How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S14, Ep7 How To Fail: Benjamin Zephaniah

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Benjamin Zephaniah was the author of the first poetry collection I ever owned. For many of us, he was the chronicler of our youth: a novelist and poet who made language exciting and funny and told stories full of action and hilarity. I was so excited to get to speak to him for today's episode, and he didn't let me down. We talk about his failure as a 'gangsta' - and his early brushes with the law (he served a prison sentence for burglary) as well as what being incarcerated taught him. We talk about his failures at school, his dyslexia and leaving mainstream education at the age of 13. And, in one of the most emotional conversations I've ever had on the topic, we talk about his failure to have children and his own journey with male infertility. It's the first time I've spoken about fertility struggles with a male guest, and it's a conversation I'll never forget. Just a note to say: we both get emotional and if you're feeling in a fragile space yourself because you're going through something similar, you might understandably want to come back to this episode later. On the other hand, it might be exactly what you need to remind you that you're not alone.--This episode is airing on Windrush Day in the UK, 22nd June, a legacy Zephaniah explores in his latest book for children, We Sang Across the Sea: The Empire Windrush and Me, available to order here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/we-sang-across-the-sea-the-empire-windrush-and-me/benjamin-zephaniah/onyinye-iwu/9780702311161--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [e-mail]--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Benjamin Zephaniah @BZephaniah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned

from failure. Dr. Benjamin Zephaniah describes himself on his own website as poet, writer, lyricist, musician, and naughty boy. Naughty or not, he is the son of a Barbadian postman and a Jamaican nurse, born and raised in Birmingham. Zephaniah started writing poetry as a child, giving his first public performance at the age of 10. His dyslexia made school challenging and he left mainstream education at the age of 13. As a young man, he served a prison sentence for burglary, and yet he went on to achieve extraordinary success. Today, he has a clutch of honorary doctorates, is professor of poetry at Brunel University, and the Times listed him as one of the 50 greatest post-war writers. His work has influenced legions of children, and I'm one of them.

His first volume for kids, Talking Turkeys, was a prize possession in my childhood bookshelf. Zephaniah has long been on a mission to challenge the image of poetry being a stilted, deadening art form. He cites his two main influences as Jamaican culture and street politics. And if you've ever watched one of his explosive, riveting performances of his own work, you'll see why. In his books and poetry, he's unafraid to explore big issues, racism, refugees and mental health. His latest book for children, We Sang Across the Sea, The Empire, Windrush and Me, is no exception. He's also a playwright, novelist, has released several music albums and lately has found on-screen fame in his 60s, acting the part of the street preacher in Peaky Blinders. He's also a big believer in learning from mistakes.

a big believer in learning from mistakes. When you make mistakes, it's not about regretting them. It's about saying, how can I learn from that? Zephaniah says. The worst mistakes are the ones you just keep making. It doesn't matter how big or how small. Benjamin Zephaniah, welcome to How to Fail. Hello. I'm really nervous. Don't be nervous. I should be nervous. You're my childhood hero. Well, that's why I'm nervous. Never meet your heroes, you know. You've already exceeded expectation because I've had the good fortune of seeing your failures before this interview, and they're really good. And I can't wait to talk to you about them. I'm surprised to hear you say you're nervous. Do you often get nervous? No, I don't, not really. I mean, when I'm doing talks and things like that,

sometimes when I'm on stage, I certainly don't, oddly enough, especially when I'm on my own. If I'm with a band and I'm worried about whether the drummer's going to come in at the right time and the guitarist is in a good mood or whatever, when I'm on my own, you see, my mother, she says when she listens to me doing interviews or sees me on TV doing interviews or whatever, she says, oh, yeah, I can see you're trying to say the right thing.

But when I'm on stage, she says, yeah, that's my boy. Wow. That's the boy that used to come down to the breakfast table and perform poems that he wrote last night in the middle of the night when he should have been sleeping you know that's the boy that uses poetry to be playful and say something seriously about the world I'm really upset with my dad but I won't say it to his face unless I write a poem and then I perform a poem for him which will tell him exactly what I think of whatever he said that upset me. So for that reason, I really, it's only ever happened a couple of times, I really get upset when I'm being introduced on stage

and someone says, the next act is Benjamin Zephaniah. I say, no, no, this is not the act. When I'm off stage, that's the acting. When I'm trying to fit in with everybody's norms, that's the acting. When I'm on stage, I go, right, I have a poetic license now and I can be myself. It's not really about nerves, I guess. It's just about I feel more at home on stage rather than doing interviews and things like that. Does it feel like you're in your flow?

Is that how you describe it? It is a strange thing to describe, actually. It's a bit like meditation. When you start talking about it, you sound like a hippie. I do, when I'm on stage, kind of get taken over by something higher and greater. I can walk on stage and just feel, sometimes I can't really remember what I'm going to be doing. And the moment I get on, it just comes into place. Sometimes I stand in the wings and I look at the stage,

especially because I'm a poet, and I'm looking at the stage and it's empty. There's no props there or anything. It's not going to work unless I go in there and make it work. There is absolutely nothing. And sometimes, on one hand, it can be a bit overwhelming, but then I realise that what I'm doing in spoken word I don't want to get too academic now but it's the oldest art form we have people were speaking to

each other and telling stories to each other and then embellishing the stories a long time before we were doing anything else certainly a long time before we were writing those things down so I remember that and then I remember when I go on stage, I mean, there is something very beautiful about people who listen to poetry. I mean, that may sound a bit general, but generally speaking, they don't care if you're white, you're black, you're gay, you're straight, you're trans,

you're Albanian, you're Iraqi, Jewish, you're whatever. Can your words move me? And that's a beautiful thing. And publishers sometimes and promoters have tried gimmicks and they all fail because we don't care how you dress or anything like that. Can your words move me?

Even if I disagree with you. Even if I disagree with you, are you speaking your own truth? And that's something special. And I think the poetry audience does that really really well very different from a music audience a music audience will come in and go well I don't know his voice not very good today I'm going home or whatever he's not playing his number one hit so I'm going a poetry audience will go I've never heard this before let me hear it I don't know who this person is let me listen to them and is it true that some poems have come to you in their entirety in dreams yes yes there is a case

I think there are a couple of cases that I know of Paul McCartney and Robert Palmer where somebody accused them or they accused somebody I can't remember which way round it was, of stealing someone's song. And I think it was Robert Palmer that said, this came to me in a dream. So, you know, if I stole it, if it sounded like something else, it may have been that I was listening to it,

but this song came to me in a dream. And I can completely understand that. When you're a poet, and to a certain extent, this applies to other art form but certainly poetry because it's your own words and it's your own experience and everything you're on duty all the time I mean you're even on duty when you're sleeping you know yeah you walk you walk down the street you're looking at people seeing a paper granted you are thinking about how to express that poetically

you brush your teeth you're thinking about it I mean and it's not all to the board of your consciousness but there's something ticking on in the background which is observing the world around you observing your mind and observing even your dreams I don't know why this is coming up for me now, but I'm just going to go with it because I know that you're a twin and I wonder if part of your impulse to observe the world and to explain it is also to do with that early need to explain yourself as separate from, but also almost the same as your twin. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. And I can understand why you're saying that,

because I think the answer is a big no. First of all, even when we were at school, I wanted to be a little bad boy and I was hanging out with a boy that really played my sister. And we were talking the other day, well, when I was doing my autobiography, about the racism I experienced at school and the racism she experienced. And this may sound

odd, but we come to the conclusion that the girl racism is very different to the boy racism. Really? Yeah. We were having very different experiences. Well, girls have different pressures on them anyway about the way they look and how thin they are and all that kind of stuff. And then with me, it was about, come on, you should be a good boxer, you should be a good cricketer, they are and all that kind of stuff. And then with me, it was about, come on, you should be a good boxer.

You should be a good cricketer, you know, all that kind of stuff. But you probably know that my father was very violent and then my mum ran away and all the other kids stayed with my father. And you're one of eight. Sorry, you're one of eight children. Yeah. Yes. And so me and my sister weren't very close,

but I have spoken to other twins and say that they feel connected. And I did go through a period where I started me and my sister weren't very close but I have spoken to other twins and say that they feel connected and I did go through a period where I started thinking about my sister and dreaming about her and everything and I phoned her one day and said you know how are you sister I'm fine blah blah blah we talked for a while and then I didn't say anything and a couple of weeks later I called her again and maybe on the third or fourth time she just said to me you're not having any stupid telepathic things are you you know thinking that you're connected to me in any way are you and I said no it's okay I mean she just doesn't feel that and the Daily Telegraph they used to do a thing which is called relative value so they would take somebody who's quite well known and

compare them to one of their siblings or one of their relatives and they did me and my sister and the journalist at the time I can't remember who it was man said they've never met a couple that are so different I mean she's a real hard-line Jehovah witness you know when it came to my poetry she said she doesn't like it she's not going to listen to me until I start talking about Jesus she came to stay with me once. It was really odd. She rang me and said, you know, can I come up on the weekend? I mean, she never does that. And she came and it was like having a bit of a stranger in the house. I couldn't talk about my passion, politics, poetry, the meaning of life. I'm really into cosmology and how the universe is expanding and all that stuff. She doesn't believe in all that stuff so it's just like how are you kids nice weather did you want to go for a walk yeah you know it was like having somebody i've just met

in the house and we're closer now than we've ever been actually because um gosh how do i talk about this but i'm getting emotional my mother's just really ill at the moment so we've all become carers and as soon as I finish talking to you, I'm going to race off to Birmingham because it's my turn to do weekend duties. And so we've got to talk to each other about caring for mother and our feelings and all this kind of thing. So at the moment, actually, probably I'm as close with all the members of my family. I mean, we're all close as we've ever been, really. It's because mum's so ill. family. I mean, we're all close as we've ever been really. It's because mum's so young. I'm so sorry to hear that about your mum. Is it painful for me to ask a question about her?

Because I know she was such a formative influence and she sounds amazing. She was a nurse and came over from Jamaica. And I know your new book, which I mentioned in the introduction, this episode is airing on Windrush Day. And your new book is actually a very, very joyful book about Windrush. And I know that that isn't always the case, but I want to ask you a bit later about whether you deliberately wanted to make it a joyful story. But tell me about your mother's story, if you wouldn't mind. Just to say, I'm not plugging books now, but the book before We Swam Across the Sea is a book called Windrush Child. And that's about a young boy that leaves Jamaica and comes to Britain and would now be seen as part of the Windrush generation. I mean, I won't give the story away, but I have written more hard hitting stuff about Windrush. But mother was a typical Windrush

generation, right? She's growing up in Jamaica. What she's learned at school, the a she's typical windrush generation right she's growing up in jamaica what she's learned at school the history she's being taught is not really about jamaica it's about britain she knows more about the queen than she does about who runs jamaica she knows more about english history she has this great respect for britain this is what a lot of people of that generation had but more importantly some girls and I guess boys do, when she dressed up as a nurse, she dressed up as a national health nurse, you know what I mean? That was a model. She wanted to come to England to work in the health service.

And that's what she did. She literally was with her sister, and they looked at a poster on a street in Jamaica. And the poster said, the mother country need you come to England where the streets are paved with gold there are jobs waiting for you help to rebuild the motherland and she said to her sister my auntie do you fancy going and my auntie went no it's too cold I'm not going there they might have ice and snow you're not going there

and my mother went well I'm going to buy a big course and I'm going to go and give it a try. And my mother went to her uncle who had a little bit more money than mum, or my grandmum. And her uncle gave her 70 pounds, I think it was. And that paid for the ship and the train fares and everything to get to Sheffield when she came over. My mother's name is Valita. It's actually a kind of Spanish Cuban name. Her uncle was working in Cuba as a kind of migrant worker, and he was a bit of a womaniser. So when my mother was born, when they were thinking of a name, he said, call her Valita, after one of his girlfriends back in Cuba. she's working in Sheffield and she's working with a cleaner in Sheffield

they're doing cleaning and I'm not going to try and put on a Sheffield accent but the lady says to my mother what's your name and she said Falita

Falita and she struggled to say Falita she said can I call you Valerie darling so my mum's been known as Valerie ever since wow

but but but there's lots of stories like that and in the asian community where they can't say nice the name is bill there or something okay i'll call you bill you know so she left sheffield well somebody came to her and said look you're interested in being a nurse there's a training thing going on in birmingham so you can come and train and get registered as what was then called a state-registered nurse.

So she became a state-registered nurse, and then she thought she'd arrive, you know. That was it. And she met my dad, and he was from Barbados. Now, sometimes people just think the Caribbean. They just kind of think we're all the same. I get it when I'm acting and stuff like that. They go, can you do a Caribbean accent?

I go, which one? It's like saying, can you do a European accent? You know, which one? You must understand that there's a lot of tension. It's never spilled into war or anything, but there's lots of kind of cultural tensions between Jamaica and Barbados. And it would be very unlikely that they would have met

or married in either Barbados or Jamaica. They had to come here to do it. I'm not sure how to compare it. It would be like, I don't know, a Palestinian and an Israeli trying to get married in either Palestine or Israel. It'd be easier to do it in England. You could say the same thing about Catholics and Protestants in Ireland to a certain extent. It's probably changing now. You could say the same thing about Catholics and Protestants in Ireland to a certain extent.

It's probably changing now, but certainly when I was growing up, couples I knew that were Catholic and Protestant found that they couldn't do it in Ireland. They had to do it in England or do it neat in England or have a life in England. Interestingly, you find that in Britain, don't you? You find all these communities and these people that are mixed that would find it much more difficult in their homelands. So, yeah, that's how it came in. Then she had twins, me and my sister. And somewhere down the line, she had another set of twins.

So there's two sets of twins in my family. Wow. Yeah, there's Mark and Paul. This may sound a bit trivial, but it's really interesting. I think it's really interesting. But me and my sister are very different. We look different. We act different.

Our concerns are different. Mark and Paul are also very different paul is like central african black really dark skin that black that shines you know mark is what they call in jamaica red skin kind of bob marley's complexion very light skin sometimes it's being mistaken for white they're twins mark is like as if he'd just come from jamaica i mean born in england i don't think he's ever been to jamaica but very rastafarian very old school and paul is like he reads the guardian it's so fascinating it's so fascinating that idea that there's an assumption that we should all belong in our families.

And actually, the older I get, the more I believe that chosen family is more important in many respects in terms of belonging and being understood. Well, one of my biggest frustrations is that most of my family, let me be straight, I think there's no one in my family that I could really talk to about the things that really interest me, the things that I'm really passionate about, things that I mentioned earlier. For example, things I'm reading at the moment is things like bell hooks, you know, black feminism.

I love Stephen Hawking, cosmology and all that stuff. One of my favourite writers is a guy from America called Bart Ehrman, who writes about religion, especially New Testament religion and what's true and what's not and what Jesus really thought and all that kind of thing. I'm uneducated, but I try to be an intellectual. I try to think about things.

I could never talk to any of my family about those things. And if you ask them why Benjamin Defenyar has been telling me why he's gone to visit a faith, they just go, didn't he write a poem called I love my mother and my mother loves me or talking turkeys he's famous they know me for being on television I say they know me I beg your pardon I shouldn't say they know me but they see me on television and think oh he's famous and yeah we love him for that but they've never really dug down into my work and I find that frustrating we're not frustrating sorry I'm not picking my words dislocating maybe yeah yeah and it's sad because I can talk to other people I mean I could probably talk well I am talking to you in a much more deeper

way than I could talk to any of my relatives yeah it's really Well, let me be your family for this next hour. Do me the honour. And let's pick up on that thing that you said. In passing, you described yourself as uneducated. And one of your failures, and I have to say, you're the first guest that's done this. And that's why you're a poet. Your failures were encompassed in three words. One word for each failure.

Perfectly chosen. And your first failure is school. Tell us about that. Well, one of the things about the things that I've picked is that it's not very straightforward. I used to go on about me failing school. And then one day, an ex-teacher actually turned around and said, school might have failed you. Yes. And I thought, yeah. Now, I got kicked out of school when I was 13. When I say kicked out, it used to be called expelled. Now it's called excluded. And now you have pupil referral units you can go to.

We were just left on the street. Okay, I was rebellious. I was naughty. I didn't really appreciate the value of education, but I wasn't encouraged to. You know, I was dyslexic. I didn't know what the word dyslexic was. So I'm sitting in a classroom.

I'm trying to engage with a piece of writing, but I can't. So I put the writing down and I look out the window and a teacher comes up to me and says, well, you may be a bit stupid when it comes to reading and writing, but you people can be good footballers and good sports people so why don't you go and play the ball and all the other boys get jealous because I'm kicking the ball in the playground on my own

and I thought this is it you know I mean I can do sports and this teacher is not pushing me I have to say I can understand that this lecture wasn't completely understood then but she didn't encourage me say well just try let me help you so that was one thing and then when I got to secondary school I remember being in class and a teacher talking about history and just saying and it's something that to a certain extent is in the curriculum to this day, which I completely disagree with, you know, how civilization started in Europe, in the West. And I stood up and I said, teacher, I know that in ancient Egypt, they had systems of air conditioning. They had drainage systems. They had systems of democracy in lots of villages in Africa. You know, I knew that. And then I would just call naughty and I would say, don't shout at me, teacher. I know this stuff, you know, because I was interested in this,

in history and things like this. But the way it was being taught at school, I just felt it was a lie and sometimes it put me down. The history of black people started with our slavery and then we were given freedom as if it was a privilege. We referred to us slaves, not people who were enslaved. And I knew the difference when I was 12. So all that kind of stuff got me in trouble.

And then one day the teacher said to me, well, I got suspended a couple of times. And one day the teacher said, well, you know, you're going to be excluded from the school. You're expelled. I remember standing at the school gate. She said, young lad, you are a born failure. You are going to end up dead or doing a life sentence. That's what she said to me. Oh, my goodness.

I was about to say I'm so shocked by that, but actually I just feel so sad on your behalf that that happened to you. Did you feel sad about it? Or did you feel, how did you feel? I didn't feel sad about it or did you feel how did you feel I didn't feel sad actually I'm being really honest because I didn't really like school I kind of felt liberated when they went to my mother you would expect my mother to be really upset and go what we're going to do with you my mother said well you know school wasn't doing anything for him she would have loved it if I could have just got a job I was I was too young get a job. So it didn't really bother me.

A lot of what comes afterwards is connected to the things we're going to talk about in a moment. But let me just tell you this. You mentioned, for example, that I was in prison, right? That happened a bit later, right? One day I was with a film crew from the BBC. He was doing something about my life story in benjamin and they went to the school and they said can we film benjamin in the school this is the school his last school and the teacher said no he said in 1975 or

whenever it was he got expelled from the school and there was an exclusion zone put around the school so he couldn't come anywhere near it. And it's still in place to this day. So we had to film kind of away from the school, with the school in the background. And then, listen to this, we went to Windsor Green Prison. It's called Birmingham Prison now. The film crew said, can we film Benjamin the Spaniard?&I and he said yeah we can actually go to his old cell and I did an interview and what

turned into a lecture for the prisoners from my old cell, it was one of the most emotional things I've ever done and these prisoners are looking at me, somebody who I'm using inverted commas now, successful, talking about what it was like for me in prison, how I changed my life around. I'm looking at some of these prisoners, knowing that some of them are much more talented than me, and they know it too. But look where they are, and look where I am. And I said to them, you know, I know people who are the same age as me, and all they've

been doing is be going in and out of prison. So I am not a do-gooder preaching to you because i've studied criminology or something i've lived the life and i'm telling you you can either go on tour and this happened to me i was in prison when i was in business prison another prison actually in brixton and there was a man there who i did some crime with in birmingham and when i asked him what he's been doing he said oh I spent two years in Birmingham prison then I went to Strangeways prison and then I went to this prison his whole life had been a tour of prison while my life has been a tour of venues and countries

so I looked at this group in Birmingham prison and said well you know you can turn it around you can change it around don't let the police record make you believe that this is your life forevermore. And did you have an innate self-belief, do you think, that whilst school was failing you and teachers were trying to label you with their own definitions, and while the criminal justice system, which I know we'll come on to, was also trying to give you a certain kind of label and put you in a box outside of society, do you think you, Benjamin, had an innate sense of yourself that helped you survive all of that? Absolutely, yes.

I don't know where it comes from. If you know anything about me, you know I always try to be as honest as possible. Sometimes it gets me in trouble, but I try to be as honest as possible. So I'm going to talk about something now that probably I shouldn't talk about, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. I remember thinking that one day I'm going to be a writer. I used to go into dances to chat up a girl, and I'd go, hey, baby, I'm a writer.

I've never seen a writer in my life. I mean you know I've never seen a writer in my life I mean she's probably never seen a writer in her life oh Cheryl he's a writer I mean if you understand the cultural place you're coming from you'll know that there's no writers around here writers are kind of gods there was lots of things that would happen to me and I'd go, I'm going to use this one day when I'm writing. So this is a bit dodgy ground. But I remember being in a house that we were supposed to be robbing. And in those days they had meters, right, the television meter, the gas meter and everything.

And I'm looking at the bookshelf. And my accomplices are going, come on, you can look what they're reading. Benjamin, grab the money and run. That's incredible. Can you remember what they were reading? Can you remember what was on the bookshelf? Actually, I'm compressing into one experience, lots of experiences. But I remember seeing names, big names now.

Amis, Iris Murdoch. They were just kind of names I heard of. But even Angela Davis, I remember, even though she was like a very revolutionary woman, she's one of my heroes. Oh, she's like Angela Davis. And you must understand the difference between that and what the other lads are doing. Yes. So they think I am crazy. I thank you so much for sharing that. I think it's just so visceral,

that connection that you clearly had to writing in the written word. Yeah, and the reason why I'm kind of, not nervous, but the reason why I told it the way I told it is because sometimes people say, why do you have Benjamin Lester and I around? Because, you know, he's an ex-criminal.

I know that my work that I've done in prisons and even outside prison trying to save people from getting into the system works because of my experience and my honesty I know we haven't got time to go into now but it's been really powerful and turned people around when a probation officer or a social worker couldn't help because when they say they've been bad I can go I've been bad than you. And one of the other things that I think it's hard for people to appreciate is the atmosphere I was growing up in. There's no real nice way of putting this. I mean, there were so many criminals. There were generations, father and son, granddad were criminals. This is the way we were supposed to be because you can't earn enough if you just get a job and getting a job is hard enough anyway so you do some stuff on the side whatever it is and that attitude to crime alongside a

particular attitude to women as well and lots of other things but women in particular is very strong and very difficult to break out of so when I'm in school and children will say to me, what is the greatest thing you've ever done? I can see them expecting me to say, oh, meeting Nelson Mandela or doing this or doing that. And I say, learning to think for myself, especially for a boy, a young boy or a teenager where peer pressure is so powerful. Learning to think for yourself can be so difficult because you've got to break away and you've got to be you. And you've got to sometimes abandon labels or abandon habits and behaviours that you've inherited. Some of those inherited behaviours can go back for generations,

especially the ones that are sexist. And I would say that to white people about racism. You know what I mean? It's not that I'm being horrible to white people about racism yeah I mean if you're not done being horrible to white people and I'm not being horrible to myself I'm saying these are things that we've inherited yes so when we become aware of them we can start to deal with them we're not perfect but we just start to deal with them sorry I feel like I'm talking too much no there's no such thing on this podcast or on any podcast to be honest what you're saying is so beautiful and so important for

people to hear. And I think you're so right. We all have our blind spots and actually true kindness and true compassion, the active kind, starts with examining and questioning our own internalized prejudice. And I think you're totally right on that. I want to ask you, before we get onto your second failure, because it's enmeshed with this one, what was the first thing you wrote? For yourself, I mean, not in school. Well, I really, when I started creating poetry, it was an oral thing for me. So it wasn't really written, it was created in my head. Certainly, I mean, probably not the first thing, but one of the first poems I ever wrote, I'm still performing to this day. I love my mother and my mother loves me.

We come so far from over the sea. We heard that the streets are paved with gold. Sometimes we thought, sometimes it's cold. I love my mother and my mother loves me. We try to live in harmony. Well, you can call her Valerie, but to me, she is my mummy. I mean, it goes on and on.

But I created that when I was about eight. And I was in this playground we used to have this game called kiss chase right you played it a couple of times still playing it mate no not really well I was really lazy so I would go to a girl and I would say your name and if you tell me your name if I just freestyle a poem about you can you give me a kiss and I would say your name and if you tell me your name if I just freestyle a poem about you can you give me a kiss and she'd say my name is Elizabeth Dana go yeah coming down the way like okay I would always say even birthdays I would say lead the way come on baby come on baby let's play

this is the best day of my life Benjamin Zephaniah just improvised a poem for me oh my gosh that you must have had such a high success rate. Well, I had some great times. I had good fun. But it was just playing with words. So to say the first poem I wrote down is difficult. The BBC used to have this thing at night where they would read a poem. And I just wrote down a poem one night.

Me and my brother wrote it down and sent it in and they got somebody to read it and it was complete dog roll I was actually pastiching maybe a kind of white male poem and I can remember that word for word it's just dog roll wonder wonder why I live my heart and soul to life I give. Upon the wetted grass I lie. If death should call me, if I should die. In vain I stride for need and require. No smoke can dark my burning fire. Cool breeze I desire. Strong winds to take me higher, take me higher than the fire.

It used to go on like that. And the other BBC man reading it in the BBC, we really had BBC voices back then. And we were just sitting at home laughing. And then they kind of try and interpret it and read it. And I mean, it was just all rubbish. Wow. Oh my gosh, I don't think I'll ever recover from that. Thank you so much.

Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognised for being very online. We'll see you next time. pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so

messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides, don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes

on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Let us move on to your second failure because, as I i said it is very linked to this period of your life

and your second failure is gangster right i say this because as i alluded to before i got involved in a life of crime and there was one time where i became the gang leader and i had a gang of boys that used to steal from cars I mean it was stealing tools and then I would sell them onto garages and mechanics and things like that sounds really petty now because tools are ten a penny but back in the day they weren't so available and it was very territorial and like I said I was the boss and then one of my guys went on to the territory of another gang and that gang then shot at one of my guys and then to the territory of another gang. And that gang then shot at one of my guys. And then there was a shooting war going on.

I was at the head of this organization. And then one day, the other gang said, right, you know, never mind this. I mean, it was much more colorful language than that. Never mind this lot. We'll go and get Benjamin himself, get the main guy. So I had to get a gun, put it under my pillow every night. One of my boys would be guarding the front door every night because they knew where I lived and everything.

And then I remember listening to a track by Marvin Gaye, What's Going On? And it was about kind of what's going on in black America. And I just thought, yeah, Benjamin, what's going on with you? You're not a gangster. You don't want to be a gangster you don't want to be a gangster you want to be a poet you want to be a writer you want to be a creative so after listening to that record i woke up the next morning and i said to the people i said my boys i'm not doing this anymore they said come on you're collecting money at the weekend we got money coming in things are going fine I was like nah if I stay to the

weekend then I'm going to say to the next weekend I am going to London today and I had a little Ford Escort I jumped in the Ford Escort I left everything behind and went to London and when I tell this story in school because I do tell a version of this story in school it's not exactly the same way I'll say to the children, you know, children, I was heavily involved in gang culture. Then I left Birmingham and I went to London. And guess what happened? I got into another gang and the children would go,

oh, but this is a gang of poets and musicians and writers and creative people. And you can see the children start smiling just like you are. Because I believe that we all need we talked about family earlier and alternative families we can have families of creative people I was just really lucky I went down to London and I met somebody somebody heard me doing a stage and then he linked me up with this organization when in fact he had an organization

and it was in the early days of the development of people like French and Saunders and the Flying Pickets. Do you remember them? No. I remember French and Saunders. Right. Rick Mayo, Alexis Sale,

the alternative comedy, basically. Up until then, a lot of comedy, especially, not so much poetry, but comedy was very sexist and racist. You know, an Irishman, a Jewish man and a white man goes into a pub, all that kind of stuff. And our thing was nothing sexist or racist. That was our motto. Don't attack anybody personally.

You can attack political policies and things like that. To a certain extent, you can attack politicians. But we never laugh at anybody's disabilities or anybody's gender or anything like that you know mandela was in prison the anti-apartheid movement was under rise so when i say you know i failed as a gangster and it's good that i failed as a gangster yeah it's not like it is on television when i get to my age now i look back and i can tell you that so many of my friends are just not here. And there's a part of me that wanted to prove that teacher wrong when she said, I'm going to end up dead or doing a life sentence.

Ironically, that teacher and many other teachers now come to my gigs. And has that teacher ever apologised to you or said they were wrong? Yes. Oh, yeah, they said they were wrong. I mean, I haven't seen that particular teacher for years, but back in the 90s, she turned up at one of my gigs. Wow. She turned up and she sent a message in, said, you know, I used to be Benjamin's last night's teacher,

can I get on the guest list? And I went, no, let her pay. Yes! Oh, my goodness. What a moment for you. But I wonder if I can ask you a question about that time in your life and being in criminal gangs. Did you spend a lot of your time in fear? Deep down, yes, but you couldn't show it. I'm saying this to you now because I'm the kind of person that talks about my feelings. I would never have said this before. I mean, certainly when I was involved in it,

you have to put up a front. Men have to put up a front. Let me tell you, I mean, you can edit this out if you like, but when you're in prison, when the lights go out, you may find a majority or some people sleeping, but you hear a lot of two things, crying and masturbation. Yeah. Because these are people that are regretful but can't admit it. They think their life is going wrong.

They can't admit it. They have no one to touch, so they touch themselves. I mean, it's desperate. It's not glamorous at all. And so I probably have gone to a complete other extreme where I just talk about my feelings all the time now and another thing I found that's happened to me as I get older is that I find myself crying a lot you know oh me too I had to cry this morning I had this thing a while ago my appendix burst and i was really lucky i survived it for like seven

eight hours you can dive within an hour i was rushed to hospital it was international women well two days later it was international women's day i had to do this talk at this big women's conference and i took a picture of my mom because i was talking about her coming to england and the windrush generation and i had to discharge myself they wanted to keep me in hospital for one more day and i've got to go and do this gig. It's been planned for a whole year. There's like 300 women waiting for me to come and talk to them. And so a nurse said, you know, I'm a fan, Benjamin, I'll come with you.

She turned up and she came to me with my gig in a uniform and with a bag, and I think, just in case I collapsed on stage. And she's standing there, and I started to speak, and I started to talk about the National Health Service and my mother and what's just happened to me how I collapsed and nobody asked me for a credit card and why we love the National Health Service and then I just started crying and I'm trying and when I cry I cry like a 12 year old girl I mean I lose my breath and all these women were watching me and one woman shouting it's okay Benjamin

we are women we cry all the time laughing about it though but at the time what was I crying for I was was crying for the National Health Service. You were crying for your mum and you had been in pain and you were exhausted and like all this. I mean, and also the other thing, I mean, this is going off on a total tangent, but we're talking two years on from the first national lockdown. And I think there's a huge amount of collective muscle memory that we all have about that really catastrophic period in our life so I think we're also sort of crying a lot to get through that yeah it's funny because I

was talking to some people and we talk about my mother and dealing with my mother and a friend of mine had a death her son died by accepting and arranged the funeral and I think and literally spoke at his funeral, I don't normally do that kind of thing, did a point for him and we were talking about me and somebody said, well a couple of people said that you may need some therapy Benjamin, you know, you need to get it out of you and for the first time in my life I'm thinking they're right and there's nothing, there's no shame in getting therapy even if I feel I'm doing all right. I know that's one thing in America, we criticise America all the time, but every American has a therapist.

And the therapists have therapists. Yeah. There's no shame in saying, well, oh, sorry, darling, I've got to go and see my therapist. Whereas here, we're slightly embarrassed about it. Well, I'm a huge, I mean, I have weekly therapy, so I can highly recommend it. I think it's a really helpful thing because it's a safe space I always think I'm very lucky and blessed in my life that I have great friends but I don't want to burden them with it all of the time and it wouldn't be fair for me to emotionally download to them all the time and so

it's sort of a space for me to do that and to process and invest in my mental health the same way as I'd invest in a pension. That's how I see it. Yeah, I completely appreciate that. And yeah, it's something I'm going to do. Good for you. When you were talking there about your criminal activity, I was very struck by how much personal responsibility you take for it, which I really admire, because you've clearly learned from that. But I also want to acknowledge that there is a whole institutional and structural inequality and racism at play here, which means that certain people don't get the opportunities that others do. And I don't know if I have a question. I suppose I just wanted to ask you about that. And because we've just mentioned the pandemic, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter

protests in the wake of George Floyd's killing, I hadn't appreciated until I came to do research for this interview that you lost a cousin in very similar circumstances. Almost exactly the same. My cousin, Mikey Powell, and we put this on the table from the beginning, he had mental health problems. One day, he climbed onto the top of the roof and said he was going to throw himself off. His mother, my auntie Clarice, called the police.

She's like my mother. She believes in the good old British Bobby and all that kind of stuff. And actually, one turned up. A female police officer turned up and said, Michael, come down, come down. She literally chatted him up. He said, hey, baby, look fine.

She said, yeah, you look fine too. Let's hang out together. She was using her skills, got him to come down, sat around the kitchen table, had a cup of tea, said, Mikey, take care of yourself, look after yourself.

Apparently, gave him a hug and left. Great. That's kind of perfect policing, you'd think. A few days later, Mikey's having another episode. This time it's not in the daytime. This time it's late at night. This time he hasn't crawled onto the roof. He's literally just outside the house, but he won't come in.

He's singing. He's being a bit loud. His mother calls the police. Now it's a black man, loud, in the middle of the night. They come in a completely different mode. One of the first things they did when they saw him was hit him, run him over. In the inquest, when the officers were asked why they ran him over, they said they couldn't see his hands. The judge said, why would you run him over if you couldn't see his hands? Well, we thought he had a gun. They put him in the van. When he arrived at the police station, he was dead.

Now, we know from the police's own words that one of the last things he said was, I can't breathe. He had a foot on his neck. In the inquest, it's completely clear. I have a copy of the report of the findings. He had a foot on his neck. The only reason why a police officer is not charged is because they don't know which police officer's foot was on his neck. The only reason why a police officer is not charged because they don't know which police officer's foot was on his neck. And the last thing he said was,

I can't breathe. And he cried for his mother, just like George Floyd. So we big men, when we have a foot on our neck and we're dying, obviously we try to tell the person that you're killing us. You know, we can't breathe. Then we cry for our mothers. That's exactly what George Floyd did. That's exactly what my cousin Michael Power did in 2003.

I think it was the year I got offered the OBE. And I'd been trying to have a conversation with Tony Blair, who I'd met and I can't say knew very well, but knew. He was contacting me. He was trying to contact me for lots of other reasons. But when I tried to contact him to talk about this, no, then I get a letter through the post.

He's inviting me to accept an OBE. So the George Floyd thing for us to be honest it was like another one this happened to be in America and one of the things I feel very strongly about is for people to appreciate that it's not just in America the police officers didn't draw the gun on George Floyd. No gun was drawn on my cousin. This is just people just not controlling themselves physically, people with power. And I've been there.

I've almost died. I've been there saying I can't breathe when I was 17, 18 in Birmingham. One of the things I'm pretty sure of the officers that do that is that they probably think I'm black, black uneducated probably done a bit of crime this that endeavor so i've got no history i've got no intelligence this guy is not a novelist and this is why we say black lives matter and black history matters and our stories matter it's not just for i'm thinking of black history not now it's not just for black people it's not about making black people feel good it's about educating all of black history now, it's not just for black people. It's not about making black people feel good. It's about educating all of us. We all matter. That's true. But we've been

neglected for a long time and people in power who don't connect with us as humans can do all kinds of things for us. They don't care when we're not breathing. I'm so sorry that happened to your family. For those of you who don't know, Benjamin rejected that obe and i would love to know how your aunt clarice is doing well sorry i have a big pause and i'm thinking about how to put this because i know that there are some people that are not going to appreciate what i'm going to say now there's a lot of black people who will not call the police for another problem for very valid reasons. I was walking in a street in London. I saw a guy jump out of a car, put a knife to a woman's neck and take her in the car and drive off. When I went

into the police station to report it, they arrested me for a burglary that somebody had done months ago. I'm trying to be a good citizen. I see a woman being kidnapped in front of me who I don't know, and I go and report it, and they try and drop a charge on me. The only reason why I got away with it is because I had Michael Mansfield, the human rights lawyer, in my phone. Well, he wasn't even in my phone, he was before mobile phones. When they asked me for a lawyer, I said, call Michael Mansfield.

They let me out within about five minutes how old were you then I was then 22 23 something like that so imagine not the community within our family we had arguments because people looked at my auntie Clarice and said why did you call the police on your son? Oh, my God. Don't you know where we are? So you can imagine the guilt that she feels. I mean, but she, as I said, she called the police before and a nice lady came around and just called him down. And they were flirting.

Yeah. So she thought that that was what was going to happen the second time. But like I said, it was in the middle of the night now. It's a bit more, you know, as far as the police are concerned, it's a bit more sinister. Black man out at night being loud in the middle of the night now. It's a bit more, you know, as far as the police are concerned, it's a bit more sinister. A black man, eight at night, being loud in the middle of the night. So it would be really easy for me to say, well, you know, it's really difficult, but she's, you know, she's coping.

She's not coping. She's got compensation and everything and all this kind of thing, but she is a broken woman. She was the auntie. You know, sometimes, I don't know if this happens to other people, but you have was the auntie. You know, sometimes, I don't know if this happens to other people, but you have a favourite auntie or uncle. She would come in the house

and she was always dressed really colourfully and she was always going to parties and she would always bring us presents. We used to love Auntie Clarice when she'd come. When our mum told us that Auntie Clarice was coming, we'd go, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you see her now, she's a broken woman. Absolutely broken.

That's the truth. That's where she is now. I'm really glad you told us the truth, because I think it is of crucial importance that people understand when these things happen and we see them on the news, families are affected for the rest of their lives. Yes, yes. And the whole thing about, it becomes almost like it's just said in news broadcasts, there's mistrust between the black community and the police. Well, why? This is why. Yeah. Benjamin, thank you so, so much for opening up about that.

I just want to say a personal thank you to you for talking about this as your third failure, because it's something that I also live with. And your final failure is as a father, but it's more specific than that. So tell us why you chose it. Well, I chose it because I am not a father. I'm infertile and I can't have children. I always felt I couldn't have children simply because when I was younger and I had girlfriends, we didn't do any family planning and none of them got pregnant. And I would have girlfriends and then they would go on to another boy and just quickly get pregnant or something. So I always kind of knew.

But at the same time, I've always wanted to be a father and I really struggled with it once upon a time I used to go to the park and just watch men playing with their children have a like real jealousy I'm not sure if jealousy is the right word maybe envy but I just used to sit there and just think here's a man who's kind of fulfilled there's this little girl or boy, their father, and they're going to live on and a part of him is going to live on in this girl or boy

and I'm never going to have any of that. And I really used to beat myself up over it. There's a poem I wrote once. It's a poem I never really performed, but it's about looking in the mirror. I am, I was going to say amazing physically, but you know, I'm very fit I mean

and you look 25 I'm 64 years old you know I play football with 20 year olds they can't believe how fast I can run I outrun them all

I do boxing and kung fu with 20 25 year olds and I fight any of them my skin is in really good condition

for some reason I haven't grazed. And, you know, my friends look at me and they go, what's happening? I mean, even members of my family, they go, you just seem to be... And maybe it's because I'm a vegan and I'm teetotal and I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I practice yoga and tai chi and all that kind of stuff.

Maybe it's that. But it's about me looking in the mirror, looking at my body and thinking it works so well why can't i produce children and a long time ago like a lot of men i mix up fertility with virility you know what i mean it's like two separate things but you know you get them confused and then when i had my ex-partner i went through a stage where i just was obsessed with having children and then we in fact i went for testing to see what the problem was in the very early days of reality television. So the BBC cameras followed me to hospital to get tested. And some of it is a little bit humiliating and soul destroying, but I did it. And then they found that I got this

condition that means that some men have a low sperm count I have a no sperm count you know it just doesn't happen I'm not sure that my what's that system called wouldn't be called reproductive whatever it's still at a kind of young age it hasn't developed it's just stayed there you know a doctor said to me once he said and this was when I was in my 40s he said you look as if you're in your teenage 20s i think and your body's aging slowly so maybe this system is aging slowly because some people i've had with a lot in africa and asia when i talk about it they say oh there's a man over there didn't father a child until he was 67 and i've heard that a few times and i sent it to a doctor and he said, that can be true, especially with somebody with my metabolism,

who seems to be taking a long time to age. It could be true. This system, it's not called reproductive system. There must be another word for it. I feel like it is. Basically, when everything's supposed to come together for ejaculation and all that and the sperm creation, it kind of just fizzles out.

And it's almost like a 10-year-old or something there's nothing there it hasn't developed and usually it just carries on and carries on and develops and mine hasn't it's kind of stayed around there so failure as a father is not like i said failure to be a father i love kids and one of the things i've learned is that there are people like you who read my poetry when you were children when you were young and people that come to me all the time say your poetry was so important when I was a kid or they made me do this I met a girl the other day and she told me a story which I completely remember I was shooting my tv series certain life and rhymes she came running across the park to me and she said she was in gold as green and I met her parents and her parents said oh our daughter is a

great fan of yours and I said well where is she and she said she's at home down the road and I went go and get her and they went and they got her and this little girl came and I kind of patted her on the head and we hung out for 15 minutes or so now she's a 25 26 year old girl very punkish and she said you changed my life you know I just love your poetry and you told me to be different and don't care and the roles of my children I know that sounds a bit wishy-washy but those are my children I have four children in the world they're not children anymore that are named after me yeah one in Jamaica one in Indonesia one in Wales and one ironically that used to live down in Brighton but the family just moved

not very far from me I mean he's a 28 year old strapping guy now but you know named after me so I know I've touched a lot of children in many ways and inspired them so I've learned to accept that now but yeah there is something sometimes I just think, what would it have been like to kind of have my own children? Sorry, I'm so moved by this. I'm so moved by it. I've spent the best part of 10 years trying and failing to have children and going through fertility treatments,

being told a bit like you were told at school, you're failing to respond to the drugs until a friend of mine said, maybe the drugs are failing you, which completely switched my mindset. And like you, I've seen almost all of my friends and family have children. Like you, I go to the playground.

Sorry, that's going to make me cry. Yeah, we do this we do this and it's hard for people to understand yeah it's so amazing to hear from you what it's like as a man and I'm so sorry because I can be at peace with something, but I can also still be sad about it. And I don't know if you feel that represents your attitude now. Yes. I said earlier that I cry a lot. And I tell you what I find really difficult. You have these programs on television where they have,

it's basically watching children being born yeah it's not seven up is it there's that one and then there's like 24 hours 24 hours on the maternity yeah yeah yeah yeah can't watch it drives me to tears you know but as a man as well when I started talking about it in the kind of late 80s, early 90s, very few men talked about it. I was shouted at by another black Jamaican poet who said, black people don't talk about those things in public. And on the other side of that is I've been walking down the street and a guy stopped me, literally pulled me into a shop doorway and said, that program you made about infertility, I'm like that. And they'll start telling me something, something that they've hidden or something they're going through.

And I tell you what, I mean, I've been to parts of the world where people have been banished from the town or the village because they're infertile. I met a friend, he's a really close friend of mine now in China. And I was actually in the train station looking as you do, what time the train's leaving. And this guy came up to me, and I think he was trying to help me because he knew I was a foreigner.

We became friends. We exchanged numbers as you do. And then one day he said to me, I want to tell you something. I've never told anybody this. I'm infertile. I can't have kids. He's got twin girls. He said, how do you get twin girls?

I said, I'll invite them to have some treatment. I think they may have had a donor. And he said, my've got twin girls. He said, how do you get twin girls? I said, I'll invite you to have some treatment. I think the mayor had a donor. And he said, my parents don't know. My brothers don't know. My sisters don't know. You're the only person that knows. And I went, oh, I'm infertile too. And he went, what?

You can just tell me that? And I said, yes, I can just tell you that, you know? And he's like, what? I invited him over to England, actually. At one time, I took him to the kind of festival where people get together who are infertile and he was so overwhelmed because he'd never spoken about it and when somebody asked him he didn't know whether to he spoke the truth when he said to me afterwards he said I was going to get into automatic mode of lying and saying I

don't have a problem with me you know yeah and then he realized he's amongst people and he said it was so liberating i tell you i mean women i don't know that much about this area but i do know that in certain areas of the world and even in britain when there's infertile couples women are usually blind right that's why it happens certainly in some places that i know best, in the Caribbean and places like that. For men to come out and talk about it, it's unusual. More and more are doing it. But I will keep doing it for as long as I'm breathing, because I know it doesn't make me lesser of a man.

I know it makes me appreciate children even more. When I tried to adopt, even my social worker was outraged because they stopped me because of my criminal record not because of my criminal record had anything bad you know about children just that they couldn't find it you know they found some of it and they couldn't find other bits of it so they had to conclude that it could have been a minor so that was it and at the time I was living in a lovely house with a lovely space for a child and I think oh and then I'm not playing judgment on anybody but you know two kids can go around the back of a bicycle shed yeah yeah you would have been an amazing father for that adopted child can I ask you you said at the beginning you were interested in cosmology and the meaning of life I guess so I once heard this podcast on which Eckhart Tolle,

the spiritual teacher, was interviewed. And he said, you should try and act and respond as though everything that's ever happened to you was an active decision on your part. So even the worst things, you made an active decision for that to happen. If you could imagine that Benjamin in this area why would you have chosen it like what do you think it's taught you I just think it's taught me to appreciate life and not to take things for granted and if we failed or we lose something sometimes you've got to be thankful that we had the opportunity sometimes you've got to be as you said when you were kind of introducing me that okay we fail but we can learn from it in this matter I'm a bit of an extremist this is why I'm a vegan I just love life I look at

Anant and I go where are you going are you going shopping you got a family you got a brother and sister you know I see them do things and it's so organized and they go wow you know have you got a supervisor you know what's happening there you know one of the reasons why i practice tai chi and yoga is because it teaches you how to breathe and i'm just glad to be breathing and i have stripped away some of the things that people have given me like a nationality an agenda and a flag all those things I just said I'm a human being yeah and I'm sorry this sounds a bit cliche but there's I'm going to quote Bob Marley there's one of his songs that I I love I always love Bob Marley as a poet he says live for yourself and you will live in vain live for others and you will live again when I decided that I wanted to live for others I left

the life of crime behind I stopped being selfish I started to care about other people I started to care about other things I started to build my empathy and my compassion because there were people who were less fortunate than me. Sometimes there were people who were suffering because of me and what was I going to do about it? When I start my term at my university, I'll look at my students and I'll say to them, on paper you are all more educated than me. I'm here to help you get the best degree you can get. If you get your degree, what does it mean if you have no love, no compassion, no empathy, if you cannot connect with fellow human beings?

You could be a politician, I guess. Oh my gosh, you are such a beautiful human. I can't tell you how much I agree with everything you've just said. And I want to thank you for your the courage that you show in your vulnerability because that for me is the ultimate act of generosity to other people it is the foundation of all meaningful connection and I'm so grateful for you and I'm so grateful you came on this podcast and you didn't cry but I did I've never got that emotional on a podcast before no I can't sit in front of you and talk about stuff I've learned in my public school that I went to or stuff like that. Thank goodness.

I can only talk about my experiences. I'm not perfect and I've made mistakes. And when I heard about this podcast where you talk about your failures, I went, ah, brilliant. Because sometimes when people ask me about my successes, in my head, I think about my failures. I don't think I've been that successful. But what people see is the success. Most people don't see me when I cry.

Well, you're my perfect guest. Do you want to come back next week? Let's just do a whole series of Benjamin Zephaniah. I could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for coming on How To Fail.