Your Mind Matters With Dr Maria Kempinska – Herculean Trials Of David Wimble

There's always going to be another mountain. I'm always going to want to make it move. It's always going to be an uphill battle. Sometimes I'm going to have to lose. The struggles I'm facing, the chances I'm taking, sometimes might knock me down, but I'm not breaking. I've just got to keep on going. It's the climb. These are the lyrics from the song The Climb by Miley Cyrus. Which reminds us that no matter how successful or content people appear, their internal and external struggles can still be momentous. There's always going to be another challenge. There's always going to be another hurdle. How do we reconcile this philosophy if we don't know what this— that this is the path of life? The higher you reach, the more obstacles you can face and more challenges. This is why psychologically we need myths, like the myth of Sisyphus, who rolled the boulder up the mountain and then it rolled down every day. In the myth, the legendary king of Corinth, Sisyphus, a figure in Homer's Iliad, received the eternal punishment for trying to cheat death and was condemned eternally to repeatedly roll a heavy boulder up a hill only to have it rolled down again. This he had to do every single day. Today we have diluted this metaphoric experience and called it the treadmill, which makes life appear easier. But when we look at the myth of Hercules, who was given 10 trials and later 2 more, this became the 12 Trials of Hercules, where he had to overcome and kill the the Nemean lion who was terrorizing the hills of Nemea, and take its skin back as proof. That was the first trial, to a trial which makes everybody shudder, including myself, for King Aegis, who had a stable with 1,000 cattle, and Hercules offered to clean it in one day, and in return to receive one-tenth of the cattle. The king agreed under the impression that Hercules would not be able to fulfill the task. But since this was one of Hercules' last tasks, and by now he had learned to use his wit and clever ingenuity, he bore openings in the side of the stables and rerouted the two main rivers close by to rush through the stables and flush out the cattle waste. Very clever. The king, however, refused to pay, so Hercules took it to the judge, who awarded him the 100 cattle but this was not counted. Many people have experienced this type of unfair disappointment in life. After that, Hercules was given 2 more trials to complete. At this point that a number of people fall into a deep depression and struggle to climb out, but in the case of Hercules, he did climb out. But there's a myth full of promise which is that of the Phoenix. Who builds itself a nest, sets itself on fire, and rises from the ashes. This is the principle of repair and renewal, which is one of the basic tenets for all my therapy sessions. Both Freud and Jung, the founders of psychotherapy, had deep respect for storytelling and also for the spiritual notion of the soul. Even Freud, who was known for his lack of belief in religion and spirituality, later in life said that psychoanalysis is a part of psychology which is dedicated to the science of the soul, and he continued by stating that his life's work had been devoted to the understanding as fully as possible to the world of man's soul. Viktor E. Frankl wrote his book Man's Search for Meaning when he survived Auschwitz whilst his family, including his pregnant wife, died. He created a theory called logotherapy, which suggests that finding meaning and purpose in life is the key to personal happiness and well-being. Frankl quoted, "It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to these questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence." The goal of his guide was to provide a guide through for thorough investigation and comprehension, as well as self-investigation and introspection. Can myths be a part of that reflection and put life into perspective or make our anxiety a little easier to cope with? Marie-Louise von Franz, an analyst who studied under Jung and was one of Jung's devotees, believed that storytelling helped us recognize and consider the tension of opposites which is part of life. We can observe behavior which is both divine and evil, love and hate, faithfulness and betrayal, fantasy and reality, cruelty and kindness. I am Dr. Maria Kempinska, a psychotherapist and entrepreneur, and this is Your Mind Matters. In my psychotherapeutic work, I'm honored to hear a number of tragic, disturbing, and inspiring stories. Today I'm delighted that my guest David Wimble, who has experienced his own trials, will tell his story of failure and success, gain and loss, health and illness, and how he overcame all of these opposites and, like the phoenix, is rising. Welcome, David, and can you begin by telling us about your background? Hello, Maria. First of all, thank you for inviting me on. My background is basically I'm, I'm just a normal person. But somebody who's always dared to dream big and has worked for myself for pretty much all my adult life. I have done the day job, but I've always aspired to be my own boss and to try and succeed. So what got you into being an entrepreneur? Where did that ability come from? That drive? I don't know. I guess it's— there's two major things, I think. Firstly, this only came out years later. I've known all my life that I was adopted. And I think somewhere deep down there was a deep-seated feeling that, you know, I wasn't ever wanted, so I was given away. So there was this inner, inner belief that I had to prove to myself and to other people that I was worthy. Um, but I, I was adopted by the most brilliant parents who have been just giving me everything. We don't come from a wealthy background or anything like that. They've just, uh, always sort of— my mother in particular has sort of said, you know, you can achieve anything you want, you just got to go and get it. And the other thing was that I didn't realize until I was in my 30s that I was severely dyslexic. Um, at school, you know, back in the '70s, it was just called stupid. Um, it was only when my eldest daughter was diagnosed as being dyslexic that, um, I took a test and was told that I was. And that made things so much easier for me because there was a reason for why I struggle to read. And, um, and yet for a lot of dyslexic people, uh, their brains work in a different way because they have to. You, um, if you're trying to write something down and you can't think how to spell a word, you write around the word. So my brain has always been looking at alternative ways of doing things, and I, I got inspiration from looking at other people who made huge successes in their lives some who came from absolutely nothing. And I just thought, well, if they can do it, why can't I? So that's basically why I'm here and doing what I'm doing. So, you know, when we grow up in life, obviously our parents are primary, you know, teachers. Um, coming back— we'll come back to your adoption because that also leaves a psychological space, let's say, which has to be filled between one parent and another. But also, what did your parents do? What were the skills that your parents gave you? Well, it's funny because my father was, uh, the man from the Prudential. He was an insurance man, had a very stable, very stable job. He came— our family were farmers, and my father was the first of the generation of Wimbles who, who didn't want to run the farm, as it were. So he, he went into a very stable job. And at school you know, it was drummed into us that you need to get a job for life. You know, you either became a bank manager or, you know, these kind of jobs. I never wanted to do that. Um, and we had some family friends who— their son, who was a year older than me, went to what was then called the Central Electricity Generating Board, the power station, and did an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer. And it was drummed into me, this is what you need to do. And so I, I applied for an apprenticeship, and I don't know whether it's because I was quite good at talking, I didn't get a mechanical engineer's apprenticeship. I got, um, I got electric— well, it's an electrical engineer's position. Um, so instead of being a fitter, I was going to be an engineer. My first question was, uh, what's the difference? And they said, you know, back in the early '80s, well, about £10,000 a year. So I was like, yep, that'll do. But I went away from home age 16, um, every Monday every morning I'd get the 6:20 train up to London to Cockfosters, where the training establishment was. And I hated it. I absolutely hated it. I was more than capable of doing the work. But around about the same time, my school teacher, um, used to do a big mobile disco. It was a huge mobile disco. He used to do all the Pontins and Butlin sites, and I used to help him. And I think my dream was always that I wanted to be a DJ. And, um, when I finally one day, you know, having just about finished my apprenticeship, I was on my way to Dungey's Power Station one night and I turned the car around. I was doing a night shift and turned up at home and my father said, you know, what are you doing home? I said, I've just resigned. He says, Tom, what? So I've just resigned, I don't want to do it. He said, what are you going to do? Bear in mind that this is, you know, 40-odd years ago. I was then earning probably the equivalent of £50,000 a year. And he sort of said, you know, you worked hard all this time to get your apprenticeship and now you've just thrown it all away. And, um, we didn't speak properly for about 18 months because I, I just, you know, it's like the old joke, you know, I'm not, I'm not cross, I'm disappointed. And all I ever wanted was for my dad to be proud of me. And, um, long story short, 1988, I won the Carlsberg Personality DJ of the Year Award. Uh, actually, I beat Chris Evans, who came second at the time. Uh, my dad didn't even turn up to the awards ceremony, which was at the Hippodrome as it was then in Leicester Square. But the funny thing was, and I know from a psychiatrist's point of view you would have a field day with this, but my grandfather was always the one that said, believe in yourself. Um, he passed away around about the same time that I resigned But he was the one that, as I was visiting him in hospital nearly every day for a year, he was the one who said, look, your father didn't do what I wanted, and I never made him, you know, become a farmer. You know, you've got to do what you want to do. And on the night that I won the award, I was pretty, you know, cocksure myself. I was like, you know, I knew I'd won it at that point as well. But as I went up to accept it on the stage, And I know this was purely in my mind, obviously, but I remember looking over to the side of the stage and my grandfather was stood there with his thumbs up. And that was it, I just lost it big time. But I always regard my grandfather as my sort of like guiding angel, as it were. And even now, sometimes I always ask myself what I used to call him, Papa, you know, what would Papa say? Um, and I know what they say to most things, you know, you, you can't run a marathon without taking a first step. So he's— he always said, just go for it. You're going to fail a lot of the times, but one day you'll get there, so long as you don't give up. And that's pretty much been the mantra for my whole life. Um, we've known each other for 20-odd years. I worked for you about 20 years ago, and you've seen some of the schemes I've come up with, and some of the— this time next year we'll be millionaires, I think. And I just think, you know, why not? Why can't it be me? I, I don't want to be stinkingly rich. I just want to be comfortable. But more than anything, I want to leave a legacy, I think. And I want to be able to employ people and make sure they have good jobs and enjoy what they're doing. Because for me, you know, I didn't enjoy my job at the power station. I hated it. I was earning great money, but I hated it. So I went from that to being a mobile DJ and then working on cruise ships and working at the BBC, and it went from there, really. So can I just come back to your early childhood before we go into your legacy? Because the legacy tells— speaks volumes. I think it's almost our soul's purpose, why, what it— well, why we are here. And, uh, but coming back, did you ever know your birth mother? No, I didn't. Um, I never really had any desire to look for her. My brother, who was also adopted, did later on look for his biological mother and found her. Um, and I don't think we've never really spoke about it. One, I didn't want to do it because I felt that, you know, my parents have always been open ever since I, I can remember. They've, they've spoken about it. My father to this day always jokes about it. He said it was like getting the last turkey in Tesco's on Christmas Eve. He said you was all that was left. So, you know, they also joked about the fact that he already had a son and, uh, you know, wouldn't it be better to get— buy a floating gym palace, a superyacht? And even now, sort of 55 years on, he said, blimey, I could have bought 2 or 3 yachts for what it's cost to keep you going all these years. But my parents have always been supportive and they've never hid the fact. I've always said that I would never look for my biological mother, certainly not all the time my parents are alive. Um, like I say, they, they weren't wealthy people, but back then in the '60s when you was adopted— um, in fact, there's something going through Parliament at the moment, isn't there, about, uh, parents who are forced to give up their children if they were unmarried. All I know is that my mother was an unmarried 16-year-old and, uh, was sent to Jersey as was the way back in those days. You're going to stay with an aunt or uncle. So I was actually born in Jersey, which is quite nice because of my birth certificate. That's my place of birth, which means I can live in the Channel Islands if ever I make my money. But I just know she was a 16-year-old girl from Reading, and that was it. Um, I've— if she wants to find me, I don't have a problem with that, and I'll be very open, tell everybody. I would be intrigued to know if I've got any siblings, but it's not something that concerns or bothers me. No, sometimes there are people who just don't like talking about adoption, and sometimes, you know, it's such a big story because I've known young people who grow up who have been adopted thinking that their mother's their sister. Yeah. And as you say, in those days it was, it wasn't, it was the stigma that went with, you know, sort of a child being born, as they said, out of wedlock. Well, it's one of those things that, um, I'm actually very proud of the fact that I'm adopted. And, um, you know, you've been taken in by another family. Fabulous. Well, it's the same as fostering, isn't it? The people who do this do it for the right reasons. My parents did it out of pure love because, you know, they couldn't have children themselves, and it's what they wanted. And to do it once is, is a good thing. To do it twice is amazing. So, you know, I'm very grateful for everything that they've done. But do you think not to do with your mother, your biological mother, or your parents. There is that moment when a child is born between the age of 0 and 3— you've got children, so you know this— that the basic language skills and everything like that are embedded. Chomsky talks about that, and the first few years of attachment— the attachment theory is all based around those areas of life. Do you think that some of your, you know, sort of dyslexia can be attributed to those early periods, that early period of time? How old were you when you were actually adopted? Oh, I was young. I was only 2 or 3 months old. Oh yes, you were a baby. And the funny thing was, back then, the birth mother had the right to change her mind after 3 months. And, uh, she contacted my parents to say that, um, she thinks she would like me back. And I only found this out a few years ago, bearing in mind that this is sort of like 1967, '68. My mum wrote a letter and sent a check and said, please do not take him away from us, we can give him everything that he wants, we'll give him love, we'll look after him, we promise, and sent a check for about £2,000, which is the equivalent of like, you know, £25,000-£30,000 now. Wow. And it was like their life savings. And I only found that out a few years ago, but that really humbled me because I've given them a lot of grief over the years, as you can imagine, with my failed schemes and my ways of going about doing things, you know, always staying just the right side of the law. But at times it's been a bit close, I can assure you. And what was your mother's skills? What was— did she— well, she was, um, you know, she was what back in the day, you know, the husband went to work and the mother was a housewife really. But she, um, she literally was a cleaner. She, um, then worked in the hairdressers doing shampoo, very manual work. But then towards when she got to her 40s, she actually trained to become a nurse and went into nursing with the NHS and ended up at a civil service uh, sort of home where she, she aspired to end up becoming a nursing sister. So it's funny, but my father was always like very old-fashioned, like, you know, the woman should be in the kitchen. And, um, when my mum took her driving lesson, for example, I had every trust that she would get her test first time. I got my test first time. My brother, who's a doctor, and my father, who's got an IQ of, you know, zillions, uh, all 3 or 4 attempts. I was the first one to pass my driving test first time. When Mum went to take a driving test in the '80s, we was all getting ready— well, they were getting ready to say, oh, never mind, you know, revise your aspirations to being able to drive. But she passed hers first time. And I think it's probably from my mum that I get the, the go out and achieve it gene in my body, because my dad's always been happy with his lot. He could have been promoted many, many times. He had a chance to go and live in Canada. But he was like, why do I want to do that? All my friends are here. But my mum to this day probably resents the fact a little bit that we could have had an amazing life in a different country. And maybe that's where my seed was sown, because I've always wanted to go and live in France or anywhere else in the world just to see if I could really do it, more than anything. And, uh, she was the one that became— from being a cleaner She moved then doing hairdressing and then to a nurse. Yeah. So it was no easy feat because in those days, what people forget, it wasn't until the '80s— I started writing this, uh, when I started doing Jongleurs— that you could not get a mortgage on your own as a woman in the— anything before the '80s. You had to have guarantors to open a bank account as a woman. So any training you did, you had to have the agreement mostly of somebody else. Yeah, it just wasn't done as a woman. So I— and she must have had a tremendous drive and motivation. You're quite right. So you see, all of this builds up to you as a person, and sometimes the wounded healer then wants to heal the world. Um, and the adoption process, there would have always been a time between the mother and your new parents and getting to know them. Always changes. And that, they say, psychologically can leave a wound. And that wound, as you say, needs to be filled. And you're saying you, you fill it by creating something, something new, something amazing, which a lot of your things are good. Yeah, moving on to being great. I, I would say that there was something back even when I was at school, you know, I was lucky enough they sent me to a private school, my, and my brother, which I was at until I was 12. And then it closed down because it was run by a family. And when the, the elder father passed away, they closed the school and I went to the local comprehensive. If I'd have done my O levels at 12, I would have probably got straight A's in everything other than English, I would think. But the problem I had was, um, you know, my family were, I would say, at the lower end of middle class, um, but I came across as quite well spoken because you know, they were spending £2,000 a year on my education in the '70s. Again, a lot of money. And I remember coming home from school and Mum saying, you know, what would you like for your dinner? I said, oh, just some bread and butter. We don't spend £2,000 a year, you say. But I, I then tried to dumb down to, to fit in at school, so I became the class joker and the idiot. I started telling silly fibs. Because I, um, I thought I had to justify myself, you know. I'll be like, oh, my dad's got a new Ferrari or something, you know, who's driving around the Cortina. And I'd tell all these silly little fibs that would come back and haunt me because you'll soon get found out, and then you'll just have to tell another little fib or lie to back that one up, which was something I did all through my teen years, really. And, uh Looking back on it, I don't know why I did it. And I always say to people who work with me now, or people who come to me for advice on broadcasting or anything, is never try and be something you're not. Just be yourself and be proud of who you are. But it's probably took me 50 years to actually be at ease with who I am, you know. Maybe my whole life up until that point was, uh, an illusion of who I wanted to be, not who I really was. So there is this part of the imagination which I think is our saving grace, the ability to create something. Because first of all, you know, the— our ability to have an imagination, it transcends us as people. So you go out, your mind just picks up something, and you think, right, I can do this. And then you've got to make it happen. So that's where the skills come in. Yeah, and you've got to actually take that and earth it, ground it, haven't you? You've got to actually, which is what you were talking about with your mother, how do you make this happen? And that's your skill. You got in the car and you drove, and your father didn't have that particular skill, you know, to sort of— it's an autonomic skill of, you know, you get in the car, you can really understand. Well, there's two ways of looking at it. I think all through my 30s and 40s, I, I signed up to the philosophy of fake it till you can make it. Um, I remember when I first met you, um, I met one of your members of staff at an exhibition when you was running Jongleurs. I knew Jongleurs because I used to go to Camden all the time, and I sort of said, you know, why don't you do something else with your venues other than on Fridays and Saturdays? And, uh, spoke to one of your managers and said, well, come in and see us. So I saw you and your partners at the time, or your partner and the managers there, and I remember thinking, I'm so out my depth here. But I thought, no, go in, be positive, you know, you know you can do this. At the time I was supplying about 50 hotels, um, and I'd already done some cruise ship work. But you obviously believed my— I wouldn't say bullshit for one word, but yeah, I spoke a story that was credible because in my mind I knew where I wanted to get, and I knew that unless I could convince somebody else of what I could do, um, I was never gonna— no one's ever gonna come to you and say, here's a load of money, go and do it. You've got to make your own money and make your own luck. And that's what I think I put everything down to. You know, Richard Branson, famously, everybody knows about Virgin Airlines and Virgin Records. They don't ever think about Virgin Cola. Which crashed, which failed miserably, didn't it? Virgin Brides, which failed. And I'm— Richard Branson's actually quite inspirational to me. I know a lot of people don't like him, but I actually saved his life, um, a few years ago when he tried to kite surf across the Channel, and I was on the lifeboat crew and we rescued him. And I got to spend 40 minutes with him on his own. And, uh, you know, everybody joked about the fact that he started off His big empire was student magazine, and I own a newspaper. He owned a radio station, I own a radio station. Everyone's asking me when I'm going to— Your destiny. My airline. Yeah, yeah. Um, but you know, he's— he again was severely dyslexic. Yeah, but he did Alan Sugar. But let's, let's not forget Alan Sugar was slightly different. But you know, Richard Branson's parents went to Eton. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, he did come have a flying start lot. So his father was an entrepreneur, she was wealthy, and he came from a very well-to-do background. And I— and he had the help along the way with friends. That's what I'm saying, so barristers. And yeah, so you've got access to all those people. So this isn't decrying what they've done, like, you know, don't decry— I don't decry entrepreneurs who've made it supersonically, but you came from a different start. Yeah, you didn't come from a start where you could open the door and, you know, your dad would phone up, as you say, the correct lawyer, the correct barrister, the correct this person or that person or the bank manager, or get money, you know, to start an enterprise. Because even, you know, so there is that level where everybody knows the right people. And when I started as an entrepreneur, the difficulty is you've got to find out that not all accountants are the right accountants for you. Some accountants are forensic accountants or they're auditors, and some lawyers you use for different parts of your work. Some are business, some are marital, some are— and you don't learn that. That's nothing that— this information isn't given to you. But if you've got a family that you grow up with that can teach you that, you have a well, you know, head start. So you're doing super well on the climb to becoming, you know, sort of, um, David Branson, William Wimbledon. So don't worry about that, you know. I think that's yet to come for you. But yeah, I was just going to say, um, it's one of the things that I think is a little bit different now to sort of 35 years ago I was leaving school, or 40 years ago I was leaving school, forgetting how old I am, is that now you're, you know, when I left school, people like, you know, you go to careers advice and they say like, you'll be a very good driving instructor, you, have you thought about joining the police, joining the army? Whereas now people will actually say to students, I mean, my daughter's 17 tomorrow, my youngest daughter, And, um, you know, she's dyslexic as well, but she's dealt with it very well. But they're saying, have you thought about setting up your own business? Um, and one of the things I did when I got into local politics down here, which we might touch on later, uh, down in Folkestone and Hythe, Romney Marsh, where I actually come from, is when I stood for election, I said, if I'm elected, I want to start up a mentoring, um, system where I've got my friends that are solicitors and bank managers and other people who've done the hard work for you. Because people do put you off starting your own business. Now they say you need to write out a business plan. Well, that's absolute bull, you know. Business is very simple. You find something, a service or a product, you buy it or create it, and you sell it. And so long as you sell it for more than it costs to buy or create, that bit in the middle is yours, that's your profit. And it's something that I'm really proud of at the moment. We just opened a £2.5 million business hub in New Romney, which I've achieved in 2 years, uh, with help from Magnox and the council. Um, and it's 16, 16 units where people can come with an idea and rent the unit for like 1 month at a time ongoing, but there's internet there, there's power there. You can have a £10,000 grant to help build your office because I think, you know, you need to help people realize that anyone can be a boss. Not everybody wants to be a boss. Some people want to work on a factory production line because they go home at 5 o'clock on a Friday. You know, you, you know me for years, you know that I don't have downtime. Even now I'm, I'm working all over Christmas and New Year because I've got things that need to be done. Um, and that's my mentality, is that, you know, you just don't stop working. You can't stop working because, you know, I don't get paid holidays if I don't work. If I don't work, I don't earn. It's particularly at the moment, I think. And so there's a couple of things here. One is at the moment that you're not being— nobody's being supported in our industry, in the entertainment industry, or actually in the psychotherapeutic industry. Industry. They're not being supported unless you work for the NHS, and that's a whole different ball game, working as a psychotherapist for the NHS, um, because you have to do it according to the NHS's rules. So, um, but I'm not saying they're not useful and not helpful for people, but I don't think it does the whole job. But also, you need to— did you have to learn— what were the skills you had to learn Let's put it that way. You, you are now at a point where I think is the springboard for your next life, and you are now on the council. Yep. And you're also an entrepreneur, and you're also a publisher because you have a magazine. Again, the newspaper was probably the turning point in my life. I set up something called an RSL, Restricted Service License, because I'd done some work for the BBC as a producer I was very lucky that my hero was Kenny Everett. He, he took me from Capital Radio to the BBC as a producer. And again, I had— when you met me, I was still working part-time for the BBC. And again, I was surrounded by people, especially on people like Steve Wright's show on Radio 2. Every day we get guests coming in telling us how wonderful their life was, whether pop stars entrepreneurs, business people. And I just thought I could be like him, so— or her. And I set up something called a 28-day local radio for Romney Marsh. And we did it about 5 or 6 times over 2 or 3 years. And we got the local editor of, um, one of the newspapers used to come on every Thursday morning. I used to do the breakfast show and talk about what was in his paper. And he'd bring me the, the first edition of it And I would look through it and I said, there's nothing about Romney Marsh in here. And he said, well, nothing ever happens on Romney Marsh. And it really peed me off to the point that I sort of said, well, you know, I love the marsh. Tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to start my own newspaper. Forgetting that I'm dyslexic, I just thought, you know, uh, you, you know, I've been saying this long before Jeremy Clarkson ever said it, how hard can it be to start a newspaper? Well, I can tell you, it's bloody hard. Um, So 6 weeks later, I launched Edition 1 of The Looker. It was in black and white. He told me it would never be more than 12 pages long and it would be, um, you know, it would last maybe 4 editions. Well, the first edition was 24 pages long, and I just sent Issue 290 to print this morning. Um, but I just thought, I'm going to start a newspaper. What would I want from a newspaper? And The Looker newspaper now It's won 5 community newspaper awards. Our circulation is 19,000 now. The newspaper that he worked for, which at the time was the biggest newspaper, was about 4,500. So we've got a bigger circulation than both the paid-for newspapers in our district, and I'm really proud of it. It's been hard work through COVID, but I plug away. I still deliver most of the copies. Well, I say the copies, we don't put them through the door, we drop them off at 500 bundles at Sainsbury's Sainsbury's and Waitrose and newsagents. Um, but it really is the go-to community station as a paper, and it's one of them things I keep thinking to myself, could I expand that and do it in other areas? Could I do it in Ashford, Canterbury, and Dover? Well, I could, but I think the key to its success is the fact that I'm such a stubborn git that, you know, I get up and I write that paper every morning at 6 o'clock in the morning before I go and do my day job. As it were. And, um, I, I'll probably be at the stage now where I will sell the paper in the next 12 months, um, because both the competition would love to buy it, if for no other reason than to get rid of it. Um, you know, because you, you are in your area. So before we go into what you're doing now, you know, sort of, and is building out almost— the Looker is helping you You found your place, I think, through the Looker in some way, and people have found you. It's, you know, you've now very central to the area you live in, in more ways than one. Before we go into that, tell us a bit about your failures and some of the skills that you have thought to take on to make sure that you carried on, you know, being successful, because success is part of your mindset. It is. Um, I think one of the, the early failures— well, it wasn't so much a failure. Um, the advice I'll give to anybody is when you start out in business, realize what you're good at and realize what you're bad at. I was always awful at my accounts. Um, an early factor— this was in sort of like the mid-'80s. I was DJing. I was, um, you know, I was going all over Europe DJing and I did summer seasons. Uh, I did one year where I was in Great Yarmouth on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, and Blackpool on a Tuesday and Thursday night, and then doing London gigs at the weekends. And, um, all that time I didn't do any accounts, nothing at all. And then one day I got a letter from HMRC saying, uh, you know, I've been 6 years since I left my, my proper job, as it were, not done any accounts. And they said, right, year 1 You didn't file any accounts, so we give you £1,000 penalty for year 1. Year 2, you've been, you know, your business would have been growing, so we call that £2,000 plus the £1,000. Year 3, £4,000. Anyway, they gave me a bill for £26,000, and I was just like, oh my God, you know, it made me almost physically sick. So what did I do? I went and found an accountant rather quickly. He said, well, it's worked, isn't it? You're doing something about it now. And we got the bill down to about £6,000 on them because I didn't keep any receipts, didn't keep any books. Everything was in my head. And the accountant— which is funny because my partner now, as you know, Sarah, is an accountant. She, she keeps an eye on everything, which is great. Yeah, because that's a totally different skill set, isn't it? And if, if you can find a partner in life as well as at work that can harmonize that with you, uh, it's fantastic. But, but, you know, obviously she has different skills, uh, skill sets, but different, you know, personality to you in your private life. But at work, and to develop, we've, we've got to accept that we do have different skills. And also, I think accounts is one of the ones that we especially if you're highly intuitive and creative, you almost have to be scared into dealing with. Because, you know, HMRC, they are like the SS. They— oh yeah, they can do whatever they want, and they can walk into a business and shut it down if you don't pay things. Well, you were saying about my early failures. I, I set up an entertainment agency, Allied Entertainment, and we grew pretty big pretty quickly. We was the first agency in the Southeast to do tribute bands, and I'm talking over 25 years ago now. At one point we, we supplied a company called West End Events, which was doing all the big hotels and the Conrad rooms in London, things like that. And on any one night in December, we might have 40 acts out, all were earning £500-£600 a night, and I was taking my 15% commission from all of them. It became very apparent very early on that I had no structure at all to it, and most of it was all in my head. So I was actually introduced to a guy who just retired from Tesco's by a friend of mine who, she ran her own newspaper at the time. And I just thought, he's a nice old boy, isn't he? And I asked him what he did, and he was very unassuming. He said, oh, I used to work for Tesco's, but I'm retired now. Next time I saw him, he was in an Aston Martin. I thought, you don't get that if you stack in the shelves. And the time after that, he was in a brand new Range Rover. So I said to him, what did you do in Tesco's? And he said, well, I was their finance director. And he was one of the people who helped come up with the idea of the Tesco's Clubcard. And he used to go out buying huge parts, you know, land all around Milton Keynes that they would sit on for 20 years and then build a store on it, open the store, then sell the store and rent it back. And he was a multi-millionaire in his own right. And I basically said to him, can you help me? Because he liked me, he got what I was doing, and I think it was quite exciting for him to want to get involved with somebody like me because it was all a bit rock and roll. And all he'd done, it was almost like the accountant thing. Everyone sees their job as being a bit gray, a bit boring, a bit John Major on Spitting Image sort of thing. And so the opportunity for him to get involved with me was great. So he said, why don't I buy half the business? Straight away, all I could see was £50,000. Yeah, that will do. And he said, but on the condition that we invest my money into the business and it doesn't— not a penny of it goes into your pocket. And it was a bit like Dragon's Den where, you know, selling 30% of your business, 30% of a lot, you know, still leaves 70% of an awful lot, um, whereas 100% and nothing is nothing. So I agreed for him to be my partner, and we grew the business amazingly quickly. And he took care of the accounts and the VAT and all the booking and contracting side, leaving me to go out and be creative. Where the problem came was after, you know, he was then in his 60s, and he sort of said, look, I've set you up now, off you go. It's almost like, you know, I've got you fit for business now, I want to retire. And all I want back is my initial investment back, which was £50,000. Uh, well, that Christmas, that was basically my profit for the year. So I gave him my profit, and what I should have done was said to him, I'll pay you back over 3 years, even if it meant paying him a bit more. Because what I should have been doing with that money was investing in the '90s, late '90s, into a website and that everybody else was doing that at that time. And that— and then, as you know, with entertainment, everyone's trying to stab you in the back, everyone's trying to steal your bookings. And, uh, we opened a sound and light business with him as well as part of the company. And again, we were the biggest sound and light sales company in the Southeast. But when he went, all the money I had that should have made me even now the biggest sound and light online seller I used to pay him back. And that 12 months it took for me to get a website that was fit for purpose, we'd gone from number 1 in the area to about number 9. And I always— it's quite funny, everybody said David's done entertainment all of his life, he'll never give it up. It came to a point where one day somebody came into the shop and asked for something that I didn't have. I got it in for them, showed them it, and said, would you like to buy it? Afterwards, uh, they said, let me think about it. I saw him 6 months later and said, do you want this piece of equipment? He said, I bought it online from a company in Germany because it was cheaper. That instant I said, right, New Year's Eve is my last day. I'm closing the shops, I'm closing the office, I'm giving it all up. And everyone said, he'll never do it. And the day that I locked the door and posted the keys back to the estate agents where we leased it from, I'll admit I had a little cry because I thought, well, I failed. But oh, the next Friday and Saturday when I had my, my life back, I wasn't going out setting up discos. I wasn't sort of worried about, you know, is a DJ or a band gonna let me down. It was, it was brilliant. And even now, you know, I very rarely go out and do gigs. I did this weekend because we got hit by COVID with some people working, but Sarah and I, we'd rather go to a restaurant on a Saturday night and be home in bed by 10 o'clock. I don't want to go driving Because you've done it, you know what it's like. But David, your life hasn't been easy, particularly this year. Can we go into that? Because, well, it sort of started, uh, 4 years ago actually. Um, I had an accident, um, and I had some whiplash on my neck, um, on the M25. And I went home, my, my car was written off, needed to get another car. And, um, basically I went to London to buy a car, drove it back, stopped at a friend's house, and it's a hot day, and every time he spoke to me I had to turn my whole body to look at him. And I just thought, oh, this is the whiplash. Went to my parents' house that evening. My mum said, would you like Sunday dinner? Uh, yeah, okay. And I nearly choked on a piece of beef, and it was like it wasn't a big piece of beef, but I was struggling to swallow. And Mum was sort of like, um, do you want us to keep the dog and you just go home, have an early night? And luckily I said, I'll take Ted, my dog, home with me, because during the night I had quite a severe stroke, which to my mind, I, I still hear myself as slurring my words a little bit. But, um, the dog got on the bed, which she was never allowed on the bed, started licking my face and barking. And where I live is right on the beach down on the Kent coast. And so I thought, you know, I don't have a garden. I literally open the door and he goes out onto the beach. Um, so I thought, Ted needs to go for a pee. Went to get out of bed, fell flat on my face. Remember looking in the mirror and smiling and realizing that only half my face was working. And I felt very confused. I knew it was the middle of the night and thought I don't want to phone my parents. So stupidly, I got in the car and drove to the local hospital, which is 20 miles away. And by the time I got there, you know, I, I fell out of the car. I got in on hands and knees, and I was 6 weeks in hospital with my stroke. I ended up in St Thomas's Hospital, and even to this day, the right side of my face is semi-paralyzed. Um, so that had a real— that's one of those moments in life where you, you know, it's like God's way of saying you've got to slow down a bit. Um, but since then I've had some cancer scares as well. Started with skin cancer and a lump on my, my spine. And it's one of them things that you can take it either way. You can either think, oh God, I'm gonna die, or me being me, I shouldn't use the word, but stubborn bastard who's gonna say, you know what, you're not gonna beat me. Um, I've had bigger bigger issues than this in my life. Yeah, you know, I've had the taxman knocking at my door demanding £26,000 when I was 25, sort of thing. That, that was more scary to me. And you just got to put your trust in. So when you did— yes, yeah. And but also, when you did have cancer, you didn't really talk about it, did you? No, not to anybody. Um, yeah, Sarah knew, uh, obviously, and my mum and dad knew. And it's one of them things that I thought, what if my hair starts falling out? It started off, I had this chemo cream which was horrendous. It stunk like hell, and it just wasn't very nice at all. Um, and you know, you, you have your treatment, and I was just like, I felt pretty rough. But even to Sarah, I, I, I would try and pretend everything was all right because that's my mindset, you know, fake it till you make it. You know, this— I'm all right, nothing wrong with me. But you know, you just got to put your trust into the doctors, no more than I do. And at the same time, there's a friend of who, you know, I thought I had it— I mean, let's be honest, I had it quite mild compared to some people. Um, she's had cancer 4 times now in 8 years, and she was getting her treatment at the same time as me. And I look at Julie and go, Julie's still obnoxious, she's still sarcastic, she's rude, she's everything that I love about her in her own way. What have I got to complain about? But Again, you just, you just get on with it. What did affect me, I think the stroke hit me more than the cancer scare because it— you can have cancer and nobody would know. It's a bit like, you know, as a friend of yours and, and somebody that I met when I was working for you, Sean Locke, nobody knew he had cancer because it's a very personal thing, isn't it? Whereas with the stroke, everybody would be like, oh hello, what's up with you? Yeah, you're walking with a limp. You're, you're slurring your words. And again, a bit like the adoption thing, I've never hidden from that because I couldn't hide from that. But cancer and things like that, you can hide behind. So again, that's something— do you think that was helpful for you to— yeah, just get on with it, just tell people close to you so that people you were really connected with, you could tell, let's not talk about it, but this is what I'm going through. Which is what you were saying. Yeah, I think I did. Um, the stroke thing, I think people— there's nothing you could do about it. No, but something like the cancer, I was like, if people know that you're ill, they're going to stop wanting to employ you. Yeah, you're a risk. Um, at the time, uh, 3 years ago, I was working for Windstar, who are very top-end bespoke luxury cruise ships and sailing ships. And I managed to pass my medical, and I thought, well, if I'm past my medical, nobody else needs to know, do they? And the American Seamen's Medical was far worse than what you'd need if you was working for the other companies I worked for, like Cunard and P&O and Saga. So I managed to pass it, and, you know, touch wood, everything's okay. I did worry. I still have issues with my skin and I have blood tests, and touching wood, everything's okay. In fairness, I didn't do the last blood test purely because of, uh, the COVID restrictions again, and, you know, it wasn't seen as essential. But I am due to have another blood test. But if I did get cancer, I would— again, I would just say, right, okay, here we go, I've done this before, let's do it again. And who do you turn to for motivation? What is your self- talk during that time, because I cannot believe— you must, you know, and as you've said already about the stroke and you particularly, you know, what was your self-talk? What do you say to yourself when you're really low to get out of it? Um, there's been times, especially during the stroke when I really was struggling to walk, that I, I just said to myself, yeah, I'm not done yet until I, I've got my, my business that I've sold for 50 million pounds or whatever. I'm not done because I've got too much that I want to do going forward, and that's my mentality. And I think the biggest thing that happened to me was this straight away, pretty much after the stroke, when I was in hospital, and I'm trying to be as positive as I can. I'd split up from my previous relationship as well, which was almost like a bereavement because I didn't see it coming. Um, it was just over instantly. So I sort of thought, you know, pick myself up, dust myself down. I did something— I, I took the mickey out of everybody I knew who'd done it. Um, I went on a dating app, um, but I went on one of these more executive ones where you have to pay a couple of hundred quid to join. And, um, the first person who actually answered my advert was Sarah. I joke now actually about the fact that, you know, did I really get my money's worth out of this? The first person I met. So that's your dad's influence, is it? It is really the comedian. Yeah, but even when I met Sarah, um, I was using this whole, uh, why would she be interested in me? I did say that I'm just getting over stroke, and we met up, and I thought— she turned up in a nice new Range Rover and all this, and she got out the cars like, wow, She's not gonna be interested in me. Look, I'm a bit of a pleb. What have I achieved in my life? Well, actually, when I look back at it, Sarah's the one who's made me realize I've achieved a lot. But the first 18 months with Sarah was filled with little fibs and little lies that I was like trying to make out that I was bigger and better than I was. And that all came to a head when she caught me out on a lie, and I was like, you know what, okay, this is the real me. Uh, expecting her to say, well, sod you, I'm not having none of that. And she said, I knew all along it was all lies. And they weren't big, big lies, but they were just like, you know, trying to fake it till I make it, like I say. And did that open you up a little bit more yourself? Because— oh God, yeah, yeah. I mean, you became— you learned to trust her more. I, I think for the first time in my life I felt completely whole. Yeah, because You've got all anybody ever wants is a soulmate that in good times and bad you can bounce off them. I mean, even recently I had such a dilemma with a mortgage company. Uh, and you know, not everybody knows this, um, because I didn't tell anybody. And the people who do know this were shocked when they found out. When COVID came along, I applied for what they call a mortgage holiday because like you said, you know, we— I didn't get a penny from the government even though I was paying VAT, employing people, had shops. Didn't get a penny. So all my savings were used up very quickly. We took out a £25,000 loan from the bank, which we're still paying off now. But a few months ago, my mortgage company said, uh, you owe me— you owe us £11,000. And I said, well, aren't I on this mortgage rate? And they said, no, you never applied for it. And I was like, I did. Luckily for them, they did things wrong. They went to a court to get an injunction to evict me from my own property. But they didn't inform me, um, that I was evicted from my own property for, uh, 10 days. I had to find £11,000 to pay it back in full. As it happened, they then— and the only way I could do that was to prove to them, find the emails I sent to them, and they realized that they were the ones who made the mistake. They didn't give me my 11 grand back or anything, but, you know, I phoned Sarah up um, because we weren't actually living together at this point. It's only recently we moved in. Um, when the bailiff came and, you know, I kept it from her up to that point, but when I realized we'd gone past the point of no return, um, even on the morning that the bailiffs came, I phoned the mortgage company up and said, I'll give you the 11 grand, I'll take it out of my business account, which technically was a bit naughty because it wasn't my money, but I thought that would keep them away. And the bailiff said, I wouldn't do that for you because you'll still be evicted. You're gonna have to go to court. So I was on my way to the, the local court to get an injunction out to let me move back into my house. And I phoned Sarah, and she had one of her staff members working in the office, so she couldn't really speak. I said, Sarah, I need to talk to you. Do not say anything until I've told you everything. And I was expecting her to say, oh, for God's sake, I can't be dealing with this. She went, okay. We, we need to sort all this out. And in the moment she said— first of all, she said, I'll ring you back, give me 5 minutes. She needed to go somewhere private to talk to me. But for the first time in my life, I was driving the car to Canterbury to the county court to try and get this injunction, and a lorry was coming the opposite way to me. And I thought, if I just went head-on into that lorry, all my problems would be over. Sarah wouldn't have me like a dead weight around her neck. I can, you know, the pain will be gone. It only lasted a split second and I pulled myself together. But I can understand how people's financial worries lead them to suicide. And I've seen this on the other side as well. Oh, as you know, that's such a big topic and it's heartbreaking to hear you say that. But I know you're absolutely right because a lot of people are in space. And I think at this moment and this coming year, we're going to go through a lot more of that, and we will talk about that separately to this program. But we are almost at the end, but I don't want to leave without knowing the legacy you're going to leave. So there you are, you are in a very special place at the moment. You're now living with Sarah, and she's wonderful. I have the joy of meeting her. So you're known in Romney Marsh, you have the Looker, You're also a counselor, and you are now going up that mountain, up the climb. As I say, it's never easy. You've got to take that challenge. You know that you're going to get knocked a bit, and that's the choices on an unconscious but spiritual level we make because we want to produce something. You want to leave a legacy. Two things: what is your legacy? And you are now on that climb. What are the obstacles you think you're going to encounter? Well, the biggest one is that, um, I set up a company called Radio Waves, owns Deluxe Radio and Deluxe Gold, uh, and we used to supply cruise ships with onboard radio. As soon as COVID came along, overnight that market collapsed. So I'm slowly rebuilding that. I would like to get that to be a business that doesn't just supply cruise ships, it supplies hotels, anywhere where you can hear radio. Uh, internet radio is definitely the future, as Russ Cain will tell you, and Howard. Um, I've got some great projects actually lined up with Russ Cain for next year, again all radio-based. But my legacy basically is I, I want to help anybody else who's gone through what I've gone through. Um, we never spoke about my time working for the RNLI on the Thames, and most of our jobs there were dealing with suicide attempts and things like it's made me realize that, you know, you only get one shot at life. So, you know, it sounds so corny about living your best life, but just go for it. Because what's the worst? You know, if I did go bankrupt tomorrow, I'd have to just pick myself up and start again. Nobody goes bankrupt intentionally. Um, I've come close a couple of times, but I own a shop now and we sell model railway stuff and there's sweet shop and things like that. But I think for me, radio is the big thing. And for me, politically, I, I aspire to one day be an MP, um, or leader of our council. I'm going along— I'm already on the cabinet of our council, and I just want to change people's lives on a local level so that their lives are better. And yeah, and that's such a powerful thing to do, because to change everybody on that level is very, very powerful because it's on the day-to-day level that you live. Doesn't matter, no matter how much money you've got, you still have to get up, you still have to get dressed, you still have to do those things. And everybody, doesn't matter how big or small, how rich or how poor, all have problems to encounter. But I do think the issue of suicide is a big issue. You know, as you know, I was a Samaritan at 19 is something I've dealt with, you know, and also as a psychotherapist more and more. I do believe in the thing about suicides is if somebody's drowning, get them out of the water, get them warm, dressed, safe, and then ask them how they're feeling. How did you get in there? But get them back to a position where they can cope and on solid ground. And I know we are both connected in that. So your final words before we finish this program? And I would know we could be talking for another hour at least. Um, basically, uh, admit to yourself that you've got faults, work around your faults, uh, play to your strengths, um, don't fake it till you make it, just go out there and give it your best shot because eventually it's going to come good for you, I'm sure. Well, yeah, you have done that and you are now building towards a fantastic future that will not only impact on your own life, and I'm delighted you're now moved in with Sarah and the world's going to get better, but you are going to make changes in other people's lives. So David Wimble, this is Your Mind Matters, and thank you so, so much for joining me in this discussion and telling me about your life and your story that will really encourage other people. So thank you so much. Thank you.