How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S7, Ep7 How to Fail: Adam Pearson

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

So. This podcast episode almost didn't happen because I'd forgotten to put it into my iCal (I find any diary that isn't paper so confusing, don't you?) and on the allotted day, I had a text from sound engineer Chris saying 'We're outside!'. Needless to say, I was not inside. I was half-an-hour away having breakfast with my friend Viv.It is a testament to Adam Pearson's kindness that, when I spoke to him, harassed and sweating as I ran for the train, he didn't seem remotely put out. 'It's very on-brand to fail at turning up,' he quipped.Anyway, I'm so glad Adam stuck around because when we did sit down to record this interview, he was utterly phenomenal. Adam is a broadcaster, actor, campaigner and documentary-maker (and also Celebrity Mastermind champion) who has lived for most of his life with the incurable genetic condition, neurofibromatosis which causes benign tumours to grow along the nerves. In his case, the tumours are mostly on his face and they have severely affected his physical appearance since the age of five.Adam joins me to talk about what his condition has taught him: from standing up to bullies at school to confronting the people filming him on their cameraphones when he ventures outside. He talks about the discrimination, the name-calling and how he has managed to channel his anger into changing the world for the better. Along the way, we discuss the pressures of social media in a culture that has learned to value superficial aesthetic 'perfection' at the cost of other, more meaningful characteristics. And we talk about his failure at dating, which involves once taking a Swedish woman to Ikea (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and possibly the most offensive joke you'll ever hear about why he was barred from eHarmony - listeners of a sensitive disposition might like to turn away for that bit, but I've left it in because it will give you a sense of Adam's humour, which is an integral part of how he has learned to survive.I hope you enjoy the episode. As the man himself might say: BOOYAH.* This episode is sponsored by Frank Body who are offering listeners 15% off when they spend £20 or more with the code HOWTOFAIL15 at checkout.*The Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong is out now in paperback and available to buy here.*You can now buy exclusive How To Fail podcast merchandise - sweatshirts, t-shirts, mugs, post-its and notepads. The perfect gift for the failure in all of us! View the full range at howtofailshop.com*How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayAdam Pearson @adam_pearson   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. Adam Pearson is an actor, presenter and campaigner. He is also one of the few people who can claim to have Scarlett Johansson's personal email address after co-starring with her in Jonathan Glazer's extraordinary 2013 film, Under the Skin. The title is appropriate. Pearson is one of the funniest, most charming men I've ever met. Full disclosure, I interviewed him over fish and chips for a Sunday newspaper seven years ago, and he made me howl with laughter, intentionally.

His attitude to life is upbeat and dry-witted. This is all the more remarkable when you know that Pearson has an incurable genetic condition called neurofibromatosis, which causes benign tumors to grow along the nerves. In his case, the tumors are are mostly on his face and they have severely affected his physical appearance since the age of five. Pearson's twin brother, Neil, has the same condition but with a difference. He suffers from memory loss but has no visible symptoms. Neurofibromatosis has meant that Pearson has been the focus of bullying and discrimination from a young age. Yet it has never held him back. Today, Pearson works in television production and was one of the people behind Channel 4's The Undateables.

He was nominated as UK Documentary Presenter of the Year at the 2016 Grierson Awards and even appeared on a 2019 edition of Celebrity Mastermind, winning the episode with his specialist subject, WWE. I don't really care what strangers think, he once said. You own it. Otherwise, it crushes you. Adam Pearson, welcome to How to Fail. Oh, that was lovely. You should just follow me around and say things like that all the time

i can give you a laminated printout and you can put it in your pocket but it is all true and i really remember that interview seven years ago this is where you say i've never met you before no no i i remember as well i think you you had a go at me because i made you write booyah at the end of the whole thing i think that was the tweet you went adam pearson you're the only man that's made me write booyah at the end of an article. Yeah, transcribing the tape was fun because, yes, putting actual letters to the phrase booyah is quite an exercise.

But it's really interesting that you say that about not caring what strangers think, that you have to own it, otherwise it crushes your spirit. Yeah. But how long did that take you to learn? Oh, years. Yeah. Years. And I think it's something you learn, like anything, otherwise it crushes your spirit yeah but how long did that take you to learn oh yes yes and i think it's something you learn like like anything you learn to get things right by getting things wrong and i think when we talk about things like failure incorrectly we polarize it and view it as the

opposite of success whereas i feel there's a journey toward success. And if you've never failed, you've never tried, I think. Very on brand for this podcast. And I have to say that actually this podcast has started recording half an hour late because I forgot it was happening. So the failure in this instance is all of mine. And thank you very, very much for being so patient with me. How do you feel about failure more broadly in your life? What do you consider to be a failure? Good question. And I think failure is an okay thing to do. And I think

it's how we learn. And we learn by getting things wrong. And I think rather than try and shun it or avoid it, I think once one can get their head around that it is in fact an inevitability of the human experience and learn to embrace it but more importantly learn from it if you're feeling the same way over and over and over i think that might be a problem whereas if you try say or pick yourself up kind of brush the dirt off your shoulders and carry on and learn from it and take it as an experience. I think that's in a really perverse way quite a beautiful thing to be able to do. In the introduction I talk about your condition. How does it feel when an introduction like that always mentions it? Well it would be weird not to, wouldn't it?

Because it is such an important thing. And in a weird way, it's kind of defined my existence. And it's also part of the reason why I get the opportunities I do. In a weird way, it's opened more doors than it's closed. And something on the face of it, whether you're talking from like a medical, social or philosophical point of view, that could have been designed for destruction has in a very kind of amazing way made me who I am. Tell me a bit about Under the Skin,

the film that I mentioned there, which was an extraordinary piece of work. If you haven't seen it, please go and see it right now and also read the book that it was based on. And it's about an alien played by Scarlett Johansson, hot alien. And she has an encounter with you which humanises her for the first time for the audience. Would you tell us about the encounter first?

So completely. In the film, she is cast. She's on a mission to go and pick off kind of wayward men who no one will miss and send them back to her home planet. That's pulled out a lot more in the book. The book goes into that in way more detail than the film. And she starts off quite kind of cold and callous

and very much on a mission, no blinkers. And then my character is a person that just isn't really interested in the whole sexuality of what's going on just is out on the cover night to do his shopping wants to get to Tesco's and I think that is what kind of humanizes her and the tone of the whole film changes at that point and it's a really poignant scene one of the most beautiful and profound bits is that scarlett hansom's character does not comment on your face no but comments on another part of your body yeah my hands and that's a completely kind of i say impromptptu, we, myself, Jonathan Glazer and Scarlett met a couple of times before filming to talk about it and the character and lead me in kind of gently. When your first acting dick is a Jonathan Glazer film with Scarlett Johansson, you've either done really well or really badly.

And the jury was out at the time. Turns out really well. Yay. And my mother has always said i've got very nice hands or you've got hands like my father had them and i'm like yeah i do and that's why i like the film it's really interesting in what what does a world look like without prejudice or without knowledge or if someone rots up on earth today's like a 35-year-old, having had no media exposure,

how will they find the world around them? How will they interact in it? And how will they try and find their place in it? And I think that's something that echoes throughout that whole film, and in particular that one scene. You also had to do a nude scene with her. Yeah. You told me when we first met

that she had a filthy sense of humor yeah yeah yeah well not not filthy as in crass but quite dark I like people that have a dark sense of humor I think if you don't laugh and joke about things then you'll cry about things so yeah we kind of went back and forth the banter was very much there and I think humor is a very good way of communicating with people and breaking down barriers anyway I think laughter is one of the very few things that we as humans do communally and if you go and watch a stand-up gig you'll laugh more when you're in a room with other people and if you watch the exact same thing on your own on DVD I hold up comedy as one of the purest forms of communication humans can have.

You mentioned there when we were talking about the film, that idea that if someone had not been exposed to media, didn't have any clear ideas of what humans should look like, how they would react. And it's interesting to me because you are of an age where I guess your very early years, there was no social media. No. So how different do you think your experience as Adam Pearson would have been had there been no social media and no internet all of your life? It's a double-edged sword, social media and internet.

I'm a big fan of social media. I use it a lot. I've had to get it wrong to learn to get it right much like everyone and i think it's a tool and a weapon to be mastered and wielded with great care if it hadn't been there if it wasn't there now i think we'd all be a lot more insular than we are to make communication ridiculously easy almost to the point where we take it for granted or have forgotten how to do it though i do feel for the younger generation in a sense of that you're being constantly bombarded by images of how you're supposed to look or what you're supposed to be or how you're supposed to

act by both big corporations and then so-called influencers which is I love that term so much I'm a social media influencer like who you're influencing and how you're influencing them I think that's the question that we're not asking you could put a photo of yourself wearing an amazing dress looking absolutely good and yes you're influencing what is mainly young girls it's just unfortunate that the influence you have is making them feel inferior. And how does it make you feel? Or can you insulate yourself from that because of everything that you've been through? Does it make you feel, I don't look a certain way? I'm quite media literate. So it kind of just bounces off me. I think I've learned through my own personal experience, but also being in the industry and being around, I can delineate between what's real and what's fake,

what's reality and what's advertising, or for want of a better term, posturing. So I'm quite savvy. What advice would you give people who are less savvy, who feel overwhelmed by that kind of messaging? Get savvy. And I think it's also completely fine to have a detox. And I often give advice, I say, to young people,

because I do a lot of school assemblies. A lot of my friends are teachers, so I get roped into a lot of things which I completely love doing. I love talking to young people and giving them the benefit of my experience because I was a crap young person. I was an awful, awful teenager. And I think if social media had been around when I was that age,

I'd have been a worse teenager. I think have a detox. Have a complete media detox. Take a week. Don't look at your Twitter. Don't look at your Facebook. Don't look at your Instagram. Give the reality TV a rest and just go home, read a book and talk to your family.

And then once you switch back on, realize how easily swayed you are. That's very interesting. Yeah. And because in that week, you'll learn who you are and you'll also learn who you're not. And I think learning what you're not is a crucial part of learning what you are. you're also learning who you're not. And I think learning what you're not is a crucial part of learning what you are. And then you'll realise what you're taking in might not reflect the norms and values you actually have. You say there that you were a terrible teenager, and we're going to get onto that in a second because it ties into your first failure. What do you think of the person that you are now? I've done all right, I think. I can look myself

in the mirror and be like, yeah, you've got this I'm very fortunate you know my parents are great my brother's great I've got a good circle of friends around me who love and respect me and who I equally love and respect and they've all got kids who adore me so I'm now emotionally tied into these relationships at the point where even if I wanted to walk away I couldn't because I'm now emotionally tied into these relationships. Even if I wanted to walk away, I couldn't because I'm kind of having those magic tricks. And how's Nintendo? And we'll walk the dog and they can't be bothered. And I'm happy enough. It's interesting, though, that when you asked that question, you said to me, I can look in the mirror and say you've got this.

I can look in the mirror and say, you've got this. Because we've talked before about how much of culture uses a kind of semaphore of visuals to convey something. So Bond villains are often shown with scars on their faces and it's seen as a negative. And what was really beautiful about your performance in Under the Skin was that it completely subverted that norm but talk to me a bit about that about how culturally we've seen quote unquote disfigurement yeah the bond one's really interesting because this is the third disfigured bond bad guy in a

row now which is a tad lazy and a tad um hugely shorthanded and the language they use i also find really i'm not going to say offensive i think it would be alarmist to say it's offensive because it's just words at the end of the day and this kind of outrage culture where everyone just ends up shouting at each other but no one ends up talking to each other i find remarkably unhelpful talking to each other I find remarkably unhelpful but I go oh yeah he's scarred in villainous or a scar made for evil and it's one of the very few areas where it goes unchecked and I imagine if one day when it happens when Idris Elba gets the Bond role I don't think that they'll start using different adjectives to describe James Bond when it's being played by a black actor I don't think that they'll start using different adjectives to describe James Bond when it's being played by a black actor. I don't think he's going to one day go from being suave and sophisticated

to sleek and streetwise. I just find it really interesting and frustrating. But I also don't want to go too far the other way and put a blanket van on it, because I think that also restricts creativity. And I'm also campaigning myself out of work. But that's interesting as well because I know that you said in the past that you would love to be a Bond villain.

Absolutely. But you'd be playing it. I think another thing that worries me is that idea that you have someone who doesn't live with a condition such as yours, who's been given makeup to look a certain way, in a way that you wouldn't do with any other form of being no again that's fascinating i was watching it i was actually watching this morning joe rogan was interviewing robert danny jr about tropic thunder it's a film where it's robert danny jr it's hilarious it holds this kind of mirror up to

the hypocrisy of Hollywood and what you can and can't do and how the virtue signaling and the actual output don't actually collaborate in any way. There's no equivalency there. And that would never get made now. Like, just backing up the liberal use of the word retard from Simple Jack. And the narrative is always, oh, it's acting, mate, kind of get over it. Because essentially the argument is

a disabled actor playing a disabled character isn't acting. And there are two problems with that argument. A, it doesn't equate elsewhere. Female actors playing female characters isn't acting. It's a ridiculous statement to make. And also it boils disabled actors and disabled people down to just their disability and ignores the whole other solid up parts i'm more than just my disability i'm a son i'm a friend i'm an employee i'm adam

fucking pearson god damn it and it's a really interesting tipping point i think we're at now in terms of the creative arts and where disability fits into that your first failure is that you bombed at secondary school and i want to come on to that but i also want you to take me back to five-year-old adam pearson one of two boys. Your brother twin is called Neil. Yeah. And what happened when you were five? So I was dicking about in my room. I was probably, I was doing something I shouldn't have done.

Like, kind of the details escaped me because I was like, but I reckon, I was probably pretending to be Hulk Hogan. And I took this, like, massive swan dive and then bounced my head off, bounced my head off the corner of the windowsill and screamed. And my parents came in, checked the windowsill, checked on me, because priorities.

And, you know, we put... And it came up in a bump, as it normally would, right? And so we put some ice in it. We were like, OK, don't do it again. And naturally, Fast Learner, failure were like okay don't do it again and naturally um fast learner failure all that jazz did it again and it came up in a bump again but this time it didn't go down and there were other things going on as well i had these um like pigmentations on my skin called capillary marks french and milky coffee because that's the color they are when i'd eat

one half of my face to go bright red where you could literally draw a line down the middle of it to um delineate and eventually all these things combined got us to a diagnosis of neurofibromatosis which back in the 90s the nhs and diagnostics as a practice wasn't what it is now so the doctor just literally read a definition out of a medical textbook patting my mom on the hand and i was like i don't know how she didn't have got him to this day i don't know how she didn't kill that man and she didn't because i quite like coming around and then from that point you just get on with it you learn the system you know as much as you can about the condition. And you armor up and you fight the battle. Did it get worse and worse?

And does it continue to get progressively worse? Yeah, so it's progressive. So it's always going to be a thing that's ticking on. And you can go in and have the excess tissue removed in what they call debunking procedures. So in the same way that electric wires are wrapped in plastic your nerves are wrapped in cells called swan cells and the condition means that these cells multiply exponentially and you can go in and have as

much as you can remove without compromising other things like there are muscles nerves and blood vessels involved so one can only be so heroic without doing more harm than good and so i've had 38 ups now i think on your face yeah on my face 39 is in in the schedule and then i have this massive debate with my mom is to is it crass and offensive to have a party for my 40th no absolutely not and i hope I'm invited. Because I think it's quite dark and quite macabre and very Adam Pearson. Very Adam Pearson. But I think other people might find it really, really offensive.

But like you said at the beginning, if you don't laugh, you cry. Yeah, totally. Is it painful? No, the condition isn't. No, no, no, no. I mean, after surgery, you have a day of it not being fun because it is a bit tight and it feels different. And sometimes it can move different. It can go around the old communication triangle area.

You have to move cups and cans to different places and relearn Russell memory and stuff. I can normally handle that out in like a week. I'm like an old school. I'm a veteran of the game now at this point it's like a free rent free food free morphine and you go home normally the same day now you talk about it with eloquence and humor but I can imagine it wasn't always like that and it must have been really difficult having an identical twin who doesn't have it visibly I don't think

that would have been a healthy attitude to take because Neil very much had his own own struggles to deal with and as much as it sucked to me having to go through it it also sucked him having to watch it and I think that's a very easy thing to forget when you're in the throes of the medical system. But my concern was always mom, dad and Neil, even going through it. I was like, I'm going to get through this. This is going to be fine. I'm in the hands of medical professionals and this will all be okay. I need to make sure that they're okay with all this as well.

Because they're my support network. If they fall away, then I'm in big trouble did you ever or do you ever feel resentment at the condition no because I don't know how to how to do that if that makes sense I think it sounds incredibly bizarre to say but it also isn't going to change it it's going to be kind of wasted energy but it also isn't going to change it it's going to be kind of wasted energy and wasted motion and i think once you allow that kind of resentment to kind of manifest it's only a matter of time before it works its way out in the real world it isn't going to work its way out on strangers or on enough of objects it's going to work its way on the people that i love and care about

and i don't want to be that guy. I think we've got enough of those guys out there already in the Easter and on the interwebs and what have you. It's not in my nature. It sounds really weird and maybe a bit arrogant, but I'm not that guy. Tell me about a secondary school. Oh, God, awful. Like, worst five years of my life.

And it's only now looking back on it, I can be like, yeah, I've balled up there. You balled up? I, yeah. I think I had to take part of the responsibility for those five years. I'll never say it was all my fault, because it wasn't. I certainly could have handled myself a lot better over those five years. So you've cited it as a failure. What was happening? Were you being bullied?

Oh, completely, yeah. So in five years, to the point where you get so far in and you know who's going to say what, when they're going to say it, at what time, whereabouts it's going to happen, you can almost plan your schedule around it at that point. I was in the unfortunate situation where I was a lot smarter than the people bullying me. So it gets to where I'd just be like kind of blowing people up in the playground. Like they say something and I come back with something infinitely worse.

Like kind of random speech lists and they go and tattle on me. And then I get called and I become the problem. And then I reckon they had my mum's car on ANPR at the time because they were forever driving up there and being told, oh, Adam did this, Adam said this. And we couldn't drive to the point now that people just left me alone to get on with my stuff. It wouldn't happen.

Yeah, it sounds like you were being failed by teachers there. A little bit. But then I think two wrongs don't make a right and I think there was failure on everyone's part there. There were a couple of really good teachers that kind of sought my corner a bit, both of whom I still talk to even today but I'm not going to say I don't regret it because I can't change it and in a weird way it kind of shaped my past slightly differently and then I had to take a longer route through education than I would otherwise have to so I think it was actually really really good for me so I think in the long term it worked its way

out really really well I just sometimes wish I'd handled myself a bit better and had grown up quicker and if I could go back and talk to my kind of 13-year-old self, I'd probably just tell him, it's OK, you'll get through this. Just reel it in a little bit. What kind of things were happening? Was it verbal abuse? Was it physical? It was pretty much verbal. It very, very rarely got physical.

And it was all the, what I now refer to as the classics, kind of Edith Mann, Quasim the bells all that kind of skullduggery is now kind of ward off adults back i now rank those on on social media as like a two out of ten must try harder when people write it but you're less well balanced when you're a teenager, I think. All anyone wants to do at that age is leave school and get laid. And outside of that, anything else is just an inconvenience that needs to be put to one side to focus on those two key objectives. Yeah, I just wish I'd calmed down a little bit. And if I'd have known then what I do know now.

Did it have an impact on, I mean, in the sense that, did it affect how you felt about yourself did you feel sad or even depressed or can you remember crying over it yeah i got really angry i'm a big proponent of justice even as a young kid i was like quite geeky into my comics and the one strand that runs through any of the dc comics is this idea of justice the actual justice or kind of the punishes vigilante justice either way it's kind of there and i was like this isn't fair and no one's doing anything and i can't figure out why and if i could have figured out why i don't know i've at least had some kind of resolution or understanding

or had a finish to this train of thought, as opposed to all this stuff just going round and round, both in reality, in the day-to-day of the school playground. If you want to see Darwin's theory in perfect motion, the weak being consumed by the strong, look at any school playground up and down the country and then tell me Darwin's not onto something. But if I could have just gotten some kind of resolution I reckon I'd have been a lot cooler with the whole thing what kind of

resolution could you have got like what explanation is there maybe if I'd have known what the other people in it were going through I think now again organ-wise we know a lot more about mental health and that people who are bullies at school are probably being bullies themselves somewhere outside of those parameters but also high school's dumb there's this

whole social pecking order where all these girls walk around arm in arm and write bestest best friends forever on each other's books. And then on the last day, they hug, say goodbye, and then maybe see each other once a year after that. It's just a ridiculous popularity contest that ultimately doesn't matter. I think that's such a key message because I do think that I didn't have a particularly good experience at school either.

Nothing compared to your experience but I always used to resent it when people said to me school days are the best days of your life because I was like these are the best days I don't know what's going to happen next and it's absolutely not been the case like my life has got better the older I've got and I know that a lot of people who listen to this podcast feel particularly lost in their 20s and that that's a sort of confusing decade as well for slightly different reasons yeah and I always want to say maybe it's not going to be your decade but that's fine because a later one will be like there'll be different patches of your life that will be for you completely will no one rid me of this troublesome priest

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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 were you talking to your parents about what was going on i mean obviously they were being summoned to the school oh yeah yeah and i think communication is always really important in those kind of things because the more you can talk about it the more you realize that you're you're not alone and that other people have been through it as well bullying has always been a thing i think with the advent of the online and social media the delivery mechanism may have changed slightly but those feelings of kind of loneliness or isolation or desperation are very much universal and i think the more we get used to talking about

them and the more we open ourselves up to talk about them and i guess more than anything i felt ashamed i thought i thought i was better than this and I was somehow more bulletproof and I should be okay and I'm not. And I think once you get over that, that inertia, and realise it's okay not to be okay, I think that's when you can start doing the heavy lifting that you have to. Do you still get bullied and do you still get people saying things in the street? I wouldn't say I get bullied. I think you can only get bullied if you allow yourself to be bullied. But yeah, people say things in the street i wouldn't say i i get bullied i think you can only get bullied if you allow yourself to to be bullied but yeah people say things in the street people say things online

camera phones are the vein of my existence but i have mastered the subtle art of not giving a fuck and what strangers think of me or say about me is not will not and will never be my problem they can live in their ignorance and i will move on with my life and never think about you again that camera phone comment has really upset me people take out their camera phones yeah and you know sometimes do video sometimes take photos and i try and be subtle about it i don't know how they can be subtle with phones as big as they are now but but you have to learn to delineate how much of it is kind of ignorance and how much of it is because i am off the telly but people tend not to be subtle if it's an off the telly thing people kind of ask for the selfie and people forget to turn their

sound effects up on their phone when they try and do it kind of subtly for the voyeuristic purposes and you can make it really really awkward i'm a big fan of cranking up the awkward how do you do that when i know it happening what was it i did that one time oh i went up to a guy i knew he'd done it and i left it i was like sorry mate the lighting's not very good over here if we go over here you'll get like a much better photo to show your mates when you when you get home we should do a video we can chat out to your mom and we hope she's proud of you and all of that jazz i know i'm proud of you and then he was just like no mate i wasn't i wasn't i was like well open your photos and all right i wasn't really sorry wasn't. I was like, well, open your photos. And they're like, all right, I wasn't really sorry. I won't do it again.

Yeah, but I'm fucking right you won't. And then all the kind of forced apologies come out. And yeah, but I think it's important people feel the weight of their actions. Yeah, good for you calling it out. And I think sometimes it's important to do it in the moment as well, because otherwise you've lost that opportunity.

What you say there about strangers and how they react to not being your business but being entirely a function of their ignorance and what is going on in their life is such a sophisticated and profound thought and very enlightened is part of the way you've been able to feel and think that by having certain key relationships in your life that you know you can go to who know you as you really are so your parents your brother how important is that to you oh literally i think having that kind of network to keep you grounded and keep you secure is crucial kind of people that know me like i know myself knowing yourself is really important knowing what kind of your identity is in

and kind of is in who you are, what you do and what you're doing in the world is it in stuff and the social media and the perishables if it is please have a very fast rethink or is it in kind of religion

is it in kind of like Christ the deity or another and I've got a very good network of friends who are there for me, but also who kind of keep me grounded. So, like, one of my friends, Dan, is like, you might be famous, but you're still a prick. And I'm like, I need that. I'm really glad that I have that guy around to keep me there.

And then my best friend, Roxy, is like my comfort on who I tell everything. And, yeah, I'm really'm really really lucky I love that phrase the perishables social media appearance that idea that we set too much stock in the perishables and they expire they have an expiry date amazing gonna use that gonna claim it as my own Adam there we go copyright I'm actually going to come on to your third failure next because that's the order i want to do it because then there's some light relief at the end but the next failure is that in your words you used to be terrible at advocacy correct because you saw everything as a battle yeah this is fascinating so tell me why that is and how you got into advocacy in the first place

i didn't come to advocacy advocacy Advocacy came to me. I never set out to change the world. When I left uni, it was all very anticlimactic and everyone builds up graduating in their own heads at your walkout of that last exam. The eye of the tiger will start blasting over a PA system. There'll be kind of style works and an eagle will swoop down and hand you a contract for the

job you want and everything will happen and as he stood i did my last exam it was raining a bus was broken down outside of uni a recession was about to happen and it was all incredibly anticlimactic and then i somehow fell into what I'm doing and became this I suppose voice for the voiceless I was one of the first people to face the significance to get like a proper channel 4 gig I did a lot of behind the scenes stuff for diversity at the BBC and gain the attention and respect of a lot of very important people very quickly and i suddenly i know we just got this platform and this voice that i had no idea how to use properly and so then when you start doing this advocacy you can take everything on and kind of slap your chest and shout this is wrong you must change and that as it turns out tends to piss people off a little bit

no one likes being told they're wrong and i think i did see everything as a confrontation and an argument to be had and a battle to be won as opposed to a conversation to be had and learning to kind of lovingly correct people and steer them around to your way of thinking using love, sacks and logic. And I think I've slowly gotten better at those kind of... Fern Cotton articulated this wonderfully in her interview with you. Learning those soft skills, learning those people skills. I had the sacks, I had the figures,

I had the academic research all day long as to why I was right. But I didn't have the soft skills to communicate it in a way that would get people on side. And you learn those by, I think, getting it wrong. Because I guess in many respects, you were still Adam Pearson, the teenager in the playground with your incredible verbal articulacy and your slap downs and that that was the most recent experience I guess that you'd had well I had been to kind of uni and kind of lost that edge and lost that privado because was uni better it was a positive experience the higher up the education system you go the more equipped they are to deal with difference and i think

people are there because they want to be we're secondary school that's like a legal obligation people there because they have to be and i don't think education is for everyone some people just don't learn in that way or in that kind of environment like one of the guys i was at school with who was actually quite rotten to me, but now we're actually really cool, in that academic environment, didn't do very well. Soon as you put him in a garage with loads of broken cars and motorbikes, he excels. His eyes light up, he comes alive, and it's like he's a different person.

So you're still in touch with him? Yeah, yeah. And have any of the bullies ever apologised to you? I've said to you. Good. Yeah, yeah. have any of the bullies ever apologised to you? I've said to you.

Good. Yeah, yeah. And I will never judge anyone on the person they were when they were 16. Ever. I think it's an unfair thing to do. Because I don't know who the hell I was when I was 16. And I don't think even if you take disability and bullying and all that out of the equation,

no one knows who the hell they are when they're 16 you're still trying to figure it out some people take a lifetime to figure out who they are so in this advocacy role we've spoken a bit about individual instances of prejudice and ignorance but i know that it goes a lot deeper than that and it's a lot more institutional so will you explain to people who don't have your experiences how ingrained prejudice and discrimination can be in our institutions in three words in three words get a grip um i think it is i i think when you're going to work tomorrow walk around your office walk around

your place of work do your daily commute and just think if i were partially sighted or in a wheelchair would this work what changes would need to be made to my day-to-day if heaven forbid i should be in an accident today tomorrow whenever and need to use a wheelchair could i still get into my office could i still do my job would i have to start getting black cars everywhere instead of using the underground or driving would all my friends still want to hang out with me or so on and so forth just think about it and and let it let it sit for a while and if it feels uncomfortable don't fight that let let it feel uncomfortable because that's okay and just think about it and try and kind of emphasize a little bit and then take it from there do you think that our marginalization of people who are quote-unquote not like us stems from fear

yeah yeah yeah well i don't think it i think it stems from anxiety whenever we're confronted with something different or other we're instantly put on on the back foot and the sooner you can counteract that counterbalance it by almost normalising it and having the conversations and explaining things, you get over the difference of either explaining it or putting it out there for people to become accustomed to in their own way and in their own time. And if we can do that before it gets to fear, and then that fear later will become prejudiced the easier it gets

so how did you end up learning the soft skills necessary i learned by doing it i think you find yourself in in the situations and i also like by watching other people doing it i think whatever you want to do find someone that does it exponentially better than you and just have the humility to sit under the learning tree and take it in and kind of respond to feedback as feedback criticism is there to help you it's not an attack

it's not an affront it's not telling you you're wrong or a bad person it's like sailing it's helping you get better at it so I spent a lot of time just standing back watching other people do what I wanted to do and now do do a lot better than me and even now I'll still do that I always say that if I'm the smartest person in a room I'm in a shit room what are you proudest of that is always a really hard question to have to answer

and this is going to sound incredibly incredibly wanky and the achievement i'm always proudest of is the next one i think if you put all your stock in the past then it makes it very hard to aim higher and so yeah you know Mastermind absolutely took down the graduation photo, put up the Mastermind trophy, rock on. But then what's the next thing? Kind of what other walls need breaking down? What other hurdles can I jump? What have I been told I won't be able to do that I can now go out and do?

So the thing I'm most proud of is the next thing I'll do. I love that your specialist subject was WWE. Yeah, I know. I know, I thought I'd keep it highbrow. What's the difference between WWE and WWF? They're the same thing. It's all wrestling, isn't it? Well, WWF and WWE are the same thing.

There was a 10-year lawsuit between what was then the World Wrestling Federation and the World Wildlife Fund for the name because clearly people were getting confused. They were meant to be saving pandas. They were buying steroids to Hulk Hogan. These things happen.

And there was a 10-year lawsuit and then they just changed the name to World Wrestling Entertainment in 2001. And they ran this really clever campaign called Get the F Out so that everyone could get used to the name change if you were a wrestler what would your name be oh because they don't like it when you use your real name because they can't trademark it and i don't know if i'd want

to use like a kind of madam yeah or yeah yeah mr smash because those things are really really ridiculous I sprung that on you it's a really really hard thing and I have thought about it because after Mastermind I got all these wrestlers starting adding me on Twitter so I've now got this bizarre network of NXT UK stars

who I'm getting wants with which is like an insane one and one of my other friends, Simon, is like a pro wrestler. I would probably call myself Kenny Chaos. Nice. I like alliteration. Yeah, me too.

It makes good t-shirts. It does. Excellent. Kenny Chaos. Okay, so Kenny Chaos, your third failure is not your failure to be a WWE wrestler, but it is your failure at dating. I suck at dating. I am so bad.

Tell me the Ikea story. I really hope this wouldn't come up. So I used to date a really lovely Swedish girl called Amanda. And she's coming over from Sweden. For our first date, we went to the, I'm just near here actually, the Wapsaw Theatre tea house. And she loved that because she loves tea and cakes

and all the kind of British... They have knitted tea cosies there, don't they? They do, it's adorable. And then for our second date, I thought, and I told people I was going to do this. I'd run this by people. This isn't just me in a moment of madness going, aha, I told people I was going to do this. I'd run this by people. This isn't just me in a moment of madness going, aha. I told people I was going to do this.

And everyone went, that's amazing. You should definitely do that. Everyone. Not one person went, I wouldn't do that shit if I were you. I'd have been quiet and someone quite nearby. I took her for lunch at IKEA. Because I thought she might be having sex. But Ethan, I think that was quite a good idea. Yeah, I took her for lunch at Ikea. Because I thought she might be having a sick. But Ethan, I think that was quite a good idea.

Yeah, I know. I love eating at Ikea. Yes, it's amazing. Yeah. 60p for a hot dog. Bring it. I know. And she just ploughed at me over lunch that I paid for.

Going, you are not really funny today. Yeah. Did she also call it Ikea? Because that's the way you're meant to pronounce it in Swedish no no no no we didn't really talk about it afterwards it was just a really awkward tram ride home so that relationship didn't work out but how it did not why do you think you suck at dating more broadly I think everyone sucks at dating I think everyone's like really at the start of it i was like really nervous i was like putting on a front and trying to be kind of their best them and eventually that facade slips and you work out that they're a dick

and yeah so now i'm just very much kind of cards on the table kind of here is what to expect when you're dating me here is a computer game release scheduled for 2020 marked in red are the dates that i might not be around as much are you okay with this no me either amazing see you later no i can do it i'm not good at it it's a learning process and one girl and a cat died and apparently going oh it's okay we can get a new cat was the wrong thing to say in that moment like how how am I meant to know that it's in my field I can't even I mean first dates are extremely awkward and I speak from personal experience but do you feel on a first date that you have to get the obvious stuff out of the way

like do you feel like you have to have the conversation about this condition and what it's going to mean or do you try and go the other way and connect I try and connect and I all the dates have been on I've very rarely gone on cold I've normally started out as friends with someone and then it's progressed kind of into dating you've gotten past all that stuff and you got to know them and you already have some kind of chemistry there i'm not a big proponent of dating apps have you ever tried them oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you know i i have an active Tinder account. I'm banned from eHarmony. Wait, hang on.

You're banned from eHarmony? Okay, please tell me that whole story. Well, I went on that and I perused. And on any profile, it's, I like a man with a sense of humour. So I thought, all right, literally me. Nailed this. Let's do this. And you have to answer all these questions

it was what did you look for in a woman and I wrote as a joke my dick oh my god

that was the best okay and apparently they dropped the bad hammer no one found it

funny you've already enjoyed that far more than the moderators at eHarmony did. So did they? How did they get in touch with you? Did they email you and say? Yeah, your profile has been deactivated.

Oh, Adam, that's hilarious. Kristen Mingle, my photos don't get through their facial recognition software. So that's a bugger wow i know what's tinder been like have you ever had a successful date off tinder yeah several oh great several i really i really like tinder because everyone knows what they're getting i used to have this thing where i sort of didn't take tinder seriously for a while i still don't to a degree i think it's a bit of a joke where i you get a match and i message them

going sat penguins and they reply going what and i'd be like thought i'd say something to break the ice and sammy 48 has blocked you but how much do you use i'm going to use a very cod psychology question here but how much is your humour a defence mechanism? And how much do you think that means that when you date, people can't get to know you? I don't think it's a defence mechanism. I think it's a communication thing. Again, I think it makes people feel very comfortable.

And also, if I can joke about my disability, it makes them feel more comfortable around it because they know I'm not one of these kind of uppity disabled guys. I'm not disabled, I'm handy capable, or whatever the wanky terms are nowadays. Humour really puts people at ease. I'm actually just still laughing about eHarmony, I'm sorry. Yeah, I know.

You were saying all of this important stuff and I can't stop thinking about it. Yeah, no, take it in. No, I think it's a pure communication thing. I think at one point in time it may have been a defence mechanism, but now I just think it's a really good way of communicating with people and making relationships more human. And I think we take things like this way too seriously.

And I think there's a time and a place for it. But I think laughter is a really important thing and I think we all need to learn to do it more in any situation when was your last relationship or have you had anything that you categorize as a relationship I haven't been in a relationship for a couple of years now because I have been like really busy with work and stuff and whenever I get into a relationship I'm always really wary that they then become Adam Pearson's girlfriend. And the last thing I want to do is subject someone I love to this tabloid ring circus of kind of, oh, Adam Pearson's girlfriend, beauty and a beast and what have you.

Because then I end up clapping back and going, don't call my girlfriend a beast, but thank you for the compliment. I'm beautiful. And, you know, I also kind of want to, A, protect them from it, but also not be a distraction for them as well. Even with my family, I'm, like, really, really protective. Like, whenever I do something, my mum will get all these couriered telegrams from women's magazines asking for interviews,

and I'm forever phoning, kind of take a break or chat, telling them to leave my fucking family alone. And they don't do it anymore. I think the message has finally gotten in that you don't approach my mum without my express permission. And I still go out there and kind of put myself out there and what have you. I'm not backward in coming forward

and I'm not as bad as I used to be at dating do your parents want you to meet someone I don't think they care I think my mom's like please I have grandchildren I think as long as I'm happy they're happy I'm really fascinated by twins and I'm sure you get asked about this all the time as well but do you and Neil feel each other's feelings? And have you had that experience of having the same dream or one of you's twisted your ankle and the other one's had the pain of it? One time someone punched me in the head

and my fist really hurt, but outside of that. Really? Because I was the one... Because you were the one punching her. Yeah, yeah, because it was my fist. That was the... Oh, Adam. Now I've explained it, it's Sonia.

No, I think guy twins are very different from girl twins. I think the emotion thing is, because one of my best friends, Roxy, is a twin, and her and her sister, George, have that all the time, kind of know each other's feelings. One time, Roxy had been in Australia for six months. George had went to meet at the airport, and they'd brought each other the same present to give each other at the airport. And they bought each other the same present

to give each other at the airport. How does that work? How are you so in tune that that happens? And I was like, oh, that's adorable. And me and Neil don't have that. We get on, and that's fine. And we're incredibly competitive. Like, incredibly competitive.

So he's like, oh, I've got a real I've got a real job he's got like a nine-to-five job or like a proper job as my as my parents call it and I'm like I won mastermind where's your comeback now son what what Adam Pearson do you feel successful? I think I do yeah and I think how we measure success in culture is very arbitrary and I think if you're measuring success by money you're onto a dangerous road because then you could be the kind of the richest man in the graveyard and no one would care whereas i think it's the implicit duty of every human to leave this world a better place than when they left it and i think if you can do that and i do this a lot when i do school assemblies i will always

sit down with young people and i'm like write imagine the best life you can lead. Now write your own obituary for that life. And then that way you'll know what you're striving for and what the legacy you want to leave is. And that's what you should be shooting for. The money, the cars, the fame, all that jazz is great, but it's not the thing. For me, kind of fame, quote-unquote, is a very fortunate by-product of being very good at

what i do and being a good campaigner a good bloke and being that kind of voice to the voiceless almost i think at this stage of life my job is to give a voice to people who might not be able for one reason or another to speak for themselves and And if that doesn't make me any money, it doesn't make me any money. And I'm okay with that. Hey, you can always go to Ikea for lunch. It's very cheap. It is very cheap.

Adam Pearson, should I say Kenny Chaos, you leave my world better for being part of it. Thank you. I cannot thank you enough for the beautiful way you have with words and with life. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you for having me if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist