, we used to go for lunch out of school for lunch. All those schools started to like warn kids saying, look, you shouldn't, we

should stay in for school dinners or even have your packed lunch in school, because there was always some incident that would happen. My school, secondary school was in Stratford, but we used to go to Upton Park quite a lot to Coins Market to get fish and chips or all sorts of different whatever options they were there. And it was just nice to have the freedom to leave school. But a lot of the kids from my school got banned from Queen's Market because there was always some sort of physical fight really going on. We decided to go in the opposite direction to a place called Green Gate.

And we were getting chip buddies or something like that. And then there was a group of boys who I knew a little bit, you know, you seen them around and you know, we played football with them and they were always a little bit leery and yeah, racist in some ways in some ways, came and they saw one of my friends who is quite tall, he was really outgoing, just an amazing, amazing guy, just that really, really funny, sometimes just a bit silly as well and a bit embarrassing because he was so loud, but just a nice, nice guy. And they made a beeline for him

and they started calling him all sorts of names. And it was just quite shocking because we're like 11, 12 years old. These guys were probably like 14, 15, bigger and stronger and there was more of them. And my mate responded jokingly and we were like, you know, just calm down. There's no need for any of them. And my mate responded jokingly and we were like, you know, just calm down, there's no need for any of this. And then they started pushing, then they punched him, kicked him

to the ground. And like within, it just started happening in seconds. It went from words to suddenly he was on the floor and just blows and kicks being rained on him. Blood everywhere. I still hear him now, I can hear the screams. I was looking around as adults and no one was coming to help. Everyone was just ignoring us. I was just like, normally I would be in. We were in straight away. It's a punch up, it's a fight, but you're protecting your own. This happened so quickly. It was so vicious. It was just so violent that I froze.

I think some people might have shouted at him or police might have been called and they ran off and he was on the floor. And I just, I really hate myself for not getting in there and not, and I've always felt, I mean, it was over 40 years ago and I feel even now just sad and angry that I didn't do enough to protect my friend. What happened to him was bad. The violence was bad. It was awful. It was disgusting, the racism and all of that. But it's the aftermath. Because he was broken after that. How can you be broken at 11 years old? I mean, what kind of society does that to someone who could, had so much potential, so much joy in them, so much beauty in them, that he became a shadow of himself? We were all traumatized. We still carry that trauma now. He started

dressing in black, shoplifted, went from being the top of the class to the bottom of the class. It was just an awful, awful, awful experience. You say that you are sad and angry at yourself and I am sad and angry that that happened to you and to him, it must have felt so traumatizingly disempowering in multiple ways. When I think back at it now, I mean, we didn't think of it back then, but now what made it harder is we went back to school and we didn't really tell anyone about it. He got cleaned up, he went home, didn't see him back at school for a while, but it was just like our secret. I didn't tell my parents, I didn't tell the teachers. You just didn't have anyone to have an outlet to talk about things like that.

I think even if we did, people would have just said, well, that's how it is right now. You shouldn't have gone there or try and stay out of trouble. It was just an accepted part of life that as young kids, you went through violence and you went through racial, you had to deal with racial violence. And even it's only now, decades later, that I'm trying to process what happened on that day. Don't Drink The Milk is back for season 2, and we've got even more surprising stories that take us through time and around the world. Coming up this season, sex, and lawns? We're back on the road to bring you the hidden histories of sex, drugs, and so much more.

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Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. One of the things that I discovered about you during the course of this research was that before you were a basketball player, you were a powerlifter. You've done your research. Wow, well done. Well done. But I wonder if you think that was related to this incident because you were a powerlifter

when you were 14, 15. Was there part of you that wanted to make yourself really strong? I've always wanted to make myself strong. I think my obsession wasn't with sport, it was with fitness. And the reason why I wanted to be fit and strong is because it meant that I was independent and it meant that I could protect myself. And it's only like in recent years that I've been able to analyze and look back. Being good at sport gave me that physical confidence because I was vulnerable. I walked around on calipers, so my balance wasn't great. I wasn't that quick, so I'm not going to get away if it came to an argument or a dispute. I had to fight. I'm not going to run away from anyone. I'm not going to be

able to escape from anyone. I have to stand up for myself. I couldn't hide. People could see me. I was one of the few black kids around. At the time, I had a strong Nigerian accent and I walked with a physical limp. So to be strong, to be fit helped me. And that was my first and foremost reason for why I got into sport. LESLEY Is it true that you got into wheelchair basketball because someone spotted you in a Tesco shopping trolley being wheeled around by your friends. Very true, yeah.

Tell me that story. Yeah, yeah. That's, so as I said, I couldn't really get around that quickly on my calipers. And it was a time where there was shopping trolleys everywhere and we would just jump in shopping trolleys and we'd just race around the streets just having a great time. And I'd be able to travel long distances with my mates without getting knackered. And there were two physiotherapists who were based in Canyontown and they worked at a school for kids with disabilities called Elizabeth Fry School.

And they'd set up a sports group for kids with disabilities called the Newham Rollers. That was their basketball side of things. And they'd heard about me because I was in the local newspapers, the Newham recorder. I'd done a sponsored walk over all the bridges and they wanted to get hold of me to play in their team, but they weren't quite sure how to. And it just so happened by total coincidence, they lived a couple of streets away from me and they'd been dropping some kids off from a basketball match in their van and they saw me as I was being raced down the streets in the shopping trolley. It was Pragal Street.

I was being raced down and they pulled up beside me in their bus, looked out at me and I just saw these really weird looking people. I say weird because they looked, at the time is what people would class them as like hippies, you know, with like flowery shirts and long hair and all of that. And they were pretty chilled and they looked out the window and said, you're Addy, aren't you? And I was in shock that they knew my name. I was like, how did they know who I am? And they said, how would you like to swap that shopping trolley for a wheelchair? And I told them to get at it. I was like, what the hell? There's no way I'm getting in a wheelchair. Because back then, the perceptions of using a wheelchair were all really negative. And I felt that I'd fought so

hard to get my friends to respect me and like me and to understand and to forget about my disability. And now if I got into a wheelchair, suddenly I'd be starting all over again. I know everyone would suddenly have this perception of me being slow and stupid. But luckily for me, they persisted and they spoke to my teachers, spoke to my parents and took four, five, six months. And they convinced me to go to Stoke Manville where they were hosting the junior wheelchair games. At Stoke Manville, one, when I went there, I was overwhelmed by meeting so many people

with different disabilities. I went to a mainstream school surrounded by non-disabled people. I'd never seen amputees, people with spina bifida, people with visual impairments, people with cerebral palsy. And it was like mind blowing. I was like, wow, look at all these people just trying to get my head around it. But it just so happened that weekend, the Great Britain men's wheelchair basketball team were training and everyone was really excited about it. I was like, ah, the men's team are playing. We've got to see these guys. And I was like, what's the big deal about wheelchair basketball and the men's

team training? And then I was taken to watch. I went and just followed everyone and went to watch them training. And immediately I was like, oh my days, these guys are incredible. I was expecting to see them in hospital wheelchairs, rubbish looking wheelchairs. I thought they were going to be pushed around, but they were in state of the art, funky colored wheelchairs. Wheels were angled like this with a camber on them so they could spin around really quickly. They were flying up and down the court at pace. I'm like 12 at this time. at pace and I'm like what 12 at this at this time and like I remember one point there was this guy going down the court at pace is double amputee no legs and he's about to like go for a basket and this guy takes him out and you imagine

this guy with no legs just flies out of this chair like literally six seven feet some guy out with no legs flying out of the chair and rolling across the floor I'm like what what the f... This is nuts. And then the guy scrambles back into his chair, fist bumps, the other guy makes a layup, shooting three point shots. And I'm like, look at these guys. Like they are more incredible than any of my non-disabled friends that I, that I

know, you know, and I was like, suddenly at that moment, I had this light bulb feeling, I was like, light bulb moment. I was like, this is my tribe. These are the people that I've been searching for all my life. No one's talking about their disabilities. Everyone's just talking about their excellence. And they were also not talking about being sportsmen, not talking about being good sportsmen for their borough or their country, they were talking about being the best in the world. I was just like, yeah. So, you had found your tribe and your passion, but your parents couldn't understand it at that time.

And you ended up leaving home at 17 and having a period of estrangement. Can you tell us what happened? Yeah, well, I got selected to be in the Great Britain powerlifting team to go to the junior world championships in Miami. So when I was 15, I was British record holder. I think I was lifting like twice my body weight. I didn't weigh much. I was really light, so it wasn't that big a feat. But anyway, I was selected in the team and I remember coming home super, super proud and saying to my dad, you know, that I've been selected for the team. I'm

going to get to go to Miami. I'd never been abroad. Since I'd come over from Nigeria, I'd never even been on a plane. And my dad said, no. He said, you got your exams coming up. He said, it's Paralympic sports, not gonna get you anywhere. And he told me, no, you can't do it.

And so that was devastating at 15 years old, being selected for your country and thinking, you know, I'm going to go and compete with the best in the world and then to be told that you can't do it. But prior to that, when I got my first wheelchair and I brought it home, my dad threw the wheelchair out the house and said that I wasn't allowed to bring the wheelchair in the house. They were, I mean, look, my parents were coming from this perspective. There was no Paralympic sports on the TV. There was no route for success as a person with a disability.

And my dad would say to me, Adé, you are black, you are disabled. You have to work twice as hard if you want to succeed in this country. Stop wasting your time with these silly sports." That's what he would say to me. It's like, focus on your education. My parents saw education as the route out of poverty, out of the route to success, not Paralympic sports.

I had to hide my basketball chair in the garden under a piece of tarpaulin. My next door neighbor took it through their house and lifted it over the fence and put it in our garden. And I hid it under tarpaulin. And then I used to sneak off to go to play basketball and to train. And then when I was told by my dad that I couldn't go to the world championships, I was like, in my mind, I was like, you know what? I need a plan.

So I said to my parents, university is not for me. I want to be a Paralympian and I'm going to be a star. And they just thought I was mad. And so I sort of investigated how I was going to do this. And I had a few friends who were living on their own who had disabilities as well. And one of my mates, Paul Pearson, said to me, you know what, you should write a letter to the council saying that your father's kicking you out of the house and forge your signature. He said, it might take a few months, but you'll get a place. So I wrote a letter saying that, pretending that was my dad forged his signature saying that he's kicking

me out and all of that. I got a place, I didn't tell my parents and just left when I was, I'd just turned 17, left home without a word, moved into this council for that. The council were like so scared. They had a social worker come to see me every day. They were constantly watching me, making sure that I wasn't doing anything crazy. And that was it. I didn't speak to my parents or see my parents for best part of 10 years. And the amazing part of this story is that after 10 years, your mother, I believe, saw you on TV at Sydney. It's part of the Paralympic Great British team. I don't know why I'm getting emotional, sorry, and called you and said, I can see you on television and your parents understood

it. Yeah. Before I'd got into the Paralympic team, I got selected for Sydney 2000 games. I was sort of tentatively getting relationships back with my parents, talking to them a little bit here and there. My mum, who was absolutely heartbroken at me not being at home and leaving home, she bought me a mobile phone. She's literally thrust it in my hand because I'd come and see them and then I'd leave because I didn't want to get into an argument with my dad or anything like that. And she went one day when I was leaving, she thrust this phone into my hand and she said, wherever you go, please make sure you stay in contact.

Because I'd also lived in Spain. I moved to Spain for two years to play basketball professionally. So I was out of the country and moving all over the place. And so I kept the phone and I also said to them, look, you know, you might not see me for a while because I'm going to be away. And I was going to the Paralympics, but I didn't think there was any reason to tell them that I'd been selected. And I was going to the Paralympics because they weren't into what I was doing. And then you're right at the Paralympic opening ceremony for the Sydney Games, team Paralympics GB, we get called out into the stadium, 100,000 people, or whatever, it was 80 to 100,000

people just cheering and screaming as we're going around the track. And then my phone rings and I'm like, wow. And I look at it and it's like, mom, do I answer this? Then I said, I better answer it. She'd be worried. So I answered it and she was like, you're in Australia. I'm like, yeah, I'm in Australia. What are you doing in Australia? I'm here for the Paralympics. I know I can't see you on the TV. I can't see you on the TV. Why are you here? I said, yeah, I got selected for the Paralympics. She's like, ha.

And so yeah, I ended the conversation and then they watched me at the Paralympics, watched our bronze medal game against the USA. And when I got back, I went to my parents' house, got taxi home, and my dad came out and he had tears streaming down his eyes and gave me a hug and then brought me in. And my uncle was there and they had the Neum recorder and I was the Neum star features in the Paralympics, some headline like that. And I just remember my dad saying to my uncle, I always knew he would be successful. I always knew this one could do it.

What a story. Thank you so much for telling us that your second failure is when you were working in television. So you make the transition from elite sport to TV presenting. Honestly, it's just unfair that you're good at so many things. And you climb a volcano for a BBC documentary in 2005. Why is it a failure? So the documentary was called Beyond Boundaries. And the idea of the documentary was to send a group of us all with different disabilities to Nicaragua in Central America and to go from the Caribbean side to the Pacific side. And I was really searching for a challenge. I was on my way to leaving basketball, really in the direction

of retiring in my mindset. And I wanted another challenge. I wanted something that would really, really push me. And I remember doing this and finding the first couple of stages quite easy. Like everyone else was like struggling and moaning and wheezing. I feel bad to say this, but I was like, I was loving it. You know, you're traveling through the Nicaraguan jungle. We had like howler monkeys screaming at us and picking mangoes from trees and setting up your tent in the middle of the jungle, the beautiful vista, wonderful wildlife. To me, it was like, this is life, man. But we were told on the final couple

of days that we had to climb this volcano. I think it's called Volcan Concepcion. And as we approached a volcano, I remember seeing it and literally, have you ever seen something where you arrive and you see something and it takes up the whole skyline? Everything you can see is volcano and you look at the top and you just see the peak of it with these wispy clouds just at the peak and this white sort of snow cap bit and you're just like, wow, we're going to climb that. Like it's hard to even comprehend in your mind how you could get up that. And I felt like this is my moment. This is my moment to show people how strong someone with a disability can be.

I'm going to absolutely smash this, dominate it. We set off at about five in the morning. We were told by expedition leader that we had till two o'clock in the afternoon to get to the top. If we didn't get to the top by two o'clock, he would turn us around and we'd have to come back because it would be too dangerous because it will get dark. I'm in a wheelchair, specially adapted wheelchair for the jungle. I've got Ammar Latif who's blind, he was pushing, Carl Sachs, single leg amputee was pushing. And I don't know if you've ever been up a volcano

before. No. It's rocky, there's cloud forest. It's also the material on the volcano is like, it moves, it's constantly falling. Rocks are falling and anyone who's ahead of you can dislodge rocks and they'll come and a few rocks would go past us and you'd see them go past you and you look behind you and they wouldn't stop. It would just keep dropping for hundreds of feet. If that happened to any of us, that's exactly what would happen. You'd just keep falling until you landed in the ocean. So, we're making our way up this volcano and they're pulling, I'm pushing. And after about two hours, my group had only

traveled 20 meters and the rest of them were quite far ahead. And the expedition leader, I remember Ken Haymes, stopping them and I could see them up in the distance and he had his hands on his hips. We caught up to them after another hour and he said, look, you're going to have to make this decision. You guys are either going to have to go back because Addy's not going to make it up there in time or Addy goes back on his own and the rest of you go up. And I knew this was, this point was going to come. This is why I went there to challenge myself, but I didn't think it was going to come in

this way. And at this point I was like, I'm going to have to do something that I've never done before and that I've always wanted to avoid. I could see his mouth moving, but I wasn't listening. I was like, I'm going to have to get out of the chair because he is trying to take control of my situation. And this is what I've fought all my life for, to have control of my life. This is why I've got, I've trained and worked so hard to be fit so I could judge myself. I could tell myself what I could and couldn't do.

As a disabled person, you spend your life hearing people trying to tell you what you can and can't do and what you're capable of. So I just got out of the chair. And as I got out of the chair, I just like, I'm getting up this volcano one way or another. I don't care how I get up it. I'm just going to get up it. And I just started crawling. And I remember all of them looking at me, just thinking, what is he doing? Because it was a live volcano and it was boiling hot, burning hot. So every time I was touching the ground, I could feel it burning my hands, burning my knees because I smell the sulfurous fumes coming out of the volcano. So I'm crawling and scrambling up the volcano and I'm getting emotional because I'm also

thinking like this is going to be on TV and thousands, maybe millions of people are going to watch me, who sees himself as a really strong guy on my hands and knees. And it sort of made me think about when I was a kid and sometimes when I'd fall on the floor and I'd like crawl around and some of the kids would start laughing at me and calling me like black monkey and making monkey noises and stuff like that. And it's like, here it is all over again. Everyone's going to suddenly think, you're not this guy who you're cracked up to be. You're just this weak guy who's crawling on the floor. And my chair is what I saw as my power and my strength. And I left my power and my strength behind.

And I was getting further and further away from it. And obviously I know how TV works. I could hear him on the walkie talkie. He's on the floor. He's on the floor. Let's get the camera over. Get the camera over. Because the cameras were all over the place and suddenly like cameras appeared and they

were all pointing in my face. And you're in this really vulnerable moment where you feel emotionally naked and cameras are pointing at you and I just started I just lost it and started to cry and I swore at the camera why leave me alone I just I don't need this and but I was also in my mind it's a TV program all the way up I just felt really embarrassed I felt ashamed and I was really in my mind, it's a TV program. All the way up, I just felt really embarrassed. I felt ashamed. And I was really, really worried that when they showed this on TV, as I'm going to just get people bombarding me, calling me a cripple or calling me weakling, all of this sort of stuff. And to my shock, I got a text from Daley Thompson, who is a good

friend of mine. He was a hero of mine as well. I grew up watching him and he inspired me and he sent me a text saying, just watched your show. I was in tears all the way through. He goes, you're an absolute hero. I can't believe you've done that. That doesn't even compute with how I was seeing myself. Those two things don't line up. Then suddenly loads of other people started contacting me and telling me how amazing they thought it was. It just suddenly made me think, oh shit, it was fine. It was fine to break down.

It was fine to be vulnerable. But it comes from a period where we're not allowed to show that back then you weren't really allowed to show vulnerability. And I came from sport as well, where you had to be strong and if there was anything that was really bugging you or tough, you pushed it to one side. And then to suddenly show my vulnerability and people not hate me for it was a real shock for me. And I thought I'd failed, genuinely thought I'd failed, and I'd let the disabled community down. It's unbelievably powerful, because that story goes to the root

of everything this podcast is about, about that idea of forging strength and connection through vulnerability, through having the courage to show up as yourself. It sounds like you came face to face with yourself on that volcano. And all of these years that you'd spent building yourself up and building up your strength and having your defenses, which you needed to survive, suddenly you were being dismantled of them.

And maybe it made you realize afterwards, oh, I'm powerful from within too. Yeah, such a great analysis. I suddenly realized that there was power from vulnerability. Shop Best Buy's ultimate smartphone sale today. Get a Best Buy gift card of up to $200 on select phone activations with major carriers. Visit your nearest Best Buy store today. Terms and conditions apply. Are you ever minding your own business

when you start to wonder, how do killer whales work? Who are Hollywood's paparazzi? Did British sailors get it on in the 1800s with each other? I'm Jonathan Van Ness and every week on Getting Curious I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. Honey we explore everything around here with scientists, historians, activists, entertainers, and other brilliant guest experts. You can join me every Wednesday for an all-new topic

with an all-new expert on Getting Curious. Listen to Getting Curious wherever you get your podcasts. -♪ I'm wary of saying that. What a Nazi war. I know. There's no such thing as a bad failure here. I'm wary of saying how brilliant they are because your third failure is that you fail to take compliments. Oh, God. Yeah. Even now, when you're saying all of that stuff, I cringe. When I talk about myself as well, I used to go home and feel like I have to cleanse myself

with like, stop going out and talking about yourself all the time. Make sure it's not all about you. No, it can't be all about you. I don't get that impression from you though. Whose voice is that? Is that yours or is that a parental voice? Probably a combination. It's a lot of stuff. I think it's also, stuff, you know, and I think it's also the way we deal with creative people in this country is kind of flawed. The reason why I say this is I came into sport, into Paralympic sport as this cocky East Londoner who was super confident. And I tried to get into the Paralympic team. And I remember, like I think I was just a shock

to everyone there, you know, cause I was, I believed in myself, I was really mouthy. And I just always backed myself and felt like I could, you know, add the talent to beat people. And all they ever like put into you is you have to be humble. Don't be flash. Don't try and take on people and do the flash things on the court. You know, do the simple things.

Sendemic in our culture, we put on a pedestal fantastic players like Pelé, Lionel Messi, Michael Jordan, all these incredibly creative talents. I think they would find it really hard to flourish in the UK because we don't like people who we perceive as being flash. We want people who are like hardworking and humble. And if someone tries to do too much, people do a hard tackle or take you out to put you down a peg. And I think those things, I sort of took them on board and they took out some of my flamboyance in my early days, because I desperately wanted to get in the team. I wanted to be in the

team and I knew that in order to get into the team, I needed to take some of that flashness out of me. And how much do you think that is embedded in race and culture? My understanding of Nigeria is that it is a culture that thrives on emotional expression and flamboyance and creativity. And there are probably all of those elements within you, the Nigerian and the British, competing. Absolutely. I am this person that has to travel between different cultures. I intersect in different parts of society. So I've got all of these parts of me constantly fighting against

each other. I come from a flamboyant culture. Nigerians, you go to Lagos, it is the most brightest, brashest, incredibly energetic place you could be. And then you come to the UK. I mean, I was fortunate that I went to East London because I think East Londoners are probably the closest, Cockneys are probably the closest to Nigerians that you would get in the UK in terms of how they carry themselves, oi oi and all of that stuff. So I think that was fortunate. But yeah, it was really difficult to intersect between these two worlds. And I always have that inner wildness wanting to come out. So are there people that you can accept compliments from? For instance, your wife.

Does she pay compliments or does she know not to? No, she does. She does, but I do struggle. Sometimes I don't believe it. I'm like, really? You're just saying it to humor me? Like, I trust her. Maybe also it comes down to trust as well. Maybe I don't always trust people when they say that, oh, you're good, or I'm like, there's an ulterior motive here, or they're just saying it. Yeah, I just don't believe them. I'm a complicated person in some ways. Do you pay compliments to her and to your son? Yeah. Yeah, I'm big on compliments. I've got a lot of hangups from my past and there's

no way do I want to pass them on to anybody else. No, you know, the stuff that I've had, I hate that. The thing that I love the most is to see people achieve their potential. I love seeing great people becoming amazing. Excellence is exciting. Or people like Adi Adepitan. Yeah. I know that you won't feel you're worthy of this, but thank you for being such a profoundly brilliant guest. I'm not just saying this, I think it's one of my favorite episodes of all time. And you've made us understand the true meaning of vulnerability and how it ultimately leads

to empowerment. I cannot thank you enough for coming on How To Fail. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it. Do follow us to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share a link and spread the love. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.