How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S9, Ep5 How to Fail: Ovie Soko

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

I'VE GOT A TEXT...MESSAGE. This week's guest is Ovie Soko, a man who entered the Love Island villa in 2019 and rapidly became iconic by uttering this phrase. But he's so much more than a reality TV star: famed for his laid-back charm and wise advice, Ovie is also a professional basketball player and a soon-to-be-published author. His debut book, You Are Dope, is out next week.Ovie joins me to talk about almost getting expelled from school, cheating on a girlfriend and being caught stealing from his mother. Along the way we discuss Black Lives Matter, and his experiences of being pulled over by police in America, Love Island, Nigerian families, faith, relationships, social media and what it means to channel your difference as a super-power.What. A. Dude.*PLEASE PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK, THANK YOU! Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong is available here*To celebrate the publication of Failosophy, I am doing a LIVE show at the newly Covid-secure London Palladium. It is also live-streamed online. If you'd like to buy tickets for either option, you can do so here.*You Are Dope by Ovie Soko is available for pre-order here.*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] You can buy our fantastic PODCAST MERCH here.* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayOvie Soko @oviesokoHow To Fail @howtofailpod                Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Their website address is www.beja.london. Beja is spelt B-E-I-J-A. It's Portuguese for kiss, so you learn something new every day. You can book your online fit appointment on the homepage of their website. Thank you very much to Beija London. 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. When he was a child, Ovi Soko's mother gave him the nickname Motorola because he talked so much. child, Ovi Soko's mother gave him the nickname Motorola because he talked so much. As he recalls in his new book, You Are Dope, most of his chatter came from a desire to question the rules. He felt like an outsider for much of his adolescence, not prosperous enough to fit in with the richer kids at his North London secondary school, not academic enough to fit in with his Nigerian family's expectations. Basketball turned out to be the answer. Soko worked towards a professional career from the age of 13. At 16, he won a sports scholarship to a private school in Virginia and left home in Tottenham to live in the States. After three years of university, first in Alabama,

then Pennsylvania, he turned pro in 2014. Since then, he's played in France, Italy, Greece and Spain. His subsequent stint in the British Basketball League saw him become the national side's second leading scorer. He recently signed with the French team Le Mans. But it was as a 2019 contestant in ITV's reality show, Love Island, that Soko truly won the nation's hearts. His unflappable manner, laconic self-assuredness, his dazzling array of headgear and Hawaiian shirts, and his habit of shouting, message, after anyone received a text, a reference to a cult 90s movie, won him legions of admirers. He emerged with a newfound fame and a social media following, but Soko seems always to have had a wise head on his young shoulders. He agreed to several

lucrative brand partnerships, but he mostly stayed out of the limelight, quietly rebuilding his sporting career and writing his first book. You Are Dope contains sections on love, family, social media, and positive masculinity. It is also a guide to understanding that what makes you different is, in fact, your superpower. As Soko writes, it's always better to risk failure than not to try at all because of the fear of what other people might think. And on that note, I should just add that this recording was beset by many failures of the technological kind. So if there's a slight glitch in the sound, that'll be why. Ovi Soko, welcome to How to Fail.

Thanks for having me Yep I'm here I'm here I'm here I'm here You are here we're so delighted that you're here although I'm very upset that we're not meeting face to face because you would be one of the only guests who is taller than me because you are a very tall man Indeed I am six foot seven I'll tell you what the height is good for basketball, but then

getting on flights and fitting into cars can tend to be an issue from time to time. But you need to channel your difference in the right way. That is the lesson of You Are Dope, which by the way, I really, really loved. Did you love writing it? I did. I did. It was a journey. It was a great experience. It was almost like reliving a lot of the life lessons that I tried to share throughout the book. So, yeah, the whole journey, it was just great. It was a great experience for me. So that quote that I mentioned there in the introduction, that idea that it's always better to take the risk and to try and not be afraid of failure because that's the only way that you can succeed. Is that something that you think you have learned through basketball because it's very similar to Michael Jordan's attitude

I think it's something I've learned through basketball but one of the amazing things that basketball's done for myself is it's given me the chance to travel to different countries meet with different cultures learn about different cultures and learn through the bumps along the way. So, yeah, I would say basketball's definitely taught me that lesson, but it's a wider life lesson, I think, I've learned. Have you watched The Last Dance on Netflix? I have watched The Last Dance. The Last Dance was absolutely quality.

So good. Just reminded me of that whole era and how much I loved them. It was terrific. And, you know, one of the things I really loved about it was I don't think you had to be a basketball fanatic to watch it and enjoy it because all the different characters that they covered throughout the whole series, I feel like people can relate to those same characters in the workplace or in their friendship groups.

So yeah, it was really relatable for a lot of people in their friendship groups so yeah it was really relatable for a lot of people in different ways so yeah I really enjoyed it one of the things that really struck me about the last dance was the compelling charisma of Michael Jordan but the fact that as an athlete he went in for the kill like he almost was surprised when he found out that his teammates didn't always like him because he always expected excellence and you Ovi are almost the opposite in so many ways I mean you're excellent but you're also quite zen like you in the Love Island Villa you were very laid back and easygoing and that was an enormous part of what was so attractive about you so how can you be a top level athlete as you are and still be this zen I think it's just about finding balance I've always been extremely

competitive are you competitive with other people or mostly with yourself I'm mostly competitive with myself you know I've gone to a place now where I understand that it's extremely important to always improve and you want to have that comparative aspect in you but it should always be with your previous self so it should always be about self-growth rather than competing with the person to your left and your right you know can't get carried away with all of that so for people who have yet to read your book which is out on the 1st of October what is dope how would you define it I would find dope as the individuality that we all are it's something that everyone has in them I feel like on the surface level a lot of people see dope as certain aesthetics maybe that are pushed in the media

but I feel like dope has many different meanings it doesn't just hold one meaning like and that's the key behind the whole book that was the key behind the thinking when I was thinking about everything you know I was like dope is something it's a phrase that I use a lot but it's something that I truly believe everybody is and that comes down to us being unique and having our unique superpowers in that uniqueness you know and not to get too carried away with what everyone else has got going on but I feel like yeah that's a snippage so there is a section in dope I mentioned in the introduction about positive masculinity and you wrote a brilliant essay recently for the Metro newspaper which covered a couple of topics I'd love to ask you

about but one of them was your sadness that when you came out of the Love Island billiard you were held up as this kind of unique example of positive black masculinity. And you made the point in the essay that actually there are loads of people like you amongst your friendship and peer group, but it's just what the media chooses to focus on. So tell us more about that. Yeah, it was just something that really struck me and it stood out to me coming out of the Love of Island for them. Obviously there was so much love and appreciation that you know i'm more than grateful for but the fact that i had a lot of black mothers come up to me and sort of thank me for representing what could have been their son in a positive light

letting the wider audience know that hey no it's not all knife crime and it's not all maybe what these ideas that the media put into everyone's head but black guys can be cheerful and have an emotional side that is a side that we all have and a lot of these qualities that just don't get shown as much as the athletes or maybe you know the boxers or the rappers not that there's anything wrong with all of those things but there's much more to us than that you know I mean there's much more to us than what we have to offer physically there's a mental depth to us there's an emotional depth to us you know that I feel like needs to be shown more and that narrative needs to be pushed a lot more such a beautiful way of putting it and I remember reading this thing about

in the wake of all the Black Lives Matters protests that my friend who is in publishing said, we should read novels about Black people who are happy and who are multifaceted and have all of these ranges because by refusing a person their multifaceted nature you're kind of refusing them their humanity you really are young men already feel trapped by masculinity

obviously I'm a young black man and that comes with its own sort of journey but masculinity is something all men struggle with at some point because it's this idea that's pushed in the media today and social media and television that to be masculine isn't to be emotional and isn't to be in touch with all of these emotions that if you put 10 young children next to each other they would all have them so why is it that at a certain age okay all the guys all right stop crying stop being in touch with a whole side of yourself stop talking about your problems. Oh no, you would have cried when you were a child and you would have went to your mum or someone for help.

But now when you get to a certain age, all of a sudden you're supposed to suppress everything. And no, being a man is handling it and dealing with it. Well, no, being a human is being able to know that we all need help at times and being able to reach out to the people that you trust around you. By the way able to reach out to the people that you trust around you. By the way it's partly why I love that you went into Love Island you're a professional

basketball player you also went into Love Island and you can write like a dream you are such a good writer it's not easy to put you into any category which I think is brilliant but in that article for Metro you were talking about the fact that we are still rightly feeling the impact of all the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd's tragic death and countless other horrific injustices faced by Black men and women in America and around the world at the hands of systemic racism. And you said in this piece that, and it's a quote, it wasn't until I moved to the states that I became overly aware of my blackness what do you mean by that I meant growing up in London I think after having

lived in a couple of different places around the world is one of the biggest privileges that I feel like I've been blessed with and that's because you come across so many different cultures by force even if you wanted to have certain ideas about other races or whatnot it'll be very difficult for you to have sort of a skewed vision because you'll come across these different races in real life and in reality and regardless of what narrative is pushed towards you you'll be able to make your own mind up I've grown up in classrooms with people from all different backgrounds, especially when I grew up in Tottenham and just growing up in London. So that was one of the privileges I had. And then when I

went to the States, it was all of a sudden apparent to me that, okay, this is not just the norm everywhere. This isn't how everyone lives. And I think even outside of London, it's probably not the norm. I would say London's very unique in that way. But, you know, I got to the States and all of a sudden I was very much more aware of class and then where race had its own part to play in that whole deal. It became a much more complex situation. I became aware of how to now carry myself and little things like that yeah it was

definitely an eye-opener moving over to the States. Because you lived in Alabama so we're talking like deep south and I know that you were pulled over by police and you described it as one of the scariest things that's ever happened to you what's that like? It's very very hard to put into words it's not a situation where it's like okay I know I didn't do anything wrong so I don't have to worry about anything it's a situation where you're like okay I just want to get out of this situation safely that's it I know I've not done anything wrong but that doesn't give you a peace of mind you know i think having to come across situations like that and have that in the back of your mind like okay being innocent isn't enough not having done anything wrong isn't enough you just want the

little ordeal to just go as smoothly as possible you don't want to definitely wind them up at all because you know ultimately the power isn't in your hands. You only have so much power and you only have so much of a voice when you're in those sort of situations. Yeah. I hope you don't mind my asking you about this because I understand that it is re-traumatizing on a level that I can't understand. But I think it's so important for people who haven't heard these kind of stories to understand that it happens and you are so articulate when you talk about it so thank you very much for sharing that experience no no no that's absolutely fine I think we're at a place now where having these discussions is extremely important because just by the nature of the

situation there will be a lot of people who just genuinely aren't aware of what's going on. Because if I had grown up and I'd never come across anything like that and it never happened to me or any of my closer friends or relatives, I might not necessarily be so aware or so conscious of it. So it's a discussion I feel like it's educating and it helps everyone in moving forward do you have discussions about this with your great friend from the Love Island Villa Amber Gill because I know that she's been very active with Black Lives Matter yeah we've

had a lot of discussions just about the movement in general and how amazing it is the unity that we're seeing the amount of people that are getting involved, the amount of people that are speaking out and the amount of people that are just helping push forward in their own little way. I've always been a firm believer that to progress and to move forward is everyone doing their part.

In an army, everyone doesn't do the same thing. You have some people that are working on the front line and then you have some people that are working on the front line and then you have the people who are working on the computers like there's so many different angles for people to take and for people to be able to help i think that's the beauty in this i think that's the beauty and that's what a lot of people do also need to understand and realize because there's a lot of folks that are in the public eye or in a position where they have a large following but not every single one of those in my opinion should speak because that's not everybody's role that's not what everyone's strength is everyone needs to help the best way

they know how and they need to help where they're strong i think that's how we'll be able to push forward and get rid of this nasty bug that's been affecting this world for way longer than it should have been. And just because you put it on social media doesn't make it real or more effective. No, no, no, no. And I appreciate people who do use social media

as their platform to speak out. I think it's great. Like I said, everyone has their strengths if you think about it on why systematic racism has been able to thrive it's because on that side everyone has a role if you think about the people who may be higher up that have those beliefs they can't go out and say this that and the other they carry themselves in a very different way because they know okay in order to push their agenda and to push what they believe everyone has to play a different role there will be some people that will yell at the top of their voice abuse and this and that and i hate you and then there'll be some people who share the exact

same beliefs that you won't hear a peep out of them, but they're still very effective on that side of things. So I think everyone who believes in this movement and believes in basically the unity of people and believes in humanity and how important this movement is for all of us and for the next generation, they also need to understand that everyone must play their part. Thank you, Ovivi can you please stand for politics like i would love you to be prime minister no no no no no no no i like the balance i like the peace in my life i don't know politics that's a tough one yeah okay fair enough i mean you'd be the tallest ever prime minister I bet but

so let's get on to your failures thank you so they're really good ones and your first one is almost getting kicked out of secondary school so tell us what happened there oh yeah this was me being a bad boy trying to be a cool kid pretty much just being something I wasn't so me and my mates we decided it was a bright idea to try and pull off a Ocean's Eleven heist on the boys PE locker rooms during class the plan clearly wasn't as elaborate as those fellas but long story short it's not actually funny but one of our mates he got his hands on the teacher's keys and we went down to the locker room during class one day we decided to do it on dress down day so that they could easily identify all of us great idea and yeah we broke in there and we took a lot

of goods after the lesson obviously everyone got back into the changing rooms realized stuff was missing i played the role of pretending my stuff was missing too again not proud of it and i don't know why i didn't know that we were pretty much caught red-handed from the beginning because the head of year held an emergency assembly pulled pulled everyone in that was in PE that day and pretty much explained what happened. Everyone had to write a little statement on a piece of paper, as you do in secondary school when something goes wrong. And me and my other three mates were the last four kids left sitting in the hall after everyone had been dismissed. We didn't get caught straight away, though. The investigation carried on for three weeks.

The day we got caught, one of my mates had, obviously, he got caught before I did, or he got taken into the headmaster's office before I did, and he sent me a text, I guess, because he had been sent to isolation. He said, Ovi, it it's over they've got us me being a warrior and my competitive nature and you know the never say die attitudes I got called next literally minutes after I got that text the knock on the door came and I got taken down to the headmaster's office they wanted me to explain my

whole statement again go through what I did that day lied through my teeth I continued and then the headmaster just lost it and she was like I've had enough we've got CCTV footage of you going down to the locker rooms and we've had three teachers confirm that this is exactly what you was wearing on that day and then at that point that's when I said look I did it okay I'm sorry sorry obviously didn't fly I got suspended for 30 days I think that's the longest you can get suspended without expulsion I think they they let me slide because it was my GCSE year but yeah that was a game-changing situation for me because obviously prior to that whole situation of mischief the whole idea after secondary school was that I wanted to go

to the States and my parents were actually looking at some boarding schools in America where they were pretty good at basketball and going to try and find a way for me to actually go out there. But after this happened, they were like, hey, well, look, we can't risk you going out there and doing something like this because you turn 18. It's not suspension. You're looking at prison or maybe even worse. So that's a point in my life where I was like, all right, you know what? I've got to cut the crap. I really had to take a long look in the mirror and look at how I was carrying myself. What did I really want to do with my life?

What did I want to do moving forward? Did I want to pursue basketball? Did I want to have the opportunity to pursue something I love? Or was I going to let sort of acting out of character get in the way of that so it was literally a huge huge huge pivotal moment for me in my life. I'm so interested in this notion that you were acting out of character because you talk about this incident in the book and it's quite clear that it's not that you were naughty actually so that seems like a very diminishing word but actually you weren't

badly behaved but you didn't feel that you fitted in anywhere because you didn't feel like you fitted in at school and you didn't feel like you fitted in with the Nigerian culture of your family can you tell us a bit about that yeah well growing up in a Nigerian household of your family. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, well, growing up in a Nigerian household, if you say that you want to play a sport for a living, a lot of Nigerian folks and diaspora that live outside of Nigeria, they can probably relate with this. The response that you'll get would be, you want to play ball for a living you want to you want to play ball for a living ah no no no no you're not serious and that was just the kind of attitude towards sport at the time and something I can't blame my parents for that take on it or my aunts or uncles I can't blame them because ultimately they grew up in Nigeria and for the most part, they hadn't seen, especially firsthand, sports as a way of making a living.

They hadn't seen it happen enough. It wasn't really proven. So, you know, it was something that just definitely didn't catch on. And when I felt like, OK, but this is what I'm good at and it wasn't taken seriously for a while, it built a little dilemma and a bit of a frustration. Because in school, learning in that environment wasn't for me it's one of the biggest misconceptions is that you don't like to learn because you don't like to learn in school do you know i mean that's something i learned later on in life once i started to travel and then i found stuff that i really was interested in and then i was finding out hold on i don't mind listening to audio books or reading

stuff as long as it's something that I have an interest in and something that's more tailored to who I am as a unique person but when I feel like I'm learning stuff under and I'm sort of almost just being painted with a broad brush and it's like okay you thousand kids take this one test and we'll charge all of you from this one test. Even though every single one of your DNAs is completely different, I always use this analogy. If you were to give every single one of those children five colouring pencils as a baby

and give them a piece of paper, every last one of them would draw something completely different. But if you give five colouring pencils and you put a box on a piece of paper they will every last one of them will draw something completely different but if you give five coloring pencils and you put a box on a piece of paper to six formers give those five coloring pencils to six formers and watch I guarantee you you'll see more similar patterns you'll see because all of a sudden now that uniqueness it's almost like we've become I read it somewhere but you know adults are almost like deteriorated children you know yeah and they would also you'd also color within the box wouldn't you oh yeah oh 100% you wouldn't dare color outside of the lines because since we're born we're put immediately into boxes and our unique strengths and unique abilities are taken

away from us in the sense that society will deem you strange or deem you crazy or deem you weird if you were to stick to something that just felt completely right for you. But if it doesn't feel right for everyone around you, then all of a sudden it's a problem. But no, that is the problem because now I feel like we've grown to a place in society where a lot of people find themselves in a rut. This is where this whole notion of when people get a little bit older,

they get cynical and all this. It's because if you have lived a life where you haven't been completely true to yourself and haven't been able to follow your passions, follow your heart and do something where you can truly feel fulfilled as a unique person, then it'll always feel like something's missing like something's just not quite right something's just not quite there and I always tell people one of the worst situations to possibly be in is to have made it to the top of whatever field it might be that you have been told your whole life okay

yeah this is a great profession but it's not something that genuinely is a passion of yours but okay you're good at it and you'll make good money so you reach the top of it and now all of a sudden you can get all the cars you want buy all the shoes you want all the bags you want you can travel when you want but still yet you feel like something's missing you feel like there's still a hold it that is the worst possible position I think one could be in and we need to start living towards our uniqueness and really embracing it and it's never too late to change your life and your mum is a very good example of that, isn't she? Because she changed careers. 100%. Yeah, I touched on that in the book. You know, my mum, she worked in housing.

She was really good at her job. She had a managerial position. She was pretty hard, making good money. And she fell ill. We almost lost her. And it was a really, really tough time for my family, for her sisters, my aunts, my uncles, and of course, myself, my father, my brother. It was a really, tough time for my family for her sisters my aunts my uncles and of course myself my father my brother it was a really really trying time but through prayer through belief

through her just pushing through she was able to push through that situation and on the back end of it she decided that okay I want to go back to school and study theology. It's just something that was a real passion of hers. She really wanted to do it. And it was something that I might not have agreed with all the way. You know, I had my selfish reasons for feeling like, oh, well, mum, bacon got to come in, you know. So I have to think, oh, well, whoa whoa you're telling us we're not going to be able to get the brand shopping stuff and oh anyway but she did do that and she's been happy

and she's still doing it till this very day and that's just something that the more i've grown the more proud i am of her because she's always been such a strong woman and I've always appreciated her but there's certain aspects of how brave that is that I might not have understood at the time but the older I get and the more I just experience life the more proud I am of how brave a move that is because one thing mothers out there will definitely be able to understand this and families and fathers will notice too parents and especially mothers it's just something about their kids they'll go to the edge of the planet for their babies you don't play when it comes to a mother and her young so the fact that things are going to be tough for all of us and I knew she always wants the best for us but she was still able to follow her heart follow her passion it's taught me a lot it's taught me a

lot so I feel bad now making the link to your second failure because it is about your mother and it's about the fact that you stole 50 quid from her dresser but you got caught I did I did oh you know what I'll tell you what one of the stevious days I was mischievous I was in I think year three I was in year three I was a young one I was really really young woke up to school any other day however the difference today was there was a stack of pink 50 fresh 50 pound notes hanging on the dresser my face was shiny from vaseline as it is when when you're young you know my mom had put vaseline on my face body was shining i was glowing ready to go to school and sweat all of that vaseline off my face, running around and come back with the dirty neck collar,

you know, like the kids do. And I seen the glowing money on the table. So I was like, well, there's a lot of them there. So if I just take one of these, she'll never know. There's no way she'll know. Just like paper, there's a lot of them grabbed the top note slipped it into my bag and i was off to school i went to school that day with a plan to splash out after school on none other than penny sweets i was gonna spend 50 pounds I was going to spend £50 sterling. This was in 1990, whatever, like 97 might have been. But I was going to splash out on penny sweets, 50 quid.

This is mad. Today, that's like spending, I don't know, like... You could buy a house back then for 50 quid. You could have bought a house for 50 pounds back then and I was gonna spend that on penny sweets so after school I've left school I'm excited I'm about to go splash out on penny sweets but 50 pounds gone missing someone stopped oh my god it went missing from your bag. The 50 pound went missing from my bag. So long story short, another kid in my class stole 50 pounds from me and that kid got caught by the teacher.

I don't know how, but basically, yeah, it was parents evening that night. Parents came in, teacher gives the 50 quid back to my mum. I was like, yeah, kid sort of took this from your son anyway I got home was not nice that experience was not nice well what happens like how do your parents discipline you I got a butt whooping I got an absolute butt whooping yeah yeah yeah wooden spoon butt whooping but you know what i think the lesson here is a pretty simple one i would say i learned my lesson obviously i almost got kicked out of school for similar offense i just don't think it's worth it man you know if you

want something i feel like if you don't work for it, you won't value it. Clearly, I didn't value it. If I'd had to work for that £50, I don't know what a year three does to work for £50, but I'm sure if I would have worked for it, I would have cherished that £50 and I wouldn't have just left it lying around in my backpack. Your first failure when we were talking about that Ocean's Eleven heist on the lockers from PE, it started off because you wanted nicer clothes, didn't it?

Yeah. And how much of all of this was that the secondary school you were at, it was a state school, but there were also, it was a prosperous area of North London, wasn't it? So how much of it was to do with like trying to keep up with that and trying to assimilate? I think that was definitely a bigger factor once I was in secondary school especially in you know I mean Mill Hill it's a great area um really good school and with the

perks of obviously having access to a really good education come with this pressure almost to fit in with these kids that come from you know well-off backgrounds they come from different backgrounds pretty much and with me trying to keep up I saw that I felt like if I didn't have certain things or if I wasn't able to come in with certain kicks I couldn't be one of the top boys or whatever you want to call it and it's a weird kind of peer pressure because it's not something that anyone would necessarily say to you. But if everyone has something, then you naturally, especially as a young person,

you don't want to feel left out. And I feel like that was something that definitely played into some of my acting out in secondary school. It feels to me that you really found yourself when you went to the States. And it's partly because I think you lived with this woman who you talk about in the book when you went to this school in Virginia called Miss S. Who taught you, I think, that there was a certain privilege to the background that you then found yourself in, wasn't there?

Like the pantry was full of snacks. She would make you breakfast. And it felt like if you wanted to do something, she would make that her goal. Like she would make you breakfast and and it felt like if you wanted to do something she would make that her goal like she would enable you to do that and your parents who are amazing parents had also been incredibly hard working and probably didn't have time to do that for you whereas miss s did can you talk a bit about that and what difference that made for you oh man the change of environment was like a breath of fresh air for me my parents they were always extremely hard-working parents and I think a

lot of young folks especially middle class that come from middle class families which is I would say the large majority their parents don't necessarily have the time to hold their hands through a lot of different things or just be there as to support them as much as they might want to. You know what I mean? Because they're trying to make sure they can keep a roof over your head. I got to Virginia and, you know, I moved in with Miss S, who was a single mother. She had a daughter and a son.

And it was almost like stepping into a completely different world. She was always there. She came to all of the games. She came to all of the games. She came to all of our activities. She's taken this British kid in and she's showing up to pick him up from practice, take him to practice, goes to all his basketball games.

Meanwhile, her son plays lacrosse. Her son plays American football. She's going to all his games, taking him to practices. And then her daughter does horse riding. She does piano lessons. Like there was so much extracurricular activities that we were all involved in.

And then on the educational side, she was making sure that we got the support we needed. She was making sure if we needed extra tutors, they were available. She was literally there for everything. It wasn't only that she was there, but she encouraged us if we wanted to try something. She was trying to get me to get my driver's license.

You know, she wanted me to get my driver's license more than I wanted to get my driver's license. But it was just like, I never thought I was going to be able to drive for a little while. I almost just started setting more goals for myself and chipping away at these barriers that I built up in my own mind and had been built up as a result of just my situation growing up and my environment and my group of mates growing up so I was starting to chip away all of that stuff and it was just liberating

it was great to be in an environment where you could say well you know what I want to try this and the first response isn't ah come on now what are you talking about? Or you better stop playing around and go and read a book. It was, okay, well, we'll figure out how to do it. I love it. It's like you started colouring outside the box. Outside of the box, you've got it, Elizabeth. It became limitless. It became limitless.

If you're confined to a box and the way the mind works, if you put a box around it, you won't know how powerful your mind is and how powerful you are as a person so that whole process and that whole sort of move on top of the fact that you know I just had that little moment where I made a decision to you know go in a different direction you know after that little mishap in my last year in secondary school all of that it was a really special year and a half for me you know that was around 16 17 it was really really really really special I don't know if you feel like America has its problems I mean we've spoken about some of them but I like you have spent

quite a bit of time there and what I do love about it as a country is that there is a belief that your dreams are worthwhile that if you want to do something you can do it rather than in Britain where it sometimes feels like the cynicism is so embedded and it's a bit like who do you think you are having this dream yeah you know and it's like well hold on you should have a dream too my dreams doesn't mean that I'm saying you can't dream we're all supposed to dream we're we were young, we all were extremely creative. We all could have fun from the simplest of things just because of our imagination.

But it is definitely a very different environment in that sense. You know, the whole American dream, just that idea that, okay, I can come from wherever. It doesn't matter how I start. I can reach these goals as long as I'm focused on it or as long as I push myself or as long as I'm willing to put in the hours or stay dedicated to it that is a huge thing culturally out there so to dream big in the states people might still call you crazy but it's maybe just your specific dream because they've never thought of it it's not the

idea that it's a big dream that's not the reason why I'm calling you crazy whereas over here just to dream big is why people would call you mad and you loved all the 90s American culture as well didn't you you love Fresh Prince yeah I loved it I loved it before I went to the States it was almost like you know I had this vision in my head of what it was going to be like going over there. I was like, man, I've been watching Martin, Fresh Prince, I've been watching a couple of movies, you know, Boys in the Hood. I watched that. I watched Kings of Comedy, was a stand up, a lot of different stuff because I'm older brother. But I already had this sort of vision before I went out to the States of how I was going

to be. And to be fair, the States didn't let me down. They didn't let me down in a lot of ways. It lived up to the hype. When people ask me, oh, what was university like in America? I genuinely tell them it's just like the movies. University of the Regents, just like the movies. Even in high school to a certain degree, it's just like the movies. So your third and final failure, and what I love about your failures, Ovi, is that they are in no way humble brags.

They don't paint you in a good light. You've really gone there with ease. Yeah, yeah. I think it's important for people to know all sides of me. If people are going to be invested, it's only right that you let them know, like, hey, look, put your hands up. I'm not perfect by no means. I'm still trying to get there through these failures, you know. I really respect you for it because your third failure is cheating on an ex-girlfriend. So tell us about that. This was a young lady that I met when I was in high school,

in the States, my second high school out there. We had been together for a little while. She was an absolute sweetheart, great girl, a real innocence, really bubbly, smart. And after the first year, she was one year younger than me.

So after my last year, I left to go to university and she was finishing her last year in high school and the distance, me being in college, getting attention from a lot of ladies in university being sort of

the english kid on campus it was just a lot man it was a lot and i was pretty immature i wasn't ready to handle that attention and be in a relationship but now obviously looking back i do see that that's probably one of the biggest fluffs that I've made in that regard. I ended up cheating on her. It was one of those deals. I was talking to a young lady. It was fairly casual. And it went from casual to becoming a bit more serious.

And before I knew it, it was almost like I had two girlfriends. I'm like, oh, gosh. Then I was confused. Anyway, the young lady that was back in with me she ended up catching wind of this guys are not the smartest when it comes to these situations and she was really heartbroken I really hurt her feelings

and you know it's not something I'm proud of Have you ever cheated since then? No not since then that was the last time I cheated on a lady that showed me not only is it just a nasty thing to do No, no, not sister. That was the last time I cheated on a lady. That showed me not only is it just a nasty thing to do, but it's something that you wouldn't want to happen to you.

But also, I feel like it just makes you look stupid. It looks silly. You make the girl that you're calling your partner look silly. You make yourself look silly. Because your partner is, in a lot of ways, an extension of yourself. Your partner should be a reflection of you in certain ways. Wherever your partner goes they're representing the two of you and wherever you go you're representing the two of you. I think I've just grown out of that type of stuff to be fair. It sounds to me as if all of your failures were out of character, but you had to make the mistakes in order to realise what your character was

and in order to trust yourself. 100%, 100%. I'll definitely agree with that. I think I've definitely acted out of character at times. And it's something that we all do at one point or another. We all act out of character at some point, but it's about learning from those experiences and those out of character moments should almost make us sort of hold on tighter to who we are and it should almost make us draw closer to who we actually are so like actually

hold on that person's not me and that didn't feel good and that didn't bring me anything of true depth or true value you know I didn't add value to my life whatsoever so let me hold on to who I am I'm tired than anything else. How did that experience with your ex-girlfriend inform if it did your time in Love Island did you think about how you were going to act inside the villa? I just knew I was just going to be myself I knew I was going to be myself it was something where I wasn't going to go in there with a specific game plan. I feel like if you meet a genuine person or when you come across someone that clicks with you and you're willing to become vulnerable around, things will naturally progress.

But I didn't go in there with any game plans. Obviously, that was a growing experience. It's not a way I would treat any woman if I had a daughter I wouldn't want her to be treated that way and I would never want my mother to be treated like that so why would I be out there being that guy that I don't want you know any of the ladies in my family or extended family to me you know I'm saying to be well that's never going to happen to your mom with Raymond Sokosi yeah he is a gent. That's my guy. That is my guy.

You have mentioned something that has underpinned subtly a lot of this conversation, which is your faith. And I love hearing people talk about faith and belief and what it means to them. And I just wonder if I could ask you about that. I know it's a very personal question, but how does it guide you day by day?

Okay, so my situation goes like this. I've been through so much in my life up to date. And I know some people might believe in something, some people might not, but I have a personal relationship with God where I just know he has my back. And when you feel like someone or something always has your back regardless something that doesn't have the ability to mess up something

that doesn't have the ability to make mistakes it almost also brings a certain sense of optimism around everything and every situation because it always gives you that belief that, I won't understand why I'm going through this at the moment and I don't understand this pain at the moment. But once the scars have healed and I've come back stronger and I'm at a new place, then I'll understand it. I don't try and understand every situation in my life. We're human. We're human. We don't understand everything. Technology has almost fooled us into believing that we must be able to break down and analyze everything no we never will

understand everything on this planet the planet's too complex even the human body we're learning new things about us as humans all the time so to try and understand everything you're just giving yourself a hot brain I have my belief and it's something that I stand by and I know it helps me you know it's something I'll always believe in I think that is such an eloquent and beautiful way to put it and it's exactly how I feel about life so I suppose I would say that but I know that's just so beautiful. And you're 29, aren't you? I am 29. About to be 30 February 7th. Well, I'm going to be mid-season,

so it won't be anything too wild, but yeah, about to be 30. I feel sad that Britain's losing you and you're going back to France to play for Le Mans. Like, we'll miss you. Oh, no, no, no. Britain's home. You know, I've grown up in England and wherever I

travel around the world I always sort of carry Nigeria I carry the UK I carry London with me everywhere I go it's a part of who I am it's a part of me it's helped me become the person who I am today and I and I owe the UK a lot for that well after listening to this podcast I'm sure that there will be hundreds and thousands of listeners who will carry a bit of obisoko in their heart I cannot thank you enough for being the class act that you are and everyone must rush out and buy your book you are dope and thank you so so much for coming on how to fail as well thank you so much for having me you've been absolutely wonderful yourself you've made it more than comfortable for me on this podcast hopefully you'll have me back a hundred percent have you back and thank you

for bearing with us with all the technical failures ever no thank you so much this episode of how to fail is sponsored by beija london beija london is a lingerie and swimwear brand for all cup sizes from double a up to 36h they do this brilliant thing where they offer free 20 minute online bra fittings if you're unsure on your bra size you don't even need to leave the comfort of your own home and don't worry you don't need to get your baps out in front of the computer. The range features feminine modern classics with a fuss-free aesthetic. Beja believes that the simple things are the most beautiful. They pride themselves on their amazing fit and their commitment to making women feel happy and content in their bodies. That really is at the heart of the Beja London brand. How to Fail listeners can get 15% off their first order by entering howtofail, all one word, at checkout. Their website address is www.beja.london.

Beja is spelt B-E-I-J-A. It's Portuguese for kiss, so you learn something new every day. You can book your online fit appointment on the homepage of their website. Thank you very much to Baja London. Hello, it's Elizabeth Day here. I wanted to tell you all a story. It's very on brand because it's all about failure. This time, my own. When I launched How to Fail in July 2018, I had very little clue what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to put something out that opened up discussions around vulnerability and mistakes and the times when things in life did not go according to plan. I came up with what I thought was a brilliant title, How to Fail. I launched the podcast independently and as you can probably tell, I drew my own logo with felt tip pens. It really was put together on a shoestring.

So I was mortified when I received an email from a lovely woman in America called Kristen Vermilia, politely pointing out that she already had a podcast called, you've guessed it, How to Fail. I had been naive enough not to check beforehand if someone was using a similar title. I know, right? How stupid can you get? This was why I decided to start calling my podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day in order to avoid any further confusion. But confusion there was. And so I'm very happy to say that Kristen and I got together and sorted out an agreement whereby I can continue to call my podcast the name I launched it with and Kristen has launched a new project called Hey It's Okay Podcast. The handle is at Hey It's Okay Podcast on Instagram. I'm so grateful

for Kristen's understanding and feel very silly about my rookie errors even if it seems sort of fitting that I failed to name a podcast about failure. But in the tradition of this podcast, I can honestly say I've learned from my failure, which is to do my due diligence, learn from my mistakes and own up when I'm in the wrong. Thank you, Kristen. And thank you to all you lovely listeners, hers and mine, who have supported us both along the way.