Another Mans Shoes
Interviews with fellow military veterans and adventurers about their experiences of war, the lows and times of hardship, joining them on their journey and how this has shaped their lives in the most extraordinary way. Comedy moments, dark humour and witty banter.
Another Mans Shoes
John Chart - MND Survivor - Londons Burning - S1E5
What if you could find the strength to face unimaginable challenges with humor and grit? Join us as we welcome John Chart, a former soldier, London Fire Brigade firefighter, and world champion powerlifter who is now bravely battling motor neurone disease (MND). John's infectious personality shines through as he kicks off the episode with a hilarious David Blaine joke, setting the stage for an inspiring and emotional journey. From his roots in southeast London to his recent 24-hour powerlifting challenge to raise awareness for MND, John’s story is a testament to resilience and unwavering spirit.
We'll explore John's heroic service with the London Fire Brigade and the Territorial Army, sharing compelling anecdotes about the camaraderie and intense experiences faced by first responders. John opens up about the harrowing realities of emergency rescue operations and the rigorous training required to join the fire service. He also shares deeply personal stories, including the devastating loss of his daughter and the profound strength he finds in his four sons. His passion for powerlifting is also a focal point, illustrating the mental and physical endurance that has defined his extraordinary life.
In an emotional segment, John recounts his journey with motor neurone disease, from the initial symptoms to the life-altering diagnosis. This episode underscores the crucial need for raising awareness and funding for MND research, with John discussing alternative therapies and the vital role of community support. Filled with humor, resilience, and a call to action, this episode is a powerful testimony to living life to the fullest despite overwhelming odds. Support John's fight against MND by visiting pilgrimbandits.org to make donations or get involved. Join us for an episode that promises to leave you inspired and motivated.
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Welcome to another episode of Another Man's Shoes. We are delighted to welcome onto the show today John Chart. John is a friend we've only met recently, but what an absolute top bloke Former soldier, london Fire Brigade firefighter, world champion, powerlifter and also sadly suffering from motor neurone disease. But if anyone can beat this, he can. So he's going to take us through his journey today and we're going to hear some quite harrowing stories from the London Fire Brigade and some of the incidents that he's attended through to his family life and also what he's doing to beat motor neurone. Now you're going to find that John is a proper character of a guy, london guy and as soon as I got onto the call with him he was straight into a joke. So I'm just going to sort of play that now. It's probably a little bit risque and a few people might take offence, but it just goes to show the kind of guy he is Totally upbeat.
Speaker 2:The Howard Stern cast. It was a good one. Do you know what's that? Is it the Howard Stern show? Do you remember that? Yeah, well, it's like. It was like like how you're sitting in a studio, wasn't it? And he had David Blaine.
Speaker 2:You know David Blaine, the old magician. So he's had him on. He's quite a good looking fella, isn't he, david Blaine? Yeah, and they're sitting there talking and David Blaine happened, bird with long blonde hair, stunning. Yeah, he'd met her in a jewelers in new york or something. So so this, uh, callers come on and he's talking. He's going oh, say david. Say david, you're, you're amazing, man, your, your tricks are amazing. You know, when you was in the box over tower bridge for 44 days or whatever it was, oh, you're incredible. He said, all right, some of your, some of your tricks are amazing. So david blaine's sitting there, all right, how he does. And he really laid back and he's going yeah, yeah, thanks, man, thanks. He said say david. He said, um, he said your girlfriend, very, very beautiful woman, beautiful, right? And he's gone. Yeah, thanks, he's gone. Um, he said I was wondering if you could do a trick for me, and he's gone yeah, go on. He said, yeah, whatever, and he's gone. Uh, how about you make your cock disappear?
Speaker 1:up your missus's ass and so that was his intro. Haven't spoken to him for a few weeks and he's straight into jokes and that kind of embellishes the character that john is that he just wants to go and he wants to live life to the full. He wants to be happy. He wants everyone else around him to be happy. So, without further ado, it is my pleasure to welcome john onto the show yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure man thanks, so, uh, you're a bit tired at the moment. You've been quite busy this week, haven't you?
Speaker 2:I have my friend. Yeah, we've just finished a 24-hour lift a million kilos challenge, so we were locked away in the gym over the weekend and all of us individually had to lift a million kilos, believe it or not, to raise awareness for motor neurone disease and what have you. So, yeah, yeah, good event.
Speaker 1:That's an epic challenge. I mean, I don't think there's many people who complete that. I mean a million kilos, what's that equate to in sort of time, and how many?
Speaker 2:lifts, it works out for, in layman's terms, 695 kilos a minute, 47,000 kilos an hour for 24 hours, and that'll get you your total yeah, uh-oh, and you're not sore?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a fair whack. It's a fair whack, but what you've got to do is you've got to look at it and I had to work it out, obviously with my arms being affected We'll talk about that a bit more, no doubt. But with my arms being affected, I could only really use lower half. So, like legs, abs, lower back. So what I had to do was I had to base it on leg press. I'd done thousands and thousands of reps of leg press. I only put 95 kilos on the machine because it's a combination of not doing too much weight-wise to burn out but not doing too little, otherwise you're playing catch-up all the time. Yeah, so much weight-wise to burn out, but not doing too little, otherwise you're playing catch-up all the time.
Speaker 1:So you've got to sort of find that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it was hard. It was hard, mate, to say the least.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. We'll touch a bit more on that in a minute, yeah. But yeah, I'm glad that we're sort of helping you out with all this sort of stuff, but not having to join you. So let's start. I think anyone that listens this is obviously going to be able to tell from your accent that you're uh, you're a london boy. So I suppose let's start should we start sort of where did you come from what what? Where was john chart formed? What made you?
Speaker 2:so john chart was a uh, a glint in the milkman's eye in pen, southeast london, se20. And uh, yeah, so in Pench, south-east London, se20. And yeah, so I sort of like I was found on what? 16th of January 1971. Someone found me under a bush, a bit like the old World Cup that was found by Pickles the dog just up the road in South Norwood in 1966. And then five years later, another dog didn't find such a big trophy. They found me Really. So, yeah, pench, south-east London, they found me Really.
Speaker 2:So, penn, south East London, I was born and I've sort of lived within a mile of where I was born really all my life. You know, Beckenham, south East London, kent. Well, it's classed as Kent but it's South East London. And here I am sitting pretty in Annerley, just near Crystal Palace at the moment in the house with me and Arlene. So always a South East London boy. You've seen that change quite a lot, I imagine, over the years. Yeah, yeah, it has mate, some for the good, some for the bad. I think it's the population I've seen change more. You know it's so they say.
Speaker 1:London. Is it more people live in London than the whole of Australia or something? Some ridiculous statistic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's it's getting that way, isn't it? I think? I think we're getting all 10 million down here in London now, aren't we?
Speaker 1:And um it's, just it's just not.
Speaker 2:It's just not. It's not the same.
Speaker 1:It's not the same mate, it's not the I think we've all been out to see it, but it's still a beautiful place to live. You've got all that on your doorstep A lot of history.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I live in an affluent part of London. To be fair as well, where we live is a pretty nice area. To be fair, beckenham, you know if anyone who knows southeast London will know, beckenham's a very nice area. It's a lovely town. A lot of people want to live there. It's, it's not cheap, but then nowhere is now. Um, so yeah, I'm very lucky, very lucky mate.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant so obviously you've sort of been brought up in that area. So where did you go to school? Was it sort of local, comprehensive?
Speaker 2:yeah again, uh, all local. So I went to bromley road infant school, which is in the center of beckinham, little village school, and then I went to worsley bridge school, again in beckinham, and and then I went to a rugby school. Funnily enough, my senior school was a rugby school, langley Park Boys School, which was a really good school and I went there and done really well at school, got 10 O-levels, got four O-levels a year early, stayed in obviously into the fifth form, got me other six.0 levels and I left straight away and I didn't want to go on to uni or A-levels. I wasn't interested, even though academically I was spot on. I always was.
Speaker 2:Academically I've never had a problem really doing anything in my life. Test-wise, academically I've been bang on. So, yeah, left school as soon as I could joined the bank NatWest Bank, worked for NatWest Bank for nearly five years uptown, up in London, up in South Kensington and Curzon Street, right by Shepherd's Market. In fact, just around the corner from the good old Chesterfield, about 100 yards from the Chesterfield, was where I worked, funnily enough.
Speaker 1:We can't talk about the Chesterfield on here. What happens?
Speaker 2:if the.
Speaker 1:Chesterfield stays.
Speaker 2:It stays in the Chesterfield mate, without a doubt.
Speaker 1:So you did that in your early 20s. Then you were doing the banking side of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, joined the bank at 16, walked out of school fresh face, 16, straight into the bank, left the bank at 20, 20 bank left the bank at 2020, 2021 not just short of five years and I applied to and got into the fire brigade london fire brigade. But in the meantime, uh, in between that time, I joined the ta, you know. So, uh, yeah, I'd entered the ta and joined the london good old d Company, london Irish Rifles, at the Duke of York's HQ, which has got the 21 SAS alongside us. 10 Para were based there, so we had a good set up there at the Duke of York's. Actually, we had the old Cinder track, so it was good.
Speaker 1:That's still going. Is it that regiment, or was it long gone?
Speaker 2:It's not what happened. Basically, they amalgamated London, scottish London, welsh London, irish, the D Company and a couple of other I forget who they were now Fusiliers and they amalgamated them all into the London Regiment. So they are still going as the London Regiment and the Duke of Yorks itself is gone. That HQ's gone, all got sold off for property and whatever, which is tragic really, because it was a wonderful old barracks there yeah, some of those London big old Victorian buildings there that we've been into in the past.
Speaker 1:They're fantastic. But I suppose you know development in London is a premium premium mate especially there, kings Road. Yeah, premium especially there kings road. Yeah oh yeah, you won't need all those barracks anyway.
Speaker 2:There's only about 10 000 squaddies left now across the world, so yeah, you can fit the whole military into wembley stadium, can't you for a concert?
Speaker 1:apparently not a two meters distance in.
Speaker 2:You can't how many do?
Speaker 1:you stay in the ta, for do you spend a long time there?
Speaker 2:I was in it. I joined in 88, so I would have been 17. Yeah, I've still got my Ophir of Allegiance in a frame somewhere. My 88 is my Ophir of Allegiance and I left in 94.
Speaker 2:Sadly I mean don't get me wrong tragically I didn't want to leave, it was just I couldn't put the time in with being in the Fibregate. Because of my shifts and the way it works you're very rarely getting the weekends off so like, totally so it's just becoming difficult. I couldn't really put the time in. So I remember walking up with my kit back up to the Duke of Yorks with a heavy head there and walking in and Cullum Maloney was there like they were issuing out a kit ready for their two-week camp. They were going somewhere, canada somewhere, and as I walked in with my kit, saying to him oh colour, I've got to leave, I can't put the time.
Speaker 2:And he went, charity, mate. He said listen, you're the main man. He said you've got to come on the camp with us. He said I'll get you on there now. He said we're short of a few Bods. And I looked at him and I literally wanted to cry, to be honest with you, you know. And I ended up walking out of there with my three pairs of army socks issue socks, because they let you keep those in a bag back on the tube, all well welled up. The old eyes were welled up and I was like, oh god, I was gutted. I was gutted, mate, but I didn't have any choice really. I had to make some sort of decision.
Speaker 1:Well trying, to do the TAN, trying to do the five gear. That's a difficult balancing act, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's difficult, it's difficult Did you get to the point where when you were in.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I've done some great trips, you know, we we done. We was in Cyprus when they were flying all the Herks and all the supplies over for the first Iraq war. Yeah, 91. You know 91. Yeah, yeah. So I was there August 90 in Cyprus, and all day, every day, the Hercules were coming in and over, dropping into our Coterie and over.
Speaker 2:So what they did, you know, rosie, you're well my old mate, my old sidekick. That's a creep. So we, oh, top man, top man, absolute lunatic. Yeah, you'd want him in your corner. But so me and Rosie are over there doing our usual antics.
Speaker 2:You know, we grew up together and we used to have such a laugh when we was in the CA. We were the centre of, we were like the lifeline of that company. We had a nucleus. When we went out on the on the uh, on the razzle, when we went away on weekends, when we went on a two week camps, everyone wanted to be around me and Rosie, we, we, we would make it. We would make it what it was, funnily enough.
Speaker 2:So we've all gone down to the limousine and then Dale ended up having a fight with a dozen free queens blokes. They went out the back and yeah, and he dispatched. He dispatched a few of the free queens, lads, because he, he used to like putting his hands up, bless him. And I've got a good photo I'll drag out next to you, I'll show you it, of him with cuts all over his face for his birthday. He's Pat Ridge at this point. He wasn't no, no, he was London Irish. We were both London Irish. Still, you know cool beans and all that sort of stuff, and yeah. So we were over there and they set us up really, because, being like really wide-eyed and sort of like, you know, rats up a drainpipe, anything like that, we were all over it. So what they decided to do was the regimental CO was over there, funny enough, at the camp at the time. I forget the fella's name now, but he took a liking to me for some reason. There's a lieutenant colonel, actually his rank, I forget his name. Anyway, so we're over there.
Speaker 2:I'd had a bit of a fight on the beach the day before and lost my 90, my ID card in the sea. So I got a bit of a rollicking. They took me a little court martial and so I'm standing there trying not to laugh and the CO's saying listen, Charlie, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know the seriousness of losing your ID and all the rest of it, et cetera, et cetera, of losing your, your id and all the rest of it, um, etc, etc. And I went, yeah, yes, sir, you know, really sorry, and what have you? He said but I do like you. He said there's something about you, mate. He said I'll be honest with you, I do like it. So he fined me 50 quid. He fined me 50 quid and sent me packing. So I was quite happy with that. You know I didn't get any more.
Speaker 2:So what they've done, they set me and rosie up. Anyway. They said look, you've got a chance here of you and Rosie could go out to Iraq. They need people to go out on the Hercules over to Iraq, to Baghdad, just to help with the loading and unloading on the Hercules. You up for it? And I was like God, am I? Am I Rosie's? Like, yeah, we're all over it.
Speaker 2:They said, well, what you need to do is ring and mum and dad and told them Dad's rung his mum and dad, we're all excited. Lance Chee's our sergeant, our company's sergeant, they're all in on it. I said, right, get yourselves together. You've got to go and see the CO. So they marched us in double time straight into see the CO. He's there. He said, charlie, I told you he was a good lad. He said, rosie, you, you're both good boys. He said so you're up for it. He said you're up for going out there. And I went, yeah, yeah, definitely. So, yeah, we're bang up for it. And then all of a sudden we just got absolutely slated, mate, the water came all over us and they absolutely slated us, co and all. They loved it. So, yeah, and an hour later we were completely naked in webbing, running up and down the drill ground and the rest is history that's something you don't get.
Speaker 1:Do you on the outside? You don't get that sort of banter, that that like no one takes it serious, it's all a bit of fun. No, you don't get people crying.
Speaker 2:It's bonding, mate. It's all part of the bonding, isn't it? You know that it's um, different jobs require different bonding, and I don't care what anyone says. You know, as matt said, we had an interview, a pilot interview with Tom Allen, didn't he? The other day? And, funny, I was at Matt's the other week and he played it and it was hilarious, you know. But they were talking about the swearing and the ethos in the military and it is what it is. It is part of it. Swearing is part of it.
Speaker 1:Well it is. It doesn't sort of show that anyone is stupid. It just basically emphasises in as few words as possible how you feel and it's all character build, isn't it? Everything we went through, everything we do. I think that's why everyone can bond so well. It doesn't matter what your history is and where you pass, where you come from. We've we've not known each other that long, but straight away.
Speaker 2:There's that sort of click with everyone who's in that sort of circle. Yeah, and it's always been a struggle trying to find that on the outside it is mate, it is. Yeah, it's hard and nowadays, I think what's happened, unfortunately, over the last 20 years or so, and I think we'll all agree, over the last 20 years or so, they've, they've, they've tried to suck that that part of you know, that part of us out out of us. They've almost tried to take the personality the you know. I understand you've got to have, um, you've got to have a line. I get that with certain things like racism and, uh, prejudice, you know, and things like that. But when you're talking about banter between groups of people, you know, toughening us up and all that, they're trying to take even that part of things away. They're trying to say that the odd swear word is wrong. When you know it's what we're brought up on in that, I don't know, it's hard to explain. It's hard to explain.
Speaker 1:I know exactly where you're coming from, just trying to take all the character away from us. This makes us robots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they want us to be robots. They want us to all. Yes, men, we're going to be no men, I'm going to be a no man and I'm going to continue to be a no man.
Speaker 1:It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, getting to come join you down in the gym. That's going to change their ways. Yeah, and you've taken all the amazing skills that and you'd gone full-time in the fire service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I joined the fire service. I always wanted to be a firefighter. To be honest, I'm only a little shortened, but I always wanted to be a firefighter. And so, 1990, I applied Me and Rosie, funny enough, and another good mate of ours, three of us applied together. We'd all watched Backdraft and thought we were the world's, uh, most incredible firefighters, could save the world. And uh, read it there. You know, I had these images of redhead there and the rest of it. I came out to cinema my girlfriend and went flipping hell love, I've got to be a fireman, you know. And it was all it was. It was quite weird, actually. And uh, yeah, I went. So I applied and, just by luck, or whatever you want to call it, I got in. It was something like 10,000 people applied for 300 spaces in the particular year. I applied and I was extremely lucky, I got in. What's that?
Speaker 1:like for the assessment and training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's difficult. So you had to use your application form. Once you pass that, based on, obviously, what they liked on it you had to go up and you had to do a series of tests. You had to do written tests. I flew through those. That was comprehension, maths, english, et cetera. Dictation you had to write down the dictatory notes and whatever. I flew through those to the point that I'd done them so quick. I managed to write down the whole test on a bit of paper, shove it in my pocket and then, when I went on afterwards, I then dow and uh, rosie and uh, our other mate, danny mills. They'd come around my house two, three times a week and learn the tests, to the point that I could say to him right, question 20 on the maths test, what's the question? And they'd even know what the question is, let alone the answers. So we had that off to a two. They went up and passed the test with flying colours after that. So, yeah, done the test, done the interview, done the physical. One thing I've never, uh, had a problem with his physicals either.
Speaker 2:I'm quite lucky, really, because I was good academically. I've got a photographic memory so when I went to training school. So I've got through all the tests. We had to do rat runs. I'll go through it. It's quite quite some of. It's quite hairy actually, to be fair.
Speaker 2:Um, when you do your tests to become a firefighter, they, they want to know that you've got what it takes. So it's not just about being a chuck of 13 stone fella on your back or person, should we say, and run down the road 100 yards. It's not about that. It's about having an overall skill set. So you've got to have a certain amount of mental skill set. You do have to have that. You've got to be able to work under pressure. You've got to be able to work as a team. You've got to be able to work under pressure. You've got to be able to work as a team. You've got to be able to take the banter because, again, like the military, in the brigade there's a lot of banter, uh, a lot.
Speaker 2:When I joined it was, uh, it was, a navy background. The fire brigade discipline code is based on the navy discipline code. Okay, so it's a lot of ex-military in the brigade, a lot of them, a lot of ex-marines, a lot of ex-para um, a couple of lads I knew that were 21 sas, funny enough in in the brigade. So, yeah, you, you've got to have a skill set. You know when they're not just blokes that grab hoes and squirt. Well, you know the cold stuff at the hot stuff. It doesn't work like that. So, yeah, so I've got in once I've got in.
Speaker 2:Uh, you're doing training school squads of 12 guys, six months training, very, very intense. It's changed now. It's nowhere near as intense. If the training as it used to be, um, you had to know absolutely everything, the ins and outs of a duck's ass, as we say. You really did have to know everything, stuff that you were never going to need to know, but you had to learn it still.
Speaker 2:So I excelled. I excelled, luckily, again, luckily. You know we all are who we are. It's not because I'm anyone different, anyone else, but I excelled. I got the top marks ever at training school pass through, uh, I've got, I've got a wall and what have you? So I'm really well on exams and I'm really well in the physicals.
Speaker 2:I'm really well in the practicals, running around, trust me running about on a drill ground all day with 70 mil hose out in front of you, having a dutch roll it and then charge it with uh four bar pressure, eight bar pressure. Try and control a branch out of. I don't know if you've seen it on on the films. We have to do, um, all sorts of weird drills like branch out of control. So they'll, they'll charge a length of hose on the drill ground across a lot of playground area and they'll put eight bar of pressure through it and and that will then be whipping across that drill ground, snaking across you, you. You get caught by that. It's going to snap your caught by that. It's going to snap your ankle All day long. That's going to snap your ankle. So you have to go through drills and try to get that under control. And that's quite interesting, you know, quite difficult, you know live carry downs, yeah, yeah, you know there's a lot of dangerous stuff involved.
Speaker 2:You know the BA when you're going through what we call a wrap run, which are all these series of cages set up. So what they do is we'll put the BA set on and then they cover your face mask with what we used to call the nappies, which was just so you couldn't see, and then you're sent into these wrap runs and what they do is they're movable cage systems that are designed so they can change the route all the time, so you'll get sent in. So they can change the route all the time, so you'll get sent in. You can't see what you're doing, so it's all by feel. They're filled a place with smoke as well, dry ice, and then you've got to try and make your way through this series of caves.
Speaker 2:You can be quite nervy if you've got a little bit of a problem with closed spaces or you know it can be a problem. And then you've got to go through a series of sewer pipes and they go from the large one to the small one, and, trust me, the small one. You wouldn't want your BA set packing up on you while you're going through it because you're not going to get your hand on it. So if your BA set goes wrong, you're breathing out, right, it's the way you're going through that, because you have to have one hand in front of you and one hand behind you and you use your feet and your hands to sort of drag yourself along in it, because that's the only way you can get through it. And if your set packs up in that, that's your lifeline.
Speaker 1:You're that's it, you've had it. You've got a radio or anything. What was that?
Speaker 2:yeah, you've got a radio. The problem is that the old radios that we used to have were old handhelds, like what you know we had on job, all right, just a normal handheld kenwood radio, but it's on your belt so you can't get to that to operate it. The new assist, the new, the new adraga sets, and what have you now have like pressure talks and uh like like pressure, pressure, pressure mounted things and what have you? And skull, some of them you can even get like the skull mics in the, in the helmets. Now you know, just so we, we can get that communication all the time.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so I went, done my training. Uh, past excelled at training, came out and uh, and then I went to Tooting. Fire Station was my first station. So I went to Tooting, joined a lively watch, got chucked about a bit, like you do as the sprog, as we call them. So I was a sprog there. So you get chucked about a bit, you get a bit wet occasionally. Yeah, I had an initiation. They wetted me, they were a little bit. I don't know why. They sort of treated me with kick gloves, I don't know why, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean I looked about 10, I was very young looking. I looked about 10 and my my introduction was, as I walked in on my first shift, one of the lads on the blue watch was coming off nobby clark his name was and he was coming off and he poked his head in and he had a little bit of a double take because I genuinely I look really young and a bit of a double take. And he saw me walking out with my fire gear, going up to me first for a roll call and he went hello, son. He said nice of you to pop by on your way to school and I just sort of looked at him and I sort of had a bit of a dumb looking grin on my face and I went. You know, that was about it. That was me, that was me intro to Nobby, but don't worry, anyway he learned his lesson what's that invite?
Speaker 1:you're two in fire station, you're there, you're. You're the sort of the young sprog then. So what? You're making all the brews.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're having to clean all the kit down yeah, yeah, you're expected to do the usual again, a bit like the military in it. You know you're going to make the scene for the governor. You're expected to run about, keep things clean, get down, cleaning the fire engine more than all the other lads who'll be sitting up there having their tea, and, uh, yeah, just get amongst it, get down. So when you go on duty, every time you go on duty, you've got, you've got to sign in. You've got to do it quickly. You've got to check your ba set. So whatever ba set, whatever seating position you're, you're assigned so that you might be number three on the pump, say, as opposed to the pump ladder.
Speaker 2:So you've got, you'll get on duty. You'll test your breathing apparatus. That's the first and most important thing. So you test your breathing apparatus, sign your log book to say, yeah, that's all, bang on, I'm happy with that. Then we normally are going to have a cup of tea and then you'll be down within half hour checking all the equipment. Every shift. All the equipment has to be checked on the fire engine, make sure it works properly. You know we've got a lot of life-saving equipment on there, not so much when I joined but now. We've got defibrillators. We've got, you know, a lot more technical equipment. What we're trained to do is a lot more than what you see us do, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I can imagine. I mean, we don't really ever come across a fire brigade that often you might see them whizzing past you down the street. Or five-gauge, that often you might see them whizzing past you down the street. Or you you hear about a fire at the end of the road or a car accident. But we probably don't appreciate how sort of diverse your skill set is, because you I mean, when you turn up to an accident, you turn up somewhere you don't know what you're gonna face no, no, I mean I've had some good ones.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, I drove the fire engine for 23 years, which was a pleasure as well. It always gives you a bit of a buzz, even if you're going to something which seems mundane. Your buzz is in getting there. Every shout's a bit of an adventure because you're booting a 13-ton fire engine down the road. Yeah, it can be quite hairy but enjoyable.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we had some serious incidents, mate, to be fair, I mean I had my first for want of a better way of putting it my first death, my first dead person I saw in it. So I'd been there about three months and we was eating our breakfast and we got called to a guy who had jumped under the train at Tutinbeck tube station. So obviously we turned up there, we're running down there equipment and what have you and see where the train is along the platform so you know where your casualty is. So when, when we got him out, um, and he was on the platform and basically the train wheel had gone over him to the point there was just like literally a little bit of his midriff left joined, so they got him on with all the drip, you know, all the fluids into him and what have you and the governor's gone to me hold his hand? So I'm holding his hand and his whole body was shaking. You know, when you see it it's like watching a film. His whole body was just completely shaking and I was holding him. You know, there I was, this young 21-year-old just still got a mouthful of my blooming breakfast. It was only 150 yards from Tooting Beck tube station and then the guy just died holding my hand. His old body just started in convulsions and just like, literally it's like I've never seen anything like it and I didn't really know what to feel. I felt a bit numb, so we went back to the station when it was all over and we chatting about it, yeah, and then it wasn't long again before before my next one came along.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, I had a few jumpers under the trains over the years. I've had to wash body parts off the lines where they've jumped and mistimed the jump and got it wrong. Ed's gone through the driver's window at a cab not nice for the driver where one of them has jumped too high and not gone under the train at the front of it. Yeah, I've seen all sorts, you know, I would say a young lad, a young 14, 15-year-old boy, got run over by a grabber lorry. I'd say that's probably one of the saddest things I saw.
Speaker 2:And when we turned up he's on a bike. Was he or something? He's on a bike, that's it. Yeah, he was down by St George's Hospital, the bottom of Tooting High Street near Colliers Wood, and he he'd come up the left hand side. So if you imagine, you've come up with a set of traffic lights. He's got two lanes, the left hand lane obviously to turn left. The boys come up the inside of the lorry, the grabber lorry, to go straight on. So the lights have gone green and the young lads taken off on his bike. The grabber lorry didn't see him down the side of him. He's just turned left and gone straight over him and, uh, that that was awful mate. That was awful. It twisted his body so his body was like a corkscrew. It twisted him twice on himself so I snapped his spine. Yeah, it was awful mate.
Speaker 1:I won't go into too much detail no, not at all, but I think one of the things we did talk about before was obviously the perception of members of the public. When you're trying to help out, when you're at injuries, you're at a roadside, sort of an RTA, or they call it something else. These days, is it RTAs anymore?
Speaker 2:What have they called them RTCs now isn't it? They call them road traffic collisions. Now, for some bizarre reason, yeah, I'd say as well.
Speaker 1:That PC side of it. Yeah, it's got to be mate, same as STDs and STAs or whatever they are. You were saying, weren't you, that it could be an accident and someone might be stuck in a car or stuck underneath it and you might have a was it a compression injury or something. But you can't just lift the car off them, you can't just take them out of there, whereas members of the public say why are you getting them out of there? You've the public saying why aren't you getting them out of there? And you've got to go through a process because actually, in trying to hurry and save their life, you could end up ending it.
Speaker 2:Well, you can end up ending someone's life because if they're depending on what's trapped or how it's trapped that blood, then that can't get through the heart and the lungs to reoxygenate and, you know, get all, take all the CO2 and all the toxins out of it. Yeah, because our body, as you know, you know our system, it rolls around. So we're breathing in, we breathe in that oxygen, we oxygenate that, that blood, get it all in our body, our amazing system we've got the heart pumps that around our bodies to the, to the extremities and what have you to give us our life? And then it pulls it back in to then take all the toxins out of it. We, you know the blood goes through certain parts of the body, where the liver, all sorts of things which clean that blood, then take all the bad bits out of it and then back through it, re-oxygenates it and away it goes again. Now, if you're trapped a certain part of your blood, if it's trapped from then going around through that system and keep re-oxygenating and cleaning and detoxifying, it becomes very toxic and very dangerous. There's no oxygen in it, a lot of CO2 and a lot of toxins.
Speaker 2:So if you then released someone, you hear about it all the time on the news a granny lifted a car off of a granddaughter who got run over, or something, or someone lifted a bus. Apparently you hear about it all the time. Forget about those amazing feats of strength where it's like literally head off cabbage, on which we, you know, is a, is a different conversation. You release someone. That blood then hasn't been, uh, detoxified, hasn't been oxygen. It goes through and it can kill you. You have a heart attack, is it toxic heart attack?
Speaker 2:So when you see someone trapped there and you see the police, the ambulance brigade working on them, for an hour 53 minutes it took us to get a young lad out from under that lorry. Sadly he passed away and it was tragic because the difference in the look of him from when we turned up, when you would have thought there was nothing wrong with him banging on the wheel saying get me out, to how he looked and how his body was reacting when we got him out, it was absolutely horrific. It was tragic, you know, and, uh, it was awful, but we we couldn't get him out any quicker, we just we couldn't. So, yeah, it, it, it, yeah. Trap injuries are a danger in themselves. The trap itself. The trapping could actually kill you itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's something you don't really appreciate. So you just think, oh, you're trapped, and but yeah, I think there's. I was listening to something the other day about someone saying if you're sort of hanging upside down for too long, it's amazing sort of the damage it can do to your body. And uh, you see people that sort of try and sleep upside down they've got bad backs and all these different sort of contraptions. But it's it's got to be very well timed and eight minutes.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've got a gravity table. I hang upside down each day, but you shouldn't do it for any more. Five to eight minutes maximum. Yeah, because it's putting a lot of pressure in your skull. What it's doing good, obviously, because your head's a lot heavier part of your body than you think. It's a lot heavier than you think. So by hanging upside down, what you're doing is you're stretching your vertebrae out very slightly and that releases pressure, releases pressure on your discs. If you've got a disc problem, if you've got a neck injury, a crook neck, it's an amazing thing to do, is? It is literally gravity, gravity therapy. Yeah, it's an amazing thing, but you can't hang on there too long. Yeah, it can cause you a lot of problems I can't know that for next time.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was a dad I used to put my daughter into one of those jumper things. Do you remember you used to hang them off the door? Yeah, yeah, they'd climb into it and they'd just jump up and down and it would say on there no longer than two minutes. I thought that was true because you know they wanted you to be a good parent and let's not leave your kid in. It was probably some sort of compression thing to stop the loops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was brain shake you know what I mean I think I got 20 minutes out of my daughter one day on that Jeez yeah 20. Yeah, she can't walk very well now.
Speaker 2:So once she can speak eight languages, you know what. I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most of those, her dad can have some money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and she wears them traffic cones as a flipping hat. You know what I mean. Obviously, the way her dad treated her when she was younger yeah, keep child services away and um.
Speaker 1:So I suppose that was quite an interesting point though. So you've obviously must have had members of the public in the past. Have you had incidents where you've had to call the police in to sort of keep the members of the public away because they've sort of maybe intruded?
Speaker 2:yeah, not so much for, like, obviously, that trap side of things. I'll get on with it, but we we have had to call the police. Yeah, I've been involved with like a few incidents where there's like a small riot and you know we're trying to get in there to put these cars out and uh, they're just stoning us, breaking us, chucking everything they can at us. So in the end you, I literally turned the ozo on them and uh, yeah, just took them out, them out. But then we have to retract as quick as we can because obviously it doesn't help the situation. But yeah, we've had to call, I suppose, the police for other things as well. You do get. I mean, I'll be honest, the day I turned up in Churchfield, rose and Beckingham and we got called to someone who had mental issues, and when the police were there with riot shields and when they eventually got the door open, you can imagine it sent shivers up my spine. We were confronted with a guy who had a broom handle and he had two metal knives taped to the end of the broom handle and both of those metal knives were wired to his mains plugs. So he was standing there with this lance of two knives on the end of a wooden handle that were wired to 240 volt electricity trying to force it towards the old bill. Yeah, that was pretty frightening, to be fair. Yeah, that was frightening. You see a few things. Yeah, I've seen. I've seen all sorts of things. You know it's not nice when you see dead people.
Speaker 2:I mean, two Christmases in a row we had in Beckenham and I got Phil Chambers, our sprog at the time, actually to go in there and he knew there was a dead bloke in there. He just didn't want to open the door. So we got him in there. We got him to climb through the window of a flat. The guy hadn't been seen for about six weeks and there was an horrible smell coming from. So anyway, we said to him get yourself up there, phil, get yourself in.
Speaker 2:So he's climbed in through the window and he's looking around and he said no, I can't see anything. I said and where's she at? And we've gone. Right, have you opened every door? You opened every door and he went yeah, I've opened all the doors. He said there's one more door to open, right into the kitchen and I've gone, have you opened it? And he was shitting himself. Basically he didn't want to open it. So, anyway, we got up in the flat, opened the door and there he was. The fellow was lying on the floor. He'd been there six weeks but the gas was still on his cooker and he had a tourniquet around his eye and up on heroin at the time and it gave him a heart attack. So he's fallen over, bosh, straight on the floor, dead Gas still on, with a spoon still on the gas where he'd been heating it and basically all these fluids. As you know, when you die your body releases a lot of fluids all over the floor. Wasn't a pleasant smell, to be fair, wasn't pleasant. But you know, phil, just didn't have to pull so open the door, to be honest with you it's a difficult thing we've had a few of those, yeah, you can't tell we've had a
Speaker 1:few of those it's not something you can train for, is it it's?
Speaker 2:no, it's not.
Speaker 1:You try and prepare people, but until you've actually been in that situation, you've seen it. You don't know how someone's going to cope and how they're going to cope.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean you don't know how they're going to cope when you turn up to a, an rtc as we call it, near dullidge college, and the guy had clipped the pavement and his car had spun over, and his wife and didn't have a seat belt on. So she's come out the sunroof and it took the top of her head off like a, like a boiled egg as the car rolled over. Her brains come out, yeah, for the force of the, the accident and and the trauma. So the car's now lying on its side driver's side. The guy's lying there off, half awake, half not smashed up. His two boys are in the back. They've been thrown around like in a food process.
Speaker 2:So he's having a seat belt on and his wife's brain was two foot from his head, lying on the floor, and it was at night. So the paramedics have turned up. There's a few people gathering around and the paramedics have turned up. There's a few people gathering around and the paramedics have turned up. The paramedics come straight up the car. So he was going on trodding his wife's brain that was lying on the floor. You know, two foot from the geezer's head. So you know that weren't a nice one it's not that.
Speaker 1:How do you sort of cope with that, like mentally? I mean, is there support and help there if you need it, if you're?
Speaker 2:struggling? Yeah, there is. I mean, I never found I needed support and I'll be honest with you, I I dealt with it my own way. I just got back to station and the way I dealt with it as crude as it sounds is I'd almost make a joke of it. And and that's what we did. We'd almost say a joke of it. We'd have a lot and go well, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know I won't say what we said, but we'd have a joke of it, as you know. You know, because of the way you deal with it, that is a coping mechanism, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of humans yeah, it's a coping mechanism and it's only probably three times in the 27 year old years I was in it that I really got back to the station and felt died on a roof was another time and and another time. But what? The things that changed me really, if I'm being totally honest, uh, the human cost of of lives and what have you is when my daughter died that that changed things and I my, my daughter was born. Uh, she had a little complication when she was born. That in itself wasn't the end of the world. She's born with something called gastrocysis, which is where your stomach grows outside your body. It's like a little small hole forms in the stomach wall and inside the womb. The stomach is actually growing outside of her little body. So when they're, when they're born she was born slightly premature, five weeks premature they basically they tuck your, they tuck the tummy back inside how it should be and sew it back up. So she had that.
Speaker 2:And then, when she was 16 days old, she contracted a uh, a very, very uh, uh, a virus called necrotizing enterocolitis. So necrotizing meets to eat, means to eat living tissue, it's necrotizing. So she caught this virus and was rushed there and was told if it is what they thought it was, she wouldn't survive the night. So she managed to survive the night, you know, two and a half hours waiting there while she was down in surgery, brought her back up in the incubator and said look, it's not what we thought it was, but unfortunately what she has got could well kill her anyway. So for the next eight weeks we had her stomach open. We had to leave her stomach open with a special bag over it and a part of her gut poking out to see if that would repair, if her gut could repair, because your body will repair what it can. And unfortunately it didn't. So that cut away most of her bowel.
Speaker 2:And then, when she was nearly a year and a half old, her liver packed up and we had to rush her up to Guy's Hospital and she was up there for nine days on all the top machines, oscillating machine, all sorts of stuff mate, you know it's hard to explain. And basically, eight days in the, the specialist took us into the room and said look, this is where gracie was. Gracie was here when she came here. She's still here now, at the same level. She hasn't got any better. She hasn't got any worse.
Speaker 2:She said, um, our job is to keep her going as long as we can and we intend to do that. But we, in our expert opinion, within the next 48 hours your daughter's gonna die, uh, unfortunately, you know. And, um, because her lungs have stretched so much on these machines, the oscillating machine which pumps, uh, her whole body was shaking, basically like because it pumps air at very small pressures, like pulses into the lungs. They said, within the next 48 hours her lungs are going to collapse in and she's going to die. So you may want to consider doing the right thing, maybe, for her. So we went away and, as tragic as it was, we three o'clock the next afternoon, we arranged and turned the last port machines off. And, mate, it broke my heart, to be honest with you, was it broke my heart? To be honest with you?
Speaker 1:it broke my heart it's one of the most awful things anyone would ever face. I mean, you can't put that into words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was, it was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking. My sister you met on the ride Cheryl was with me holding my hand, you know and yeah, they just hit the power button in the cubicle. They had one just master power switch and they hit that and basically she was dead straight away. The machines were keeping her alive. Basically she died two seconds because they put their hand on the pulse and when they turned the machines off they checked the pulse and her pulse just was not there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you take away if there was no suffering at the end, and it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's no suffering. The awful side of it, adam, was for all the, for all the dead people. I've seen and I've seen a lot of dead people in my time when my own daughter was dead and 20 minutes later her hair had gone gray, her skin had gone yellow Every, every part of her little body where we'd had to put a needle in over the. You know the year and a half she was alive. Um, all the bruising came out. It like to, to be honest with you, it looked like she'd been in a car crash. Her. Both her eyes went black, like blackened and swollen yellow. It was awful. It broke my heart when I saw those photos a couple of weeks later. You know it, it broke my heart, mate. It broke my heart and and saw those photos a couple of weeks later. You know, it broke my heart, mate. It broke my heart and that took a lot to get through. That you know. And it changed my opinion and how I felt when I saw other people dying and die.
Speaker 1:Where was that? Was that at the guys' hospital?
Speaker 2:That was guys' mate. Yeah, she was at guys' hospital. So you know, every time I go past guys which is quite a lot actually, I'm up there that way all the time, you know, I always sort of look up to the sort of windows of the main tower there where she was and yeah, it leaves a little bit of a lump in my throat. But you know, it was tragic, it was a tragedy in my life.
Speaker 1:And you know.
Speaker 2:You've got to deal with it, mate. Time stands still for no one. It will not stop for anyone. You move on. I've got four boys now, four of the most amazing boys in the world. They are my main men, all of them. As you know, you've met Chris very well. He's a machine. Was he 15, 16 years old? 15, mate? I think he was. Yeah, yeah, just I think he was 14. On Joggle, I mean, or was he? Or just done 920 miles on his own bike. You know he done a 24-hour lunge challenge with us a couple of months back. He done. He abseiled off the orbit at the Olympic Stadium a couple of months ago. We done that raising awareness. That was terrifying. And then we done lift a million kilos this weekend. And he done that and he lifted a million kilos.
Speaker 1:Bloody hell. I mean, you know, 15 years old. That is impressive, isn't it? I mean he's definitely going places, he's got a bright future ahead of him, he has.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he has. Yeah, he's going to go places and he's just such a good lad, he's respectful, everyone loves him, everyone loves him. He's just such a good, all-round lad.
Speaker 1:I think we'll touch on that a bit more in a minute when we sort of talk about the next step. So as you were sort of coming out of the Fire Brigade, you were obviously a big guy. So we were talking about this earlier, because obviously the logo for the MND is a set of weights sort of barbells. And you were the world's biggest. What was your title? World.
Speaker 2:Firefighting. Yeah, so I was a powerlifter, which is three lifts it's squatting, bench press and deadlift. So you do three lifts, you do three of each. So you do three squats, three benches, three deadlifts and obviously your total is added up of your three heaviest lifts. So I did that and I went all around the world powerlifting. I powerlifted for Great Britain, I powerlifted for the brigade. I done all the world police, fire and prison games all around the world.
Speaker 2:I won five gold medals police, fire and prison games all around the world. I won five gold medals. I've got a couple of world games records still, but a raw deadlift and a couple of others I got in Barcelona in 2003. And then, yeah, I dedicated a couple of my gold medals. I dedicated my gold medal from New Zealand. I dedicated it to my daughter. I had her name inscribed on the back, yeah, and I was the world's strongest fireman for six years in a row. So, yeah, I achieved. I achieved more than I wanted to. Really, I think, adam, you know I just I just wanted to do it. My dad was a bodybuilder when he was younger and I was always strong from a size. So someone said why don't you utilise that and do something with it. So, yeah, I did that and yeah, the powerlifting was a good sort of leveller for me, because I was a bit of a wild one. I did used to go off on one, so it's a good leveller.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good discipline as well. Yeah, good discipline.
Speaker 1:You've got to have your good discipline, you've got to be, you've got to have your form, you've got to get your diet in place, your exercise, your regime you've got to train with that and do work and family life.
Speaker 2:It's not just talking about going to the gym for 20 minutes yeah, and then I, you know, I met some good people doing the powerlifting you, he was a sergeant enforcer of the North London chapter of the Outlaws Bikers, you know. And so I was going down the Outlaws clubhouse with Terry. I mean some of the things you saw there would make your toes curl, you know. I mean some of the characters like the powerlifters. You know I used to do the security work with them, whatever they were all immense. Tony Stevens, multiple times world champion, ipf Hall of Famer, you know used to used to go and do competitions with Bill. Do you remember Bill Kazmaier, the old world's strongest man guy, like one of the greatest ever, massive lump? You know Tony and Bill used to go and have breakfast and they'd be eating 10 Diner Bowl. You know, steroids for their breakfast. World competition because, because back then steroids were allowed yeah, didn't test.
Speaker 1:You know, on you went yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So tony, uh, you know, I met some amazing people. He's an ipf hall of famer, he's an all-time one of the greatest powerlifters ever and, uh, yeah, met some immense people and there's some great times doing that so good fun when I was watching the world's sort of strongest man.
Speaker 1:You sort of watch over the years and it sort of says, here's magnus, what's what's his face, and he's an American guy. But a lot of them actually do. They are coppers and they're firemen and stuff. It seems that maybe that sort of career takes you down. It's a natural.
Speaker 2:I think it does. I think the military as well. I think the military career takes you that way Cause, like I say, firefighters or ex-military, and I just think you find in those particular jobs you get a lot of sports people, a lot of people that are in the sport in whatever way, shape or form. You know that in the military you get a lot of people that are in their sport. I know it might start out as running and fitness, but they go into various sports, but you know we're around people that have been in that sort of lifestyle, aren't we all the time? You know, with your background, it's all about fitness, regardless of your speciality, your speciality with the comms and what have you, regardless of your speciality, it's all around the fitness, isn't it?
Speaker 1:even with you I think people used to say you've got to be able to run as fast as you can, you've got to be able to hit these timings, but I think I was never the fastest runner, I was never the strongest bloke, but I think a lot of it's mental, yeah as well, and people forget that, yeah, mind over matter.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt. Your mind is everything. Your mind can get you through something. All these challenges I've been doing, it gets me through. It I've got to focus on on. Really, I'll just focus on it and say in my head I say, yeah, look, I know it's going to be hard, this is going to get hurt, you know, but it's a challenge. It wouldn't be called a challenge otherwise. This is going to get us digging, digging and and smash it. Do it and I do.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you certainly do, and that's probably a really good time to start talking about that. So obviously you've done some pretty epic challenges recently and I think I've known you now sort of six months, yeah, and every month you're just doing something. I think I wouldn't do that if they paid me.
Speaker 2:I don't think I could do that if they paid me.
Speaker 1:Obviously it's all started because you found yourself poorly a few years ago did you touch? On that yeah.
Speaker 2:So for all my colourful life I've been very lucky. I've travelled a lot, met a lot of good people, got a lot of good friends, good family, kept myself fit, kept myself strong all the time. You know anyone. I tell you who's known me all my life. You know, john are the strongest person I've met. You're the fit. You know what's all this.
Speaker 2:And anyway, so five years ago I started getting a bit of twitching in my right bicep. It was just twitching and I was sitting there thinking I had a couple of court cases going on at the time uh, crown court and I thought that's not right. Maybe that's a bit of anxiety, I don't know. So I went down the doctors. She said, yeah, it's probably anxiety. You got your court stuff going on. Take some beta blockers. As you give me propanolol. I took that, that. That didn't really do anything. So a few months later I went down there and said I was talking to her about something else, I think, and I just mentioned it. And I said, oh, by the way, yeah, the propanolol didn't really do anything. It's still twitching in the arm, the bicep and tricep. So she referred me to a neurology. I didn't really think anything of it at the time Went there and an MRI scan on my brain that came back fine.
Speaker 2:Um, all the time I was losing muscle in my right arm. So my right arm was starting to waste. I was struggling to to pick things up and you know clearly it wasn't right. You know I've been struggling my life, um. So I started getting a bit panicky and saying to the specialist look, please, can someone help me here? Something's not right. So I'd done a couple of other scans on my neck and said look, from all your powerlifting days, we can see you've got a lot of compression there in your neck and more than likely, your nerves are trapped. So if we can do this operation on your neck and release them, there's a chance you could get that atrophy in the muscles, the wasting of the muscles back, depending on how bad the nerves are. So I went, okay.
Speaker 2:So this went on another year, rod, and you know I'm waiting. I'm losing more strength, more power, more muscle. And in the end I sent a couple of desperate emails to the doctors and said look, please, please, someone help me here. Someone help me. I'm really worried, I'm going to lose everything.
Speaker 2:And then april last year, so so April 2019 I went up to King's College Hospital and had a another neurology appointment, uh, and then they called the chief neurosurgeon in Dr Selway and he just basically put it straight to me and he said John, look, I know you've got a uh, your neck problem, but you see that with your MRI he said but I'm being honest with you. He said that amount of muscle and strength loss in that arm is a little bit more than a neck injury. And I said to him I said right, okay. I said have I got to be worried here or what? And he said well, you know, it could be a number of things. Let's do some more tests. So I was blunt with him and I said look, just talk to me like a man here. I said I know you diagnosis and he mentioned single limb motor neurone disease and other things anyway, he said look, let's do some more tests and get get more accurate picture of what's going on.
Speaker 2:And then, may I? I had an emg test where they dig needles in your muscles and listen to what the muscles are doing. And uh, I went back and she was chatting to me, my neurologist. How are you, john, you John, et cetera, et cetera. I went through everything. Again, arlene was waiting outside in the waiting area for me. She had insisted on coming down in her car and what to wait for me, and I'm glad she did now. And anyway, the neurologist was talking away, talking away, and she said so it got to your neck. And then, before we wanted to do this operation, which can be quite difficult, we wanted to check. You had nothing else going on. She said and that's when we realized, after doing your EMG, we noticed you're. That's when we realized your nervous system's getting attacked. She said we have a name for these diseases. She said you've probably heard of it.
Speaker 2:And then, if I'm being totally honest, adam, I sat there and shat myself literally, because I straight away thought don't tell me motor neurone disease. Because I straight away thought don't tell me motor neurone disease and the reason I said that and had motor neurone disease in my head was because one of my mates on my old watch at Tooting died of motor neurone disease. Mickey Macy got the diagnosis and was dead in a year and it was tragic. Again, a fit guy. So I'm sitting there thinking, don't tell me that. So she waffled on a bit more about a few other bits and pieces and she said don't tell all. Her tone had changed and I really did panic. Actually inside I was thinking, no, no, no. So I'm sitting there how I am now really with my elbows on my knees and she said right, john. She said, um, she took a deep breath. She looked like she was going to cry herself, so I knew it weren't good.
Speaker 2:And she took a deep breath and she said right, she said I'm going to tell you what name we have for these diseases, john. She said this motor neurone disease and I had just my eyes welled up instantly. I looked her in the eyes and I said well, so you're telling me I'm gonna die? And she said, um, well, there is no cure for it. There's not a lot we know about it or not a lot we can do. Um, there's one drug out there which could possibly give you three months extra to live. Um, and that's it. Basically go away, uh, you know, make your plans because there's nothing we can do for you.
Speaker 2:And the next day I went up to king's college hospital and had a confirmed diagnosis with, uh, my my now neurologist, uh top guy, top guy jameen shreeder. Then he agreed with a diagnosis, because there is no 100 diagnosis for motor neurone disease. They rule out everything else. They test you for ms, all the other immune diseases. Once they've ruled everything out, they they label you with motor neurone disease, basically because they there's no biomarker yet they found in the body to be able to say, yeah, we tested you for that, that's why you've got motor neurone disease we know you have because of that because you haven't got anything else.
Speaker 2:you can, yeah, so basically because they can't find anything wrong with me, they actually label me with that, so it's just a label for a range of diseases basically, this must be a huge thing.
Speaker 1:You're standing there trying to take this on board.
Speaker 2:What were your?
Speaker 1:feelings at the time. It must have been overwhelming.
Speaker 2:Oh, unbelievable, unbelievable. And first thing, I just wanted to go back and tell the boys I had to. So Arlene drove me back. I was crying and I walked in and Chris and Ollie got up. Luke was only three then, he was playing. Chris and Ollie got up. Jake, my other boy, lives somewhere else, just up the road, and Chris has jumped straight up arm around me. He's gone. Dad, what's the matter? What's up? And I said look, I've just come back from the hospital. I said we know I've got my neck injury and obviously my arm and what have you? And he's going yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, look, I've just come back from the hospital and I'm a bit more ill than we thought I was. Boys and there's like, well, what do you mean? What do you mean? I said, look, I'm not going to lie to you. If I'm as ill as what they say I am, I'm going to die. And like we're all crying. You know, it's just. Oh, mate, it was. It's heartbreaking and I'll be honest with you. I, I, yeah.
Speaker 2:I found it very difficult and we went up London the next day. It's just, I couldn't stop crying, mate, and my boys, chris and Ollie, just kept hugging me and it was awful, mate. It was awful and we took photos being up London. My sister, cheryl, came down from Hereford that night, cancelled her holiday she was going to be going on that day and we all just went up there. And I went up London and I just kept crying.
Speaker 2:Day and we all just went up there and, uh, I went up london and I just kept crying, I just kept crying and I couldn't stop. Really every 20 minutes burst out crying and, um, I just didn't think I was going to make my 48th birthday and all I thought about was my boys. They don't deserve this. You know how they. How can these boys be going and telling their mates at school no, no, my dad died of neurone disease. You know, I just I just kept. And then I had this image of my own funeral and I pictured my, my youngest, who's four, walking in, you know, with his mum holding her hand and saying oh, look, it's dad. You know my coffin at the front with my picture on top of it and him not really knowing anything about what's going on and sitting there going oh, look, it's dad. You know, seeing that picture of me on the coffin and being at my funeral, mate just broke my arse. Oh, honestly, it's awful it's a tremendous thing.
Speaker 1:You're sort of having to carry, but you've taken some massive positive smart. I mean it seems to sort of obviously you're looking for anything that will help ease your symptoms. You're you're getting the word out there, because motor neurons really not something that's well known about and I think a couple of years ago there was. Is it called als in uh in the states?
Speaker 2:correct. Yeah, amyotrophic lateral cirrhosis is called yeah, in in america, which means many scars. That actually equates and it means many scars. Lateral cirrhosis is scars, so they leave scars in your cells, this disease, so that's what that stands for that so yeah so it's called als amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in north america and it's called mnd, or motor neurone disease, everywhere else.
Speaker 2:And people will probably be able to remember mnd if I say that, obviously stephen alkin. Everyone knows who stephen alkin was. That's the, the awful disease that stephen alkin uh suffered for 55 years with there's got, there's, there's a cure, isn't it?
Speaker 1:But it's a question of funding and I suppose there's so many different diseases out there, there's only so much money. But it does feel like this year motor neurons has come into the fore. I see it everywhere and there's obviously been a number of celebrities who've contracted it. It always does seem to be sports stars, sort of rugby players, and I suppose it's a sad thing to say. But I suppose we need people who are in the public eye to get some sort of disease like this, because then there'll probably be more interest in it and people want to know more and help raise more money and ultimately that's what's going to help us find a cure for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree, mate. I mean the massive thing that's going on at the moment the Rob Burrows thing, with Kevin Sinfield just having done seven marathons in seven days, raising two and a half million, more than Doddy Weir, you know, with his foundation. Stephen Darby, the ex-football player. What a lot of people don't know is David Niven the first ever James Bond died of motor neurone disease.
Speaker 2:No one knew that Ronnie Colbert died of motor neurone disease no one really. That Ronnie Colbert died of motor neurone disease. No one really knows about that, don. Who was it? Don Revy, the ex-England manager, died of motor neurone disease. The ex-England football manager you know people don't know Youssef Van Der Vestas in the ex-South Africa Scrum R tragically died of motor neurone disease in 2017. People don't know this and I don't understand why it's 17. People don't know this and I don't understand why it's almost like it's the dirty word of neurological diseases. No one seems to want to talk about it or get it out there, and yet it's probably the most life-shortening of all of the neurological neurological diseases is where do people go if they want to learn more about this or if they want to maybe sort of support it in some way?
Speaker 1:is there a an? Mb page or is there anywhere where?
Speaker 2:they give money. I mean, yeah, I mean what I would, what I would invite people to do, is first of all, just go on google and type in motor neurone disease and read up on it, I mean, and just see what an awful, heinous disease this is, and it really is. I've got the lucky side of it limb onset in my arms. Uh, many people who have motor neurone disease are dead within a couple of months and they can go from being perfectly all right one day to not being able to walk within a couple of days, to not being able to talk within a couple of days, to not being able to breathe within a couple of days. This disease is awful. 80 percent of us will lose our ability to talk and breathe. Um, eight out of ten of us are dead in two to three years. You know, 50 of us die within a year of diagnosis today. Six people will be diagnosed with motor neurone disease today in the uk and six people will die of it today.
Speaker 2:It's it's a. It's an awful disease. So if people could just read, read a little bit about it, understand that the bucket challenge, the ice bucket challenge, was about raising awareness for it, albeit it was called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and just get the word out there, adam. You know, I mean they can see our page Cycle Challenge for MND. You know, look on there on Instagram, on Facebook, you know, follow us, just follow us, see what we're doing.
Speaker 2:You know, as they know, you'll be involved in some of the challenges next year. I'm sure mate, like you were this year, you know, with a joggle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they're great challenges, you know, really getting the word out there and that's all we want. We just want to sort of help spread and get the understanding out there and just hope that it just gets more money in, Because ultimately it's a disease. It's only going to be fixed by getting money into it. To try and find the cure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the cure. Yeah, exactly. Get the awareness, get the, get the funding, get the cure. There is a cure out there. They're. They're knocking on the door for a cure for motor neurone disease. You know, make no, make no bones about it. I want many bones about it. It's a fact that they're knocking on the door. They really are close to something big with it.
Speaker 2:Um, and I'm hopeful if I can hang on in there long enough, and god only knows if I'm doing something to slow in it. They say there's nothing that can slow it. There's, but god only knows, you know. I mean, I've met people that have had the same symptoms as me and they're a lot further down the line than me now. You know their legs have gone. My legs are still strong, uh, or or other parts of their body have gone. So who knows what I'm doing might be holding it off. If I can be in it long, you know, for the next two to, if I can, if I can stay in it and stay alive for the next two years, two to four years, I reckon I'll be around for a cure yeah, no, you know, we're all obviously holding out and hoping that happens, because you're doing some sort of alternative therapies, aren't you which to try and, yeah, obviously assist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you've got the chamber.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I've got the chamber, as you know. I've got the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. I'm on 60 odd hours on that now. Um, if, again, if you read up what hyperbaric oxygen does in the body, you would expect it to do something good for me. It it promotes stem cell regrowth in the spinal cord, it promotes neuronal regrowth in the brain and it promotes nerve regrowth. And while you're breathing in that 95 oxygen because it's what they call mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy as opposed to full, uh, like full-on. So what it does I'm breathing that in that 95 oxygen is pushing it 400 deeper into my tissues. So what's happening? So you've got an injury or a nerve problem. It's forcing that oxygen in which is forcing your body then to be able to promote health and regrowth in whatever it is, even if it's skin cells, you're you know it's good for your skin. It promotes regrowth and, uh, rejuvenates your whole, whole body. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what we are, isn't it? Oxygen is a big part of what we are. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm on that. I haven't noticed, being honest, I haven't noticed anything definite as yet, but I've got to just keep at it. I'm on. I've got a red light therapy unit which I'm on a whole range of. There's one bag of supplements I don't know if you can see that. There's about 15 in there. I'm on about 30 different supplements a day which I have to take, but I'm also on my alternative things, as you quite rightly said. So I'm taking pure CBD oil, which is pure. It's pure extract. It's full THC. Full CBD Knocks you out. I take it at night. It knocks you out because you get the high.
Speaker 1:Cannabis oil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cannabis oil, yeah, and that's been proven to be neuro-regenerative and neuro-protective. So that's so good for you in so many ways. Not even someone with M mnd, anyone who hasn't got mnd it's a, it's a. It's a wonderful substance to take, you know, to keep yourself fit, keep yourself healthy, believe it or not, and it and it and it loads up your ecs in your body, which is another system which is fairly recently been discovered, and your endocannabinoid system is your protective system in your brain. That's the system that when your body kicks in, when you load it up enough with CBD and THC and other compounds, your brain then kicks in to say, right, come on, let's send out our T-regulatory cells here, let's defend ourselves. We're getting attacked, our body's getting attacked. So there's a lot of good that could come from that. So I'm on that. I'm on.
Speaker 2:I actually have started psilocylin, which is a hallucinatory compound from the magic mushroom family of plants. So there's about 140 different mushrooms which give you the hallucinogenic effect, and all of them they've now proven scientifically they regrow neurons in the human brain. I don't know how again, but so obviously I've started microdosing with that. I'm very excited by that. I've started another substance called trehalose, which is a naturally occurring sugar which they've now proven stops protein clumping in cells, which is a big part of motor neuron disease, and it stops your proteins misfolding. Again, very, very fascinating substance. It's just a natural sugar.
Speaker 2:I've started taking that. Um, I'm I'm binding that with coconut oil to get it to bind to the uh, the medium chain triglycerides in the, triglycerides in the in the coconut oil, to get that past your blood-brain barrier. Because someone could say to you now oh Adam, take turmeric, it's a great supplement, really good for you. Yeah, it is, it's a great supplement and, yeah, it is really good for you. But you will pee out 99% of that, because if you're not taking it in the right form, in the right way, it won't bypass your blood-brain barrier, so it will literally do you no good at all.
Speaker 1:It's about taking the right things in the right format, in the right way so experiment, I suppose, and see what, yeah, you're doing that you feel is having a benefit yeah, it's the supplements I'm taking.
Speaker 2:I need them, I need to get them in the right parts of my body, you know. So you've got to. You've got to take certain supplements. You know omega-3 supplements, you know omega-3 oils. It's all right to take an omega-3 oil, but you know one of the omega-3 oils, the DPA, a certain acid. You don't get it in normal fish oils, so you have to take things like menharden fish oil or certain other fish oils. You have to take krill oil as opposed to just normal fish oil, because it's got a more active form of omega-3, which your body is more bioavailable and your body will take it in more. You see what I mean. So even my supplement regime has been studied, and I mean I'm always, every day I'm looking at new stuff.
Speaker 1:But you got to, didn't you? I suppose you got that drive. You want to just get yourself better as much as you can until the cure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I've done something. Well, a couple of evenings ago I've done something I never, ever dreamed I'd do and I took a hit on DMT, which is DMT I forget the full name of it. Actually it's one of these drugs they all take. It completely knocks you out, hallucinates you go into another world. So I took a hit on it because, again, the dmt is the active part of, uh, the iacusa drink that they give you in the brazilian rainforest, this shamanic drink again, which has now been proven to regrow neurons in the brain. So dmt is the active compound. So you vaporize it, put it into a thing and you breathe it in. And I'm not joking, you mate. It was unbelievable the strength of that compound. I'm literally talking within one second to the next. I was on a completely different plane, in a completely different world.
Speaker 1:It was unbelievable. It felt like you were talking to me now just totally real. It's just surreal yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't even explain what it was. You were talking to me now. Just totally real, it's just surreal. Yeah, yeah, I can't even explain what it was I was looking at. It was all colours and everything was moving. It was just an amazing, amazing experience. To be honest, it was, it was second to none. That's all I can. It's the only way I can put it Scary, scary.
Speaker 1:Well, it is, I think, everything you're going through which sort of takes me through to sort of. I suppose we sort of start concluding it. And is where you see this sort of going in the next six months. What challenges you've got to sort of try and help raise awareness for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, so obviously onwards and upwards with the awareness campaign. As you know, pilgrim Bandits, which we are both part of, back me all the way, matty, and all the boys and girls, wonderful team behind me, you being part of that. So we've got a few challenges lined up next year. So we're looking at coast to coast up north there it's about two, three or four day trek trek and we'll probably do that. Hopefully a big joint event with challenging mnd, a charity, uh, who I did the lift, a million kilos with alex and his charity. Yes, so he was a gp gbd cathlete and he's got it and, uh, he's a good lad. So we're going to look at doing coast to coast with them. And pilgrims, uh, we've got the skydiving in front of everest. I don't know, you've heard about that one, so matt's around. Uh, regiment lab one of the ex-regiment boys runs the company that does the skydiving over everest. So we're looking next november we're looking at going out there and skydiving over everest yeah, that looks fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 1:I did email them the other day about that. I said, I'll come and do it, but I'm not having someone strap to me, I'll just do the jump on my own. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:You'd want to do it on your own mate, wouldn't you?
Speaker 1:He said to me well, you can do it, mate, but you've one's got 100 jumps in this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who's going to get that in? Exactly, I mean even Matt. Yeah, exactly, I mean, I would have thought even I don't know, I don't know if Matt's kept his hours in with it. Even Matt would probably have to go on a tandem, wouldn't he?
Speaker 1:Anyone that jumps. Once they stop jumping, they're quite glad of it. You only jump when you're yeah, yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 2:So we've got that lined up. We've got uh, oh, we've got a cold water swim.
Speaker 1:I don't know what you like in cold water yeah, yeah, fantastic, yeah, I love watching people getting cold water so what we've got if you're up for it.
Speaker 2:Uh, dino old nasa, dino dean ash, pro bodybuilder. Um, he's yet another ridiculous challenge, which is so we've done the 24-hour lunges in the gym, which was unbearable. That was ridiculous. You do two minutes of lunges it kills. So we've done 24 hours of lunges, like a month and a half ago in the gym to raise awareness.
Speaker 1:That was a big thing. We got a lot of celebrity.
Speaker 2:Input Duchess of York and what have you Baxus as well? Input Duchess of York and what have you, Baxus as well. So yeah, cold water, swim. So it's a mile in cold water. You've got to swim, Can't have a wetsuit on, it's just got to be literally budgie smugglers. And it's got to be no more than five degrees the water. So five degrees or less, that's painful, mate, that's painful. I was at the lido last weekend with dino. We was up there at seven o'clock in the morning at parliament hill lido in hampstead, at seven o'clock in the morning, thinking what the fuck am I doing here? What? What am I doing here? My hands and feet went numb. I was in a wetsuit and obviously with my mnd, my muscles are wasting my hand. So you do feel it like really with MND. But I was just thinking what the hell? That's going to be a beast of a challenge, mate. You're going to have to be in that water for about 45 minutes, remember, for that challenge.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll certainly come along and support you, and if I feel like it, I'll jump in. Yeah, yeah, I'll just do it know if you're doing it.
Speaker 2:We're all there to support each other yeah, you know, see how you feel, see how you know, I'll try and get you know, we'll try and get what we can. I know Rhys. You know Rhys, the Welsh lad. Well, he was swimming in.
Speaker 1:where were we? We were up Scotland or wherever. When we met up with you guys, he was straight in the water. Yeah, but he's Welsh, isn't he? So they're used to being wet and cold, yeah, he's used to it.
Speaker 2:They run away from the sheep. It's the only way the sheep can go, isn't it? You've got to be careful. I mean, the sheep have run out of land to run away from, so they're running in the water. So unless you can handle the water, you're not going to be able well, so I'm sure they'll forgive me.
Speaker 1:Well they're all in lockdown at the moment, so the sheep have got a bit of a reprieve.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We've taken up a lot of your time tonight, but it's been fantastic having you on, and what a journey we're here. Obviously, we're going to continue this journey with you and we're going to help promote and get the whole MND out there. Obviously, you've got the Dutch who's doing a lot of stuff and promoting it and I think, um, you know there is a cure around the corner and you know, let's just sort of keep keep you going and get you to that cure.
Speaker 1:That's it, mate, that's it just keep you ready we are going to keep that awareness going mate that's it.
Speaker 2:Let's keep it going. Whether it's behind, uh, rose tinted spectacles, a pint. Whatever it's behind, mate, we just got to keep it going. Keep that boy and his campaign going. You've got to keep talking about it. Yeah, and Martin in fact I've got to hold Martin to it. You're right, our man Martin. He said he reckons January he'll have me up jumping now.
Speaker 2:I've never done a parachute jump, by the way, remember, I've never jumped. So he reckons he'll have me up by January jumping, so let's see, yeah, I mean, he's obviously down on Western, isn't he?
Speaker 1:So he'll be able to jump in no problem.
Speaker 2:We'll strap you in. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah. So let's see, maybe you'll come down on that one. I'll watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one question I ask all the guests when they come on is is three things you can't live without. If you're going on holiday or you're going out the door, what are your three must-haves? Items Anything can be free. Items free people free.
Speaker 2:Well, definitely. And I couldn't live without my wife. Definitely, she is my right-hand girl, she's a good girl and she does everything for me. You know, even if I don't need it, she does it all for me, so I couldn't be without her. Definitely number one my boys, without a doubt. Number two Chris, Ollie, Jake and Lucas, without a doubt, they are my heartbeat and my positive beat. When I think about my situation and what I'm in, I only have to think of them or look at them and it makes me smile, makes me feel positive and think, no, I'm going to be around, I've got to. And number three, my CBD oil. Mate, my CBD oil. It's got to go with me and if people get on it and realise, they'll realise what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:I'll give it a go, but I'm hearing a lot about CBD oil and a lot of the positives, but it sounds like it's the pharmaceutical companies that are probably trying to dampen that down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're not going to tell you how good it is, because they haven't got a licence for it, have they? They haven't got a sole licence. They're not going to tell you how good mushrooms are as well, because I don't want you to go out and appeal them, pick them yourself and keep yourself healthy, do they? They want you to take their drugs? Yeah, who knows?
Speaker 1:so, yeah, they're my three things, matey well, they are three fantastic things and, uh, you know what a wonderful journey you've taken us on today. I hope anyone that's listening to this sort of listens what john said. And if there's any way you think you can help, you can just share. You know, talk about mnd. If there's anyone you know you can help sponsor an event, you can come in on board with the pilgrim bandits, give some money, anything. Yeah, let's just get the word out there and let's try and find a cure yeah, pilgrim bandits all the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm more than happy. The awareness is the big thing, the campaign. But if anyone wants to donate money, donate it to pilgrim bandits and we and we know that we love, they're close to our heart. They're an amazing charity. They have helped me unto all in every way. They've supplied me the oxygen chamber. That's a 20 odd grand oxygen chamber. You know, these boys and girls really are there to help us. So, yeah, let's plug them we'll do.
Speaker 1:It's great for the PB charity and, uh, obviously they're there to help you and and and others. You know it's yeah we're one big family.
Speaker 2:That's right, we are moving, we are.
Speaker 1:Well, brilliant, thanks for coming on Another man's shoes.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, mate Journey. My pleasure, yeah, take care.
Speaker 1:Well, that was John Char on our episode of Another Man's Shoes and I think everyone will agree that he's just given a fantastic recount of his life to date and probably not many people would listen to that he weren't touched in some way. John has obviously been hit hard in both the fire service and his family life and Motoneurone certainly hasn't helped at all. But he is really sort of taking the fight to Motor Neurone and some of the things that he said. He's trying all of the different methods, be it traditional or non-traditional, or medication and alternative therapies, to try and beat this horrible disease. So I think everyone that's out there, if anyone is able to give him any support in any way, then please do so.
Speaker 1:The best way of contacting or being able to donate to the challenge is to go to pilgrimbanditsorg and via there you can make a donation and make contact. So thank you, john, for coming on the show. For everyone else that's been listening, please continue to follow and subscribe to our channel. Leave feedback in the usual way. That's us for now. See you soon.