Clarke and Carrie Carlisle

'The brainiest man in football' takes us from elite sport to addiction, attempts to take his own life and his new role as Chair of MIND.

https://www.mind.org.uk/

https://www.jeremy-lee.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-lee-58810199/?originalSubdomain=uk 

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Transcript

Jeremy Lee 0:14

As the piano fades, I am joined on the metaphorical just between us sofa by Clark and Carrie Carlyle. Clark, ex-footballer, ex-players union leader, my words, and recently appointed chair of the mental health charity Mind. How are you both? Are you enjoying a new job, Clark?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yeah, well, to go in order, I'm incredibly well, thank you today, Jeremy. How about you, Matt?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Very good, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

This new role is exciting. It's gargantuum. I think you'll have experienced this before, Jeremy, where you think you know something about a place or an organization, and then as soon as you actually get behind the front door and you understand the breadth and depth of the scope of work and how far it reaches. It's a behemoth of an organization. So getting my feet under the table is no mean feet.

Jeremy Lee 1:09

Can we go back briefly to the beginning? You played professional football for 17 years for I've got a little list in front of me, but I've probably left one or two out: Blackpool, QPR, Leeds, Burnley, Watford, I think a short spell at Luton. I probably have forgotten others. 500 appearances and three England under 21 caps, which begs a question for me now. Because I should explain to our dear listener that, well, it's obvious that a podcast is recorded at a moment in time. And this moment in time is as England have just got through the group stage and they're preparing for the first knockout game against Democratic Republic of Congo. So the moment in time thing is quite difficult because by the time this goes out, we will have won or lost. So two questions, okay. This maybe requires acting. Two variations of the same question. And just to warn you, I very much doubt whether we'll edit out the other one. First question. How far do you think we're gonna go in the World Cup?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Oh, okay. Now Carrie's the one with a couple of masters in uh musical theatre and jamas dramas. Oh, you're gonna have to coach me on this one, baby. What's Homer's space? That one. That one, okay. How far do I think we're gonna go? I would expect England to get to the semi-finals, and that is an expectation. I would expect them to do that. I want them to win. Looking at the quality of the nations, I would expect France to win. So, how far do I think we can go? Semi-finals would be a good showing. How far do I want us to go? I want us to win it. Okay, so here comes the other question.

Jeremy Lee 3:09

So, Clark, what went wrong?

SPEAKER_01 3:13

If something does go wrong, the likelihood is that the players are stilted by pressure and fear. From what I've seen of England in the group stages, especially matches two and three, the players played not wanting to do something wrong, as opposed to trying to go and do something right.

Jeremy Lee 3:39

We are gonna move on, although we're going to talk about well, I suppose as though we're on this, we're gonna talk about the dark side because you've been there. You've been through an incredible amount of personal challenges, and that includes addiction to gambling and drink, and it includes serious depression. So I guess my question, which I know you'd have been asked a hundred times before, is you were in an amazing position. You were living your dream and you were bloody good at it. So how did addiction grab hold of you? This person of such enormous strength suddenly developed addictions. How did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Living in that space as I did, where it was what you said and thought, Jeremy, that told me whether I was good enough in that moment or in that day, I took it to the extreme where your thoughts actually affected my belief of my worth as a human. Not in my professional qualities, as a human. So if I had a bad day's training and the coach said, Oh, you know, Clark, that I was shy, blah, blah, blah, you need to do better. When I left training, I was a bad person. I didn't have a bad day's work, I was a bad human, and then I that changed the way I interacted with people around me, whether I had a smile on my face, what I contributed at home. And as you can imagine, that led to over and above the nature of the industry, just huge highs and lows on a daily basis, in the midst of a consistent search for value for worth. And when you can't get that, and my mind was running at 100 miles an hour, I needed to silence it or distract myself, and that's why you know we talk about addiction. I I hate the word addict, and I'll never use it about myself. You've got a fantastic vocabulary, and you your etymology, knowledge, and understanding will be huge. You know, an addict came from Roman times where you were addicted to your master, where the state imposed that you are a slave to this person. Well, I'm not a slave to anyone or anything, but I did utilize some behaviors and actions in a way that was very destructive because I wasn't in control of the way that I was processing my emotions. And that made me go to alcohol, which I went to because there was a point in alcohol where I didn't care what people thought. That's what I needed. I went to gambling because it was a huge distraction. I had this really logical process in mind and getting into slot machines that took my attention and I'm calculating all these things, it was a distraction. I got into computer games, which took me into a different space. It was a distraction. So it was my maladaptive way of getting away from what was in here. But over and above that, in some people, and especially in elite athletes, elite workers, elite performers, there's an element of obsession and myopic thinking and focus to achieve your goal at any cost to the detriment of anything else, it's fundamentally necessary to become an elite athlete. You have to singularly focus on this goal and make sure you apply everything in order to make it come true. And if you're not taught that that's only the approach within the sport or within that vocation, and you start to apply this trait to wider life, to relationships, to interactions and behaviors, it becomes very destructive. And that's what fed into a lot of my behaviors, you know, as almost obsessive, compulsive, myopic, kind of all or nothing type scenarios that I would put myself in.

Jeremy Lee 7:46

Can we go back to football, particularly? Because I remember you using a description of life as a footballer in a particular way that has stayed with me for however many years since I heard you say it. Broadly speaking, this is this is what you said. The problem is that both football fans and the football club believe they own you. Tell us a bit more about that because it's a wonderfully crisp way of putting it. And I guess there is a parallel with big companies, but not with the fans' element. They invest most of their spare cash in following and watching football and buying the strips and all of that. So they bloody well own you, as does the club, partly because of the amounts of money involved. Is there a way through that? Or we are where we are and we just have to get used to it.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

There is a way through it, and it's via a huge cultural shift, which is happening just because of the way that football, fandom, and you know, the match day experience is opening up to a more family-oriented environment. I totally agree with myself, Jeremy. You know, football clubs do own you, you're an asset to them. And if you're not performing and you're you're not doing your job, they will offload you as quickly as they bought you. You're right, that could be the same for any organization, you know. You're an employer-employee scenario, that there is that hierarchical power. But where it comes to the illusion of ownership of supporters, this is totally different to any other workforce. If I go into my local supermarket and that the shelves aren't stacked properly, and then the next day at dinner in a restaurant, I see the person who stacks shelves in the supermarket. I don't say, Hey you, how dare you come here all laughing and joking? Those shelves were horrendous yesterday. You don't even care. Whereas that happens every day in football up and down the country. There's no separation from your work life and your personal life. And then added on to that is that I pay your wages, I'm allowed to say what I want to say. We all pay each other's wages. Every time I buy a stamp, I pay the poster's wages. Shopping in the supermarket, we pay their wages, but there's no illusion within me that I own the non-working time of that person in that place. Once they leave work, obviously I'll address them in their work capacity and work time, but I wouldn't confront them anywhere else in the world, and that's the dynamic. It's not just a contrast to a wider work environment, it's it's in contrast to other sports. Rugby fans buy shirts and turn up to matches, as does every other sport, but you don't get that level of whole life intrusion that you get with football, and I think it's because football's tangible to everyone. Everybody's kicked a football at some point in their life, felt that they did it well or they scored a great goal. There's a perception that to be a footballer you're lucky. There's no luck in your efforts culminating in you being part of the 0.001% of society in that industry. If you cross-referred that to any other industry, you are probably talking about people who are making considerably more money than professional footballers are, with considerably less intrusion into their whole lives.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

And it was a disaster for you. That scenario was just part of a perfect storm that made you so unwell. But psychologists can tell you watch to do for 90 minutes and follow rules, and every single athlete is so, especially footballers, so good at following rules. But then you get out in the world where the society's rules were invisible. Your value is still what you did on that pitch 90 minutes ago. That was what was such a psychological disaster for you. That was the absolute tipping point. You cannot say to someone, you're a good person, it's fine, to have somebody come and go, Oh, you're rubbish. They aren't saying to you, Clark, you're a terrible person. They're just saying, Clark, why didn't you stop that goal? Clark's brain is always telling him kill yourself. For a long time, Clark's brain would always offer him the suggestion for any scenario, kill yourself. And it was a secret for a long time, and it was a secret that needed killed in. I don't understand how you ended up in one piece through it because imagine that. Imagine your brain always going, Oh Clark, you must a goal, kill yourself. I don't know how you got through it, to be honest. Like, how are you still here?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

It is miraculous, but and I suppose it we, you know, we need to illuminate the the listeners that yeah, suicide attempts form a significant part of my adverse mental health once in 2001, yeah, for further times of between 2014 and 17. And what context, my football in life is without Carrie's pre-Carrie. Carrie and I, we met in 2016.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Oh, well done.

Jeremy Lee 13:06

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

I think the important thing for everyone to hear as we go into this part of the conversation is that this incredible human, my wife, has seen me right from the edge of the precipice of life, and then turn my head around, quite it majorly impart it to her presence, and then rebuild myself and learn and grow from there. And that that insight, I think, people need to hear, baby, not only what it looked like for me, but what that was like for you and how it impacted your life.

Jeremy Lee 13:40

And you said this happened several times where you were seriously thinking that the only answer was to end your life, the only way to achieve peace was to end your life.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

My first attempt on my own life was in 2001, where I had a career threatening, according to the surgeon career ending injury when I'd just broken into the England under 21s. And in that moment, as a young man, where football was my sole identity and the reason for anything positive in my life, I believed that without football I was nothing, and so I did attempt to take my own life. Now, having survived, and then that being pushed under the carpet, and me told not to do that again and don't tell anyone about it, it became my own naughty, dirty little secret. So that there's a lot of shame that comes with that, but here's what is often unacknowledged in this conversation once you've attempted to take your own life, it's no longer unthinkable, it's now part of the parameters of my experience. So rather than the notion being out there and unattached to any of my synapses, is now an option for me because I've done it once and I survived it, you know, in that mindset where the consequences aren't the full fruition of consequences, what does it serve to do? Well, it it it serves to me that it's not as catastrophic as when it was unattempted, and the stats show that especially with men, if they've attempted their own life once, they're far more likely to attempt again, and subsequent attempts will be more physically brutal and violent than the last one. So, you know, that's something to be conscious of. What Carrie's talking about there that was 2001, we moved to 2014 when I retired from football, where my whole world and life and mind was blown apart. But in that interim period, I experienced recurrent depression or depression for that entire period, which was only punctuated with nominal periods of respite where I was distracted or achieving, or there was something that was giving me that sense of worth that wasn't there when I was away from people. And when you descending to such a huge extent, and you don't share any of these things in here, which I never did, I was always closed off because I had that kind of classic perception of what it was to be a man about dealing with your business, sorting your solutions, you know, everything's physicality, strength, no emotion. When I get to 2014, my internal monologue or dialogue is absolutely brutal. It's self-flagellating, it's demeaning, it's berating, it sets me lower than any other person on the entire world. So in moments, they're not even of challenge, they're just in slight moments, the notion to kill myself came up as an option as immediately as if I missed a train and be like, oh, should I kill myself? Or maybe wait for the next train. You know, it's in the parameters of options. If you're not honest about that, you're not sharing that, if you if you haven't done any work to understand your thinking, not just why you're thinking, but how and the and the evaluation of that and how you respond to scenarios, then yes, Jeremy, categorically and repeatedly in those three years, to kill myself was one of the primary options in most circumstances. Yeah.

Jeremy Lee 17:41

Have you uh got that uh completely out of your system now?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

What a brilliant way of phrasing it. Is it out of my system? Like my youthful exuberance, is it?

Jeremy Lee 17:54

I'm not making light of it, but I guess I'm trying to be blunt in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

It's not about it being out of my system, it's about first of all acknowledging that it was happening, that it was a thing, and then B understanding and exploring why it was happening, which is why I went through two years of intense therapy, and then because of the way that my brain works, I needed to know physiologically and psychologically why it was happening rather than just experientially. So I got my psychology degree and I did counseling qualifications, and with all of that, I then understood that not only does it not have to be in my system, I can retrain my brain, neuroplasticity, to operate in a very different way. This human you you speak to today, Jeremy, I am a different human to who you first met all those years ago. The way that I hear information, the way that my brain processes it, the personal reflections, my responses to scenarios, they're inordinately different to the person who you first met. And that means that the options that I put through my brain, the counsel that I take on it in challenges, it's systemically different. And in answer to your question, it is out of my system. I know that it exists. I also know that it would take an act of self-sabotage and ignorance, not only on by myself, but by all of my counsel and people around me, to ignore what is happening and and how I'm presenting and how I'm responding for an extended period of time for months and years for me to get anywhere near there again.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

I think really you'd have to work pretty hard to get that poorly again. I think society sees what what we've seen anyway is that mental health and it's all mysterious and it's all invisible. It's always, for some reason, always invisible, even though it's not. Or you've you've got to be really vigilant and you've got to fight against this and that, and actually, and he was good at that when it didn't work. Whereas actually he has retrained his brain and his responses. There's a little bit we're left out that I'll come to in a minute there that I think is quite important. But on the whole, you'd have to work really, really hard to undo everything and to take his mind in a totally different you'd have to work as hard as you worked to get well to get ill again. I think the bit that you didn't include, which is good, I think, actually, is every step of the way, Clark realized who was changing. Change or die, change or die. We chose change. He did well, he did try die, he did try die a lot, and then was like, tell you what, I'll give change and a go. That was good news, wasn't it? I was glad to hear it, very glad to hear it in a psych hospital. He was like, I've decided to change, we'll give it a go. I'm not promising anything off it, we'll see if it works. I was like, You crack on that. And then he every step of the way, I knew that his first session he'd gone to at the counselling, and he was like, Well, I'm gonna change. I was like, I know, because it's change or die club. He was like, but what if I learn who I am in therapy? And I was like, I think that's the point, Clark. He went, What if who I am is a dick? And he was like, That's all right. I'd rather that you were. Clark was aiming to be the most popular, well thought of man in the mug. Let's just talk about him really nicely after he's died. Everything he worked for, everything he campaigned for to help different people, he would have remembered wonderfully. Of course, he would talk about people so well after they died. And I was like, How about you just be flawed and human and alive? Let's just try that one. So we tried being flawed and human and alive. And every time Clark changed, he would check, is it you know, like uh, you know, any like kids do, like pets do, is this okay? I've crossed this boundaries, is this okay? Yes, that's okay, Clark. And then people call it relapse or regress or whatever. Oh, well, I'll try and behave in Old way. Well, do you all still love me now? Yeah, Pop, we still love you. Like it this is wellness for you, not wellness for us. You can't so there was there was a great deal of that. There was a great deal of we're still gonna love whoever it turns out you are at the end. And that was a that was an unsafe space for you for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Did you forget about that bit?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

No, I didn't forget about it. It was a very unsafe space for me to be doing things that I thought were just for me, and to say things that I thought were all about me without factoring in what the other person is gonna think of me. It was a search for authenticity, a search for understanding, because I didn't know who I was, Journey.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

37.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

I had no identity, so many things fed into that, you know, the people pleasing, the maths for for everyone. I mean, just the very fact that you grow up as a mixed-race kid in the middle of Preston, and through the course of my life from birth, where we self-identified as half-caste, that makes people bristle now. But then we're told like every three or four years that I'm not allowed to call myself that anymore. No, no, you're not half-cast, you're coloured, no, you're not coloured, you're mixed race, no, you're not mixed race, you're mixed heritage, no, you're not mixed heritage, you're black, no, you're not black, you're a person of colour. I'm like, who's making these decisions about you know what my identity is and what I can call myself? And it was me and my siblings. So that inability to know who I was in tandem with trying to be all things to all people, to just be me was so uncomfortable. And I only made the progress that I did at the pace that I did because my wife and my wider family they evidenced unconditional love to me.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Even though he is a dick, as it turns out. Turns out, after all the therapy, he was actually it's fine. We still love him.

Jeremy Lee 23:57

I feel duly embarrassed for using that ridiculously simplistic phrase.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

No, this is the crux of it though. We have to use language that's authentic to us, like you mimicking Clark's language or me mimicking yours, that won't get us anywhere. That keeps that chasm, doesn't it, of misunderstanding? And I think that you owning your language and us owning ours, there's nothing wrong with that. People are so scared to ask because they're scared to get it wrong. And I think if we are here for anything and the way that we share our story, it's that, isn't it? Don't be scared about saying the wrong thing. Because if your intention is good and your motivation is good, there is no offence to be heard. That's how I feel anyway.

Jeremy Lee 24:42

Wholeheartedly agree.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

So Jeremy, it's true.

Jeremy Lee 24:45

It it is interesting though, isn't it? How so much of the conversation involves being really careful with language, even with family, even with close friends.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

I don't see even with Jeremy, I would say especially. Questions that we get asked the most is you'll have heard this loads of times. Talk to someone that you love, talk to someone that you trust, or just go and tell your mate. And when I do not tell your mate, why didn't Clark tell me when he was suicidal? Because I was six months pregnant and I really didn't want to hear it, and I didn't know what to do. Talk to a professional, delegate that stuff, don't bring it to the people that need you to be well the most, you know.

Jeremy Lee 25:26

I think this takes us neatly to your new role.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

So going in at mind as chair, over and above the standard of fiduciary duties of a chair in the whole governance aspects. What I believe I can bring to this role is that authenticity. You know, the thing about mind is that we're supposed to be and we are delivering services to all of our communities. And when someone is helping and supporting you, as a human, you want them to be able to understand you, you want them to reflect you, you want them to know what it's like to be where you are, because then you receive things without it seeming like it's patronizing or condescending. So I believe that as chair, I can cut through a lot of that noise because that whole mental health phrase nothing about us without us. I am us. I've been there, I've been psychiatric hospital multiple times with my family at their wits' end on the edge. I've been to the edge of the precipice of life, and most importantly, I've come back from there and I've come back to a state of wellness that's beyond whatever I was before. So hopefully I can not just only give hope to people but exemplify to them, like show them that it doesn't have to be this way, and it can actually be better than you've ever had it.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Eight years ago, Clark was at crisis. Clark was literally in crisis. He was in psychiatric care, and there was a line. They left a box blank for him. Section was here, they didn't take that box, voluntary was here, they put a line in the middle, and they said, We're not sure yet. If he tries to leave, we're having him sectioned eight years ago. He has gone from being almost sectioned, but staying voluntarily, to being the chair of mind. And even if he hadn't been the chair of Active Mind, he was still well enough to go for it. He was still well enough to get through that door and say, This is what I've done with eight years. That takes graft on a level of a dedication to overhaul who you are and what you stand for and faith, just a huge amount of faith in a system to support him, the NHS, the people around him, graft faith, hope, belief, but mainly graft to be the chair of mind. Eight years ago, he wasn't allowed to eat with an icon four. Eight years ago, he wasn't allowed to sleep unsupervised. Eight years ago, this man was not allowed shoelaces. And I think that if nothing that Clark will say, which is a shame because he's really good at speaking, but nothing that he can say is as powerful as that testament. Nothing.

Jeremy Lee 28:13

It occurs to me that uh the mental health uh debate, which is probably too kind a word to give it, it's very political. As I see it, the country divides into two camps, except for that probably majority of people who just don't engage in anything. So those who engage divide into two camps. And broadly speaking, uh the right, if we can still use that term, can be quite dismissive about uh things like anxiety, particularly low-level anxiety. Almost to the point where they're heading towards a sort of open philosophy of survival of the fittest. But the left, as I see it, particularly sort of the left-wing establishment, I don't mean labour benches, I mean professionals, I mean as it were, the the industry of mental health seems to be fostering something like a culture of victimhood. I might very well be provocative in putting it like that. I'm probably a bit too extremist. So maybe we haven't got to both points yet, but it occurs to me that we're heading in those unhelpful, conflicting directions. My point about victimhood, which isn't, in my view, talked about as much as it should be, is that I can see people reaching for the label of victim when it's not necessarily gonna help them. I'm not talking about people who are going through an intense and awful episode or episodes. I'm talking about the really, really, really, really, really low-level stuff. And I'll personalize it if you like. I would have been capable as a child because I spent a ridiculous proportion of my time conjuring up excuses for not doing things. I would have been capable today of expanding that list of excuses to include I'm depressed. Now I know that I'm deliberately actually going into sort of sensitive territory here because the last thing I want to do is to gloss over or ignore victims, but I also don't want to encourage people to reach for that label unless it's true. And it occurs to me that we need people who are trained as well as full of empathy to get to somewhere in the middle where we take all degrees of mental ill health seriously, but we don't encourage a feeling of victimhood because as I see it, if you consider yourself a victim, you're giving yourself a few more steps to walk before you find what the right refers to as resilience, or the left does as well. So on the other hand, the notion of we had stress, you know, 50 years ago, we had no money, we didn't have this or that, we couldn't go on foreign holidays, we didn't complain, we just did the job, strikes me as equally misguided an observation as ever. I think the answer is in the middle, but I don't know how you and I don't know how those who work in mental health can, to use another very cold word, can prioritize and reach people who need help while at the same time encouraging those who really don't need it, they just need support and a bit more self-belief to go it alone.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

My take on what you were talking about that uh the low level of the victimhood, right through to those who are more fundamentally need it. We're in an age where levels of awareness are greater than they've ever been, and with that awareness comes uh an expectation of what should and shouldn't be addressed, and that's kind of providing a generational divide. Now becoming aware and becoming emotionally literate and understanding of what is stress and now that builds from anxiety and how that can may, you know, may go to depression or the rest of it, knowing that is one thing, identifying aspects of it within yourself is another thing, but then having the agency to intercede and manage at various points is another thing entirely. And my belief in this is that with all of our education and work around emotional literacy, we have to ram home to people that emotions are transient and low mood and low feeling and periods of stress, they're finite, they come and go. So being able to assess and analyse over a period of time as opposed to in the moment will give people a lot of freedom from anchoring into I am depressed or I am an anxious person, as opposed to I've experienced it in this moment or over this short period of time. And I think that will change if you have that in tandem with people understanding what they can do to address something, as opposed to having to medicate and you know clinicize their approach, that will make a huge difference. Second of all, the support that comes with a label, with a diagnosis. This has a huge impact because it depends on the motivations of the individual. Because of the way that support comes now, and especially with you know reasonable adjustments at work or whether it's a welfare state, if an individual knows that with a diagnosis they are now entitled to B C and D, then there will be an element who will look to take advantage of that, and they might well up talk or aim for a diagnosis as early as possible because they will get wider support. Now, the the flip side is that that support might help them get well, but the drive to get the diagnosis is for the support as opposed to understanding self. And this feeds into what is my last point is that we're in an age and a narrative right now where employee support and well-being and welfare it is growing and growing and growing, and it's huge, but the dynamic of it, seemingly, for a long period of time, has been to make the workplace as soft and risk-free as possible, so that you know anybody can work in it. When that's not how it should be, that the focus should be to upskill and support the individual so that they are as resilient and well as possible to manage all of the challenges within a given workplace. So the focus on that approach is wrong because as much as we are about equality and people having opportunity, there are some workplaces where certain environments, actions, hours, etc., interactions, they are unavoidable. They must happen. There are some people who are not cut out to work in some workplaces, and I could put myself in any number of them, and that's not the fault of the industry, it's just because it's not right for me. So it's not about taking workplaces down and taking away all stress and potential triggers to a person, it's about making the individual so that they've got the tools to manage the challenge of the workplace, and then they have the understanding how to decompress and what to do to counter the impact of the workplace when they're away from it.

Jeremy Lee 36:33

I couldn't agree with you more. I was a bit nervous bringing up the kind of the left-right arguments, but I'm actually quite pleased I did because it seems to me the conversation has gravitated towards a sensible, practical, still acutely sympathetic, but there is hope that the pendulum will come to rest in the right place.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

There's just hopeful stop. Always, always, always.

Jeremy Lee 37:01

Quick question because you referred to gambling a little while ago. I was watching one of the England games in the Dog and Partridge with Sydney. Um, we got talking to three 19, 20-year-olds who were brilliant. I mean, in every respect, they were utterly inspiring is the wrong word. They just filled me with optimism. But they were looking at their phones the whole time because they'd put on a bet. And for what it's worth, the bet was that both Kane and Modrich, I think, forgive me if I got the pronunciation wrong, would have two attempts at goal, and that each put on a fibre and would win 200 pounds each. And you have to think, well, okay, arguably the best players, it's their job to go for goal. Two attempts on target doesn't sound very much. What's not to like? When Modrich got substituted and they quickly worked out that actually whoever came on in his place didn't count, and their bet was gone, they took it in good humor because they were really bright kids. But they still started looking around in this app at other bets that were being offered to them. And who is not going to be enticed? Who is not going to be interested at what is in fact a 20, 50, 100 to 1 bet that seems really quite possible. I'm not a free market person, brackets anymore. I'm very, very, very much pro-sensible regulation. But these things shouldn't be allowed, should they? It's nothing to do with age. They shouldn't be allowed to prey on people. Because the point is that the distinction between that and going into a betting shop is crystal clear. We were sitting at a table, a big atmosphere, certain amount of drink flowing, but not that much at those prices. It takes no effort whatsoever to say let's double our quids. It shouldn't be possible.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

You're 100% right. Gambling for the majority of my experience in earlier days at least, it was geographically situated, which meant time constraints, which meant physical constraints, having to get there and backfit it in around work day. Now, the world's casinos are right here, and the word you use there to prey on, it's a predatory industry. A lot of our focus is on the sports betting because it's omnipresent, it is everywhere, you know, Ray Winston, Danny Dyer, whoever it is, everyone is in there every second of not just sporting fixtures, but a lot of wider coverage of things totally unrelated. And to highlight how predatory it is, because the conversation and the debate has been around sports betting for you know the last five, six, seven, eight years, all the operators have done is gone, okay, you discussed that. We're just going to focus on the other 50% of the population, developed their bingo and social websites and started to promote, oh, it's a social engagement community, come and chat with other women. And even more horrific was that there were two operators who had an ad campaign that specifically targeted new young stay-at-home mums. Now, if that's not predatory, I don't know what is. And so while we're all talking about sports betting and how you know endemic it is, the biggest growth sector in gambling is women aged between 28 and 37. And that's because they've been targeted by the social side, the bingo ones, funneled through to instant wins and then the slot machines, which are the most addictive engagement on the apps and designedly so. And then the second one is our young people. So we're talking age 16 to 20 because they're just venturing off into life, and all the behaviors they're evolving, Jeremy. They really are. You know, people aren't gambling for that life-changing win anymore. People are gambling, like betting five, ten pounds to win £100, so they can pay the bills at the end of the week or month, and that makes it rather than just a one-off and speculative, it's almost a need basis. And the most dangerous point with gambling is where it goes from it'd be nice to win, where it sounds like those young men were, where all of a sudden, now I need to win. And that's where this dynamic that you were talking about, where one bet loses, but it follows up with maybe this, maybe this, go for this, look for this. Or if you've stopped gambling because you've spent the money that you wanted, and then immediately the next day you're getting, oh, come and have 10 free spins, come and have 100 free spins, where they're trying to lure you back into the device so they can get you into the algorithm. That has to be regulated in some way. And until it does, it's not just the person who is like me who might gamble to a dysfunctional and harm level. It's not just me who's impacted. The affected others around people who are experiencing gambling harms. It's huge, it's not just the partners and the children who might go through financial coercion, domestic abuse, violence against women and girls, children in poverty. You've also got the colleagues who you're maybe borrowing money from, or you've been up until seven in the morning gambling, trying to recoup your losses, and then you're trying to go on site and operate heavy machinery. It factors into presenteism in the workplace more than absenteeism, and that's before we even get to reputational and financial risk. So this is an issue for us as society now. The proliferation and presence of gambling, the way it's been shown to our young people by influencers and they get into futures, forecast markets, bitcoins. It's been introduced in their computer games, in Roblox for kids as young as five, six, seven, these gambling style behaviors, and then influencers funnel them to usually unregulated markets when they get into social media. So you're right, Jeremy. It's a rendition.

Jeremy Lee 43:37

We have to put a stop to it. I've got one last question, talking about putting a stop to things. This is a yes-no question. Still on a football theme. Last one, listener. Hydration breaks.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Good thing or ghastly Americanization of the beautiful game. Good thing, I know you said yes, no. Good thing when the temperature is 33, 4, 5 plus degrees, and you want these guys to perform at their optimum. Bad thing when you're in a close stadium with air conditioning or it's raining and it's 20 degrees. But the balance is if you do it in one game, you've got to do it in all of them. Because otherwise, some teams will be getting an unfair advantage of a break mid-half. Now, what is done with that break is very, very different, and that's why we watch our football on the BBC.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

That was not a yes no answer.

Jeremy Lee 44:32

I was just gonna point out that we appear to have a different definition of a yes no. Thank you both so much. It's been illuminating. I wish you both a lovely day. I hope to see you soon. Very best of luck with mind and all your other stuff. And the thought of you, Clark, going out and talking to any odd audience, knowing that that audience, whether corporate or otherwise, that audience is gonna contain people whose eyes will be opened by what you have to say. But you know what? I don't think my kind of agenting added a huge amount to the sum of human happiness. But when you know that those kind of conversations will follow, you getting up on your feet and giving a speech, God, that makes me feel good. It really does. Thank you both so much and see you soon. Q music. God bless, Jeremy. Thank you.