I Hid My Face for 18 Years

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0:37Elge, welcome. It's great to have you on the podcast. For those that may not have met you or know you or about your background and career, maybe you could just give a bit of a whistle stop as to your, I guess, your career and why was it important for you to come on to Behind the Title today? Yeah, of course, mate. Firstly, thank you for having me. It actually means quite a lot to be on here to be honest. Yeah so my name is Elj, Elj Abid. I am currently Director of Business Development at the Trade Desk but I've been ad tech side for five years. Before that I was mainly publishing side so I've spent time at ITV, Disney, then did quite a big stint at Global Radio and then from there gone on to ad textile ad tech side at the trade desk i think the main reason why i wanted to come on behind the title is because i've lived with a skin condition all since i was seven years old only recently kind of came out and started talking about it publicly within a workplace and felt it was really important to come on onto a platform like this where I know you've done some amazing talks with a variety of leaders across our industry.

1:57And I felt it was really a great opportunity for me to come on here and just tell my truth, speak about what it's like living and working with a visible difference in our industry. Because I've said this to you before, but I don't see a lot of it. And I know there's probably a lot of people that have many insecurities, whether that be internal or external and I feel as though you know if I can help people um along their journey you know by giving them my experience and and kind of you know my expertise in in how to and in how I'm dealing with it um then you know it's only going to be beneficial so that's why I'm here I mean it's a pleasure to have you I mean when we connected um and you told me about the condition obviously i i think i'd seen the condition but i never knew the name for it yeah and so um it was really uh it was really insightful to kind of understand a bit more i don't know if this is the right thing to say or something it's actually quite a cool name i don't know why just like phonetically it rolls off the tongue yeah it just rolls off the tongue yeah uh obviously the condition is the opposite of that maybe in some people's minds but um uh i actually want to go back a step to a couple of minutes ago um you you you introduced yourself as lgb but yeah that's not your actual name no it's not my actual name that's my nickname that everyone in the industry knows me by um my full name is Erhan which is of Turkish origin and um yeah I was uh it's quite funny actually because I had a breakfast with a client this morning and my the name on the booking was Erhan and he came into it and was like I didn't you know I think they got your name wrong on on the booking because you know and I was like no that's my that's my actual government name so um yeah it's it's it's quite it's quite weird there's no there's no connection between Edhan and Elge but it's just something that um I didn't like the way it was pronounced at school that people used to pronounce I used to say Erhan and um you know it just used to just used to make me feel a bit crappy um and then my brothers funnily enough well one of my oldest brother just came up with Elge and then it just stuck um what age was that about eight or nine yeah I think it was as I was getting a bit older and kind of looking to go into secondary school that's when Elge kind of stuck and I you know I've I've just just carried along with it because I always have I just think it's easier for people to know and I don't know like again being a Turkish background I know that there's a lot of people out there that won't use their full name like my dad my dad for example uses the name steve because it's easier for them to you know for people to is his name anything remotely near no seville but even with that like seville was quite easy to pronounce but even with that i think i don't know whether it's you know just culturally just um i don't know it was it might have been a way for him to obviously get more work he's an electrician it might have been a way for people just to remember him a bit better i don't know as steve but yeah exactly it's just quite easy but i know elge is a little bit more trickier than that but yeah that that's kind of how it came about i find this fascinating i've been talking a lot about this recently not necessarily on the podcast um i think increasingly people find that they have to temper or adjust or dilute you know um their perceptions their views um but increasingly i find people are abbreviating their names yeah you know i want to two people in my team um uh the both have a uh it's called a silent h but when when they joined i made a point of saying how do you pronounce your name yeah um and one of them said oh it doesn't matter people just say it like this and i said absolutely not like what how do you pronounce it and it's really interesting because you still hear people pronounce it wrong and that's fine like i'm not that's not me coming down on them it's just i think that as a society we've we we want to make it easy for yeah exactly we take the easy option yeah but when i think about you and you've had you know the condition vitiligo since you were young yeah you've effectively been to an extent masking your identity for your entire child and adult life yeah yeah i guess when you put it that way uh it's i would never say you know in my head that the the two kind of resonated in a way i guess that you know the way that you framed it is they're obviously coinciding with each other um but yeah i would say that i have i i would have said it's and it's you know i know we're going to talk about this later but it's uh it's definitely more of a a coping mechanism of taking the easier option um you know whether it's my name or whether it's you know the experiences I've gone through of having a having vitiligo um and also as well I always felt like I when I was thinking about this I was I was like it I was trying to remember how it made me feel when I was younger to have a to have a nickname I don't know if you remember this but having a nickname was it's quite cool you know so I was always like you know how can I make myself stand out a bit more or make myself be remembered um and that was another reason why I thought okay maybe people would think Elge would be cool so I'll just keep going with Elge until you know until it sticks and it has stuck um yeah and that's what that's for many years and that's what people know me by yeah um i guess across you know then as you were growing up and as you were um getting older was there a um a moment in which we call it the backstage past that you know on the outside everything looked fine but actually behind it all you were struggling in a really tough place yeah yeah I would definitely say it was more towards the earlier parts of my career I think coming out of school and going straight into kind of you know the big wide world into into working I never went to university so I just applied for loads of jobs and and you know you know went into a commercial role at ITV and that was my first step um but it was quite daunting and I think it was I've always had this thing of just trying to fit in you know I think that if when we go into my backstory that's always been that's always been my kind of angle on it of just trying to fit into what I deem as normal and I think when I was about when I was between the ages of probably about 18 to about 22 especially while my then you know my wife now but girlfriend at the time was at university I did feel a bit lost um I did go through times where I thought you know this you know putting on makeup every morning going into you know into into the workplace where I wouldn't I don't know how I was going to be perceived um and you know what our industry is like you know as you go on is there's a lot of networking a lot of talking to new people a lot of presenting you know face to face with clients I always had a fear of you know seeing senior management and you know leaders in our industry and looking at them and thinking I don't think I'm ever going to get to that level because of because of my skin um I could never see you know when you sometimes yeah sometimes I think when you look at um i even do it now to this day you look at leaders in our industry and you think how am i how how will people perceive me if i get there you know i'm struggling as it is you know being a sales assistant or a sales exec um i could never you know i think people do this where they envision in envisage themselves in in a in a certain role or in a certain certain place to be and I could never do that in our industry and I still struggle to do it now where I see myself of like you know being being like really senior or leading a leading a business or leading um leading certain teams um I thought I find that quite difficult um that's that's astonishing yeah like and maybe it's it's astonishing because that's not my reality but to hear someone say

11:39they never thought they could be considered yeah for a role because of the i'm not even going to say uh well i guess because of a skin condition yeah that's that's alarming that as a society we have not helped to normalize that better yeah i guess it's your normal yeah it's my normal and and you don't see you know i said at the start but i'm still struggling to see people with a visible difference in our industry you know uh I always use this example but I remember being at the media business course probably about nearly 10 years ago now and I remember I was sitting at the front and at the end of the course Karen Blackett came on stage and you know she gave her story about you know being a woman of color and making it to where she was now and all the kind of challenges and hurdles she had to go through to kind of get into a position of where she is and um I remember her using the the the title of like be the first and I I've always carried that with me you know to be the first to to try and use my story like she did to to to you know just get more people to be open to be honest to to try and um you know break the barrier as such but you know like I said it's it's it's one of them that if I if I did see if I saw more people do it or saw more people kind of similar to me or you know in a similar position then it would make me feel more confident but I think especially when I came in into the industry um I didn't see anyone you know and I was I was definitely hiding quite a lot then um yeah but but it's uh you know it's got it's got a bit better since then but those probably were the most we have moved on a little bit yeah so much more that can be done yeah when when were you aware or when was the um the moment that you recognize that um people were looking differently and i guess importantly how did that make you feel inside yeah um i know it's pretty young to be honest because the way that vitiligo is is it started off as a really small spot on the top of my head and then probably like a like a 5p size on the on the size of my head and then um then what people may or may not know about vitiligo is that it's symmetrical so it appeared on one side of my head and then it will appear on the other um at the same time or it takes time for it takes time for it to happen but then you know you would get a spot on you would get like a little patch on your eye it will go on to the other eye so there's some people where it's just you know if you meet another person with italigo you they might just be affected with it in one area um but on my case it's symmetrical so it started off really small and then it started once it started to kind of move around it started to get bigger and bigger like the patches were quite very visible and obviously being of a turkish background you know i'm quite a tanned person so it was easier for you know really easy to notice um so i i would say you know i got diagnosed with italigo and i was seven but it wasn't the the really bad point was when it probably when I was around 10 or 11 um just about going into secondary school because that's when it it was everywhere um you know you see it on my hands now but that my hands have never changed that's that's how my hands are but um it was all over my elbow like as in my forearms my my knees my feet um my face neck uh and I just always remember just I remember going on holiday with my parents and one of my mates when I was 11 and you know we'll probably get into this at the podcast but my mum I I wore makeup since I was nine years old so still to this day not to this day no no there was a breaking point when I got married but um I wore makeup from the age of nine to 27 um every day so I yeah so I'd go into my at the time when I was young I would go into my mum's room and she would put makeup on me so it was like a camouflage cream and then foundation foundation powder and it would work well it would cover up all the patches on my face and and it goes back into what we were saying before about trying to fit trying to fit in and I think you know my parents did everything they parents are unbelievable people they're they're amazing but I think you know being a parent myself you you would do anything to try and protect your your your children but yeah she I just remember being on holiday going back to that point in Turkey and um she covered it she she put makeup on me and then she applied fake tan on me everywhere like literally everywhere my legs my arms so i think you're smiling about this now yeah because because it's it's really strange because if you was if you was to see someone with all that on you would stare like you know you would whether you've got a skin condition or not if someone did that you would stare him so we're going back to your point of but probably when you first time you notice people staring at you that's the one that stands out to me is that you know being on holiday is always going to be hard anyway because you're not you know normally you're in a hot environment you've got you know you've got your feet out you've got you know more skin showing um so that's when i noticed a lot of people would pay more attention um at school it was different because at school you know I would put my school uniform on and I'll just cover up my face and it wasn't until you know you would play sporting activities that yeah of course but you know I didn't really I was quite comfortable at school if I was going to be honest that I'm you know I I would never I would never and I've always said this about having vitiligo I would never go onto any platform or any interview and say that I was bullied as a child because I wasn't um I've had a few comments um you know being called like panda for one but it wasn't a case of like someone you know constantly calling me that it was a passing comment you know so I can never sit here and say you know I was treated in a terrible way um I felt like I carried myself quite well but you would always notice people staring at you um and so 16 years right yes you were wearing makeup yeah obviously at that later point you're an adult of which you could have made a choice yourself before maybe you got married what um

19:20what what what did you feel at the time was it I guess grateful that your mum taught you that there's a way to cover yourself up um you know was it I guess the the fact that actually you felt you needed to do it because you didn't want people to stare at you um and and you know are you grateful for your mum for doing that because obviously she did that I assume from a point of view of safety or wanting to protect you yeah um looking back on it now I wish she never did it you know I've said this quite a few times but I wish she never did um but at the time and I always you know people that know me know this as well is that at the time I was diagnosed there wasn't a lot of information on vitiligo so there wasn't really any kind of cures or there isn't a cure but there there wasn't any treatments as such so I just remember going to loads of appointments with my mum and this is this was the I think this was the biggest issue and this is the message that I always try and advocate for is that being of a of a Turkish background my my my mum was a you know a housewife my dad was you know he had to provide for three kids so he was at work quite a lot and so it would be my mum that would go with me to appointments most time most times and my mum's English is okay but not amazing so when you're speaking to doctors the problem my parents had is that they weren't inquisitive they never asked any kind of follow-up questions or the impact of some of of doing you know having taking something or applying something on yourself so I think once the doctor said you can apply makeup as a cover-up then they were just like yeah this is we're going to do this so I think that the the decision to apply makeup on me was done at such a young age that I felt like it was built into me you know because what choice have I got as a seven-year-old if your parents tell you to do something you know I'm having the same thing with my six-year-old at the moment where I'm like you know you still have to listen to me kind of thing so yeah so no it doesn't and um so i think it was just over the years every day applying that on me that's that's what you know just it was like just uh deja vu is every day you know and that's what was built in me to do so to come out of that routine in in kind of my later years was a was a really uh it was a hard decision but you know because i don't you know this is well as you get older you kind of give a shit less you know if i'm being honest um you stop caring more about what other people think um and my my wife was a was a huge factor in you know my my journey with makeup as such you know she she was trying to get me to to not wear it for years and then it wasn't until a month before our wedding because we got married in jamaica i didn't it's a really stupid reason i didn't want to wear i i was panicking because i didn't want our wedding photos to show that i had makeup on my collars because it every time i would wear a shirt it would be all brown and stuff like that so that was my main kind of reason as a girl problem there yeah yeah so yeah i know i know um and then there was one comment that my wife's friend said once and this goes back to the point earlier about you know if when people are staring at you she said to me or she said to my wife amy at the time she goes does eld realize that people stare at him more with the makeup on than without it on no one's ever been honest enough to say that to me before or to hear it from someone before you know everyone just thought you know because i amy used to tell me a lot you know your makeup looks a bit off today you know it's not blended in properly and it looks darker than your actual skin color and all this stuff but to hear it from someone externally it was like a light switch moment because i'm like why has no one told me this before because you would right if you saw someone you know if you're on the tube or you see someone on a person on the street or in a cafe somewhere and you see someone you think that person looks a bit different and you can't figure out why you know just like they've got there's a lot going on do you know what i mean it's this is totally different so i'm not trying to yeah i'm not trying to join join up but it's like when you see someone who might have a smudged bit of lipstick on their teeth or they got a bit of food in their mouth people are naturally uncomfortable with pointing out someone else's um circumstance yeah um and i i don't have an issue but i don't say that from a a nasty point of view i say that because i don't want that person to then go to the next person for them to be thinking yeah but then the the receipt uh when you if you do share that sometimes people you know people are mortified because you've told them yeah or they're going to be happy or they'd rather like and so i i think it is a really i think it's a human yeah nature thing we just we don't know how to do that yeah no we don't and you know i i wish people because i always even like this little thing like if there's a bit of food in my teeth which happens very often please tell me you know and I say this to a lot of people around me that I work with but I guess it is a lot harder to bring up something so personal as in you know you know why why are you wearing makeup or um you know what what is that on your skin like can you tell me more about it you know no one really asks unless they've they know someone that has it or you know they've had they've got something themselves I mean it's fascinating just quickly we didn't really cover it off at the beginning obviously it's an autoimmune skin disorder which manifests itself in depigmented patches of skin here's some really interesting stats for people that want to understand more it is the most common depigmenting skin disorder affecting between 0.5 and 2 % of the population worldwide.

26:31Approximately one in 109 people will develop it in their lifetime. Yeah. I was a bit blown off. I thought it would be a smaller number. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's grown over the years. You know, I'm an ambassador for a charity called um changing faces who represent people visible differences and sometimes you know the stats that you see around certain conditions are you know kind of you wouldn't expect it to be that high but it's because you know i guess we all live in our own little bubbles as such so you don't really get to to kind of see those different conditions um but yeah it's it's it's fairly common um which is which is even more you know to the reason why i'm like still never seen anyone in industry who's got it yeah you know um did you wish when when you had that period with your mom did you wish you said something to her around the makeup um or did you make peace with it i kind of um again because i was so young i made peace with it at the time and it was just built into my everyday life style it would be like oh this is just something i have to do the problem with it was is that it stopped me from doing a lot of stuff that a teenage boy would do you know i i'm a huge football fan so like when i would play football i used even little things like going up to head the ball i would avoid heading the ball because i don't want the ball to wipe my makeup off um I wouldn't wipe my like wipe my face with a towel I would like dab it slightly um you know just some of the some of the things like you know going on school trips like that were abroad or away or going to a mate for a sleepover or anything like that um I never did you know so I it was um looking back on it now obviously it's a bit more like I should have should have kind of done that but I think it goes back to my other point as well about what the point I want to make around my parents not being inquisitive is that no one in my I don't mean to sound bad when I say this about my family, but I think, you know.

29:04Any of them going to listen? I'm going to get them to listen to it, yeah. But one thing that always blows my mind about it is, you know, I've done a lot of work in the last two years, especially around education, around, you know, not just Vitolago, but visible differences. um and if i was to ask any of my parents or my brothers to explain what vitiligo is to me they still wouldn't be able to do it are you the only one in your family yeah so it's not even hereditary it's hereditary um i'm the only one in my immediate family i've got second and third cousins that have got it as well now um but i was kind of the i don't know like first one um that with you because I don't think my parents don't remember their parents or anyone before having it.

29:54Has it been passed down to your kids? No, well, not at the moment. They're still quite young. They can develop at any time. They can develop at any time. And I've got to mentally prepare myself for that. And it's one of the reasons as well, like I wanted to try and just talk about it more because it's not easy. I don't know how, you know, and I could just be spiraling here, but I just want them to be aware of you know what it is how to talk about in front of their friends because I've already had loads of their little mates come up to me and be like why is your skin white or why why is this different or why your hands like this and you know it's really hard to explain to a young child why you know what you know the scientific reasons as to why you might be different so you know this is um really i'm just just trying to you know do it for them as well it's uh it's as if you teed it up because uh oh yeah uh this is this is eldish's book um just like me and

31:04it's incredible thanks man it's incredible i'm not gonna give a spoiler but i'd love you to just explain to people a bit about it and maybe just yeah read a couple of pages that you think are most pertinent in it yeah of course yeah yeah so um yeah the main the main reason behind this was like I just said it's just it it was a way of um after having children it was a way of kind of me trying to explain it to them in in book form or the easiest way possible was to making it sound like it's not anything to be afraid of that was the main thing so I kind of describe it in the book as magic skin um and it's about a you know even though it is me it's this it's it's portrayed on me yeah and the little boy actually looks like my son but it's um it's based on a on a little boy called milo who um is playing football with his dad and he notices a white patch on his hand um and he's trying to rub it off and he doesn't go away and it's that first interaction between him and his dad as to what it could be the the story goes into the into show that his dad actually has vitiligo as well and his dad's pointing at patches on himself and saying you know i i developed this when i was your age um and you know going into parts of where and you know my my nan used to say this as well that is that you're like a work of art kind of thing you know my wife still says it to me now so it's um it's it's it's i wrote it because one like i said i wanted to you know get kids to understand what vitiligo is what i what i really want to do with it is i've introduced four characters towards the end of the story that all have different visible differences um there's a character of alopecia there's a character with a burn scar there's a um another another little boy with a birthmark so all it all kind of um you know visible differences that people are kind of aware of.

33:20But I guess the kind of the most, if I look into the story, I think... Story time with Elge. Story time with me, yeah. I think if I was to read one part of it, it would probably be... I was hoping you'd do the pages off by heart. No, no, yeah, no.

33:41So this is the bit where Milo notices is the bit on his hand and his dad comes over to him and he and he asks what what it is and I'll read it word for word it's um the dad says there's a white patch um sorry Milo says there's a white patch on my skin dad knelt down and looked oh wow I see it he said gently that's called vitiligo dad said it's when your skin loses color in in some places it doesn't hurt it's nothing bad and most importantly it will never stop you doing what you want to do and um i think that bit is i've quite i've tried to instill in me for a very long time that even though i look different from everyone else it doesn't stop me from doing what everyone else does in life there's other obviously there's other visible differences and you know challenges that people have in everyday life where it does stop them from doing you know what we deem as normal things in society but this doesn't and I really want to emphasize that that you know it's um it is a it is a um an autoimmune disorder which a lot of people don't know like you mentioned because my parents purely saw it as a cosmetic condition not an autoimmune disorder so what a lot of people don't know about me is that I'm extremely vitamin b deficient I'm folic acid deficient um you know i have to go for blood tests every say three to five months to make sure that my my levels are correct um so that these are there are other there are actual medical factors as to as to my condition but i think my parents you know they just saw it purely cosmetically and i think that's what impacted me the most is that they just wanted to cover me up and you know and I've had I've had some you know quite uh it's horrible experiences in in different medicines and creams that have been applied to me and you know it's not been it's not it's not emotional because when you break it down quite simply that's how people will look at it at a young age and if you can't educate them young how the hell are people gonna know when they're older yeah um which brings me to you know the workplace you know yeah um have you found yourself in experiences where either there are certain triggers um where it sets you off with people or perhaps people have said something to you or you feel like it has like you said earlier inhibited your progression i suspect that was maybe an earlier thought of yours rather than an action but yeah it'd be good to know i guess i think and this is going back to a point i mentioned a bit earlier around a lot of my a lot of what i do involves presenting to bigger audiences um and there's there's a lot of times that i'll go into and obviously this happens to everyone where they get nervous might be about you know presenting in front of like large crowds and people they've never met before but that experience for me every time I do it is heightened because of my skin because it's just a general fear that I've got that people are not only not only am I nervous about me presenting what I need to present and making sure that I do a good job but it's also that fear on top about are people actually going to listen to what I say and you know and and think that what I'm talking about is actually very positive or are they just looking at me and thinking god this guy looks different um and that's always a fear of mine even though no one will ever say it uh and I don't I'm just trying to think back at my work experiences and think if anyone has ever come up and said you know what is this I don't I don't think anyone to be honest with you I don't think anyone has but working where I am now at the trade desk it's the first time in nearly 20 years that I've been in the industry that I felt though a workplace has given me a platform to speak about it and I've worked at you know big UK publications you know and nothing against you know what they you know um their kind of their their policies and and kind of initiatives that they run but Trade Desk gave me an opportunity and um and I'm forever grateful for them to do that because it was they didn't need to do that they didn't need to kind of open up and say you know here's an initiative what do you think about it and it's kind of you know really really kicked on since then to be honest was there stuff you wish you said to other employers yeah yeah I do I like I said I spent seven years at global before here and I I met some you know I know some amazing people that work that I really you know I felt like at that point in my career I was I felt like I was flourishing and I really feel like I should have been able to come out a bit more because Global was the place that I actually was the workplace where I actually stopped wearing makeup.

39:26So I was there at the time I got married and they were the first ones to see me with makeup on and then without. And I wish I made more of a big thing out of it. But I've said this to a load of people. I think, you know, stopping wearing makeup was the, I thought was the biggest hurdle that I could overcome in my journey with it. But, you know, doing what I'm doing now and being, you know, being able to come on here and talk about it and just to educate as many people in our industry as possible. That's even bigger for me. So, you know, I'll always be grateful to my old workplaces because you kind of learn as you go along.

40:14You know, I did wish, you know, sorry, I do wish that I clocked onto it, you know, earlier on. But all these things you look at in hindsight and think, you know, I wish I stopped wearing it at 18, you know, at all. so at what point though and maybe what was the the realization moment that you stopped managing other people's discomfort and started managing your own visibility yeah when did that happen

40:50um probably when i when i threw the makeup away i think what triggered you to do that oh what yeah it was it was that it was it was a combination of things I think I already mentioned one about my wife's friend making that comment to me okay so that moment it was that moment because I always remember I it was one month before our wedding and I was contemplating whether to wear makeup at the wedding or not and I was having this thing and Amy kept saying to me you don't need to wear it it's fine you know people aren't gonna it's gonna be really hot and I was worried about because it's going to be really hot out there I'm going to be sweating and I was going through all this you know turmoil in my head and I just remember on the Friday she went out with she went out with her friend um Monday morning I woke up had a shower sat down you know in our spare room where I did my makeup at the time and I just remember I and it's like it's like when you watch a film and you have like a little bit of a moment and you i just i i know it sounds really cheesy to say this but i looked in the mirror and i was like i don't want to do this anymore man i i i've had enough i'm exhausted i don't just want to keep doing this and i just remember i had three cases of camouflage cream all piled up in front of me I had two big tubs of foundation powder.

42:21And I just remember collecting them all and then just throwing them in the bin. And it was as quick as that. And I've never... You were so liberated. Yeah, I did. I mean, I was genuinely shitting myself going to work that day because I guess it was extremely heightened that morning and I'll never forget it. I left the house, got the bus to the station and then on the bus I was looking around thinking, fucking people looking at me like do they notice like you know i was trying to trying to see what people's reactions were and then when you realize people don't care as in like it's just you it's it's an internal thing that you know that you think other people are um are looking at you differently or whatever everyone's just getting on with their daily lives you know everyone's just trying to get to work just like I am you know no one's and that's what I mean I have to I had to stop making it stop being self-centered around me and think everything's about you know about me in a sense and people looking at me it was that was it was you know and I remember I got I and um I always say this but there's a friend of mine who funny enough works at Spotify and um I remember I got to the office and the lift doors open and I walked out and he was the first to see me because he sat opposite and he came over to me and was just like I can't believe you've done this this is amazing and he just gave me a massive cuddle and made me feel so excited about it and that was it but but what's funny I didn't even tell my wife that I did it I didn't tell her I just I I had like i said i had the shower got changed was going to do my makeup didn't do the makeup and just walked out and went and i didn't tell her till i left the house um so yeah that that was that that was the end of the makeup a bit of a question around the physical aspect the fact that it's symmetrical does that make it better or if it was random depigmentation, would that be better?

44:38I'm going to be honest with you, Dan. I still have days where I have a complexity about how it looks on my face. And I'll be really honest with you. I've gone past the stage of caring about what it looks like anywhere else in my body but my face I've always still had a bit of a you know if because vitiligo changes and it can come in you know in different areas so you'll probably see on top of my head here I've got a patch here and you know um i've got patches on my forehead here but this patch on my head is new when i say it was new it's um it's it's grown probably over the last six months right and there was one treatment that i got introduced to really randomly by a girl that saw me on the central line when I was when I was 21 years old she introduced me to a um who also had vitiligo which is why she came over to me but she introduced me to a treatment that they were testing in Germany it's a quite long story short me and my dad went to Germany we saw this professor who worked in like a biotechnic lab and she basically created a a steroid cream where when you apply it to your skin it dehydrates your skin cells and you stand in front of a uva light and it it basically re-pigmentates those those skin cells so i remember doing it for about for a good year when i was 21 and i noticed significant changes all over my body but what happens is now where i've obviously stopped caring about how it looks everywhere else sometimes on my face when i see that there's a patch coming up and i'm like i don't like the way it looks you know i've still got this and my wife kills me for it she's like why do you it doesn't make any sense you're firstly she's like you're so tall that no one can see it honestly this is what she says to me she's like you're so tall no one can see a lot of time for Amy yeah it sounds like she's got the measure she has um she goes what and she goes and the only answer I can give to people that because one one comment that used to bother me a lot when I was when I was younger is when I used to talk about it they're like we don't we don't see it you know you're elge to us we don't see it and I'm like but I see it every day you know and I until I can accept that and you know because I'm like you can see it why are you lying to me you know what I mean it's like it's just but I see it so when I see something new come up the only way that I can kind of limit that is by doing this treatment so you can you can see it then but on here you can see I've got like brown freckles so that's where the pigment's coming back because I've been doing that treatment and I've only been doing it for a month and what I'll do is I'll do it and then I'll stop doing it for about two years and then another probably another patch will come or this patch will grow again and then I'll do it again but I still have to do a bit of work to overcome that I'm still not you know I'm by no means even though I'm I'm doing I feel like I'm trying to give back as much as I can I'm still going through it in my own in my own head you know I mean in my own way so that that's a that's a hurdle that I'm trying to but you've Taking time to see people and talk about it and share your feelings around it.

48:28Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've spoken to quite a few, especially in the last few years. Like I said, I'm working for this charity, doing a lot of stuff within our industry. I presented at the IAB Leadership Summit a couple of months ago, which was something that I would never, again, going back to our point earlier, I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be presenting at a leadership summit in our industry because of how I felt about myself. But I'm obviously doing it for a subject that I'm trying to educate people on. You've just signed yourself up for something like a publicist now.

49:10You've literally just signed yourself up for something like a publicist. I'm happy to do it. I'm getting you down. um i think you speak so articulately about it and not just the condition but someone who's experienced managed emotionally stabilized their thinking uh and ultimately is trying to drive change and that's a there's a lot to be said about that Elge there's a lot to be said when I ordered the book um I I don't I don't know what what I don't know what I was thinking like what to what I was going to expect or think and I just honestly I just looked at the front cover I opened it up and I read the intro and I just thought wow because like like like me you know I think you see an opportunity to humanize things a little bit more and that's what we need um yeah i always say if it helps one then job done yeah um and i guarantee you people listen to this episode there'll be someone if not them that will be indirectly connected to someone yeah that suffers or will have a child yeah that's suddenly developing the condition um i also urge people you know if you know people that work in schools uh or you know you want to educate your staff then buy a load of these books because even reading it as an adult you learn something i think you learn something yeah um well look we're going to bring it to a close um we talk about the permission slip on here and what permission you want to give listeners to think feel say or do differently to what they currently do now either linked to themselves uh something they're challenged with or indeed it might be about you know the condition that you're in here talking about today what would that be

51:26i i think i all i all i would urge people with the people that are listening or you know wider industries and businesses is to show a lot more empathy I think that's one one area um that I would love to see a lot more I I think that if you and I can only go this by my own experience but it took 20 years for me in the industry to to under or to kind of fall into an opportunity where there was an initiative that was put in place by a company to kind of lead me down this path and i think if businesses showed more or you know our industry showed more empathy about around doing stuff that you know showcases people's talents or um something that someone's trying to push you know because i i think there's a there's a we've got so many creative people especially in our industry that we just see them at work and we they do their nine to five but there's a lot more going on that like everyone's got something going on in their lives that you know we should give them more of an opportunity to if they want to come forward and stand out a bit more not everything has to be about work not everything has to be about hitting a number I think you'll make people more motivated more kind of happier you know because that you know like what you do with this podcast Dan which is an amazing initiative it drives me more it drives me to do better at my job it drives me to you know want to educate people a lot more it drives me to that that point that i made at the start about not being seen or not you know not seeing myself in a certain position at an industry this helps me get there um so that's what i that's why i urge you know or my permission slip as such to be.

53:36Elj, or Arhan. Yeah.

53:43Mate, absolute pleasure to have you on here. Thank you for having me, mate. What you're doing is hugely impactful, even if, as I said, if it helps one, then job done. I think when we first spoke, I was just taken aback by your just incredibly kind, calm manner and it was it was it was not even a question of like yes come on come and share that story um i know that you will help at least one person i can guarantee that and i don't guarantee much in life um you've helped me you've helped educate me on the benefits um uh it's been an absolute pleasure and for what it's worth i think the symmetrical nature of it means that it blends in more yeah um you know i don't notice it but i notice the symmetrical nature of it yeah and so as someone from the outside maybe i because i'm familiar and i'm aware um it's not visible but it doesn't really matter because you as you are unbelievable and you will continue to change you know people's perceptions on anyone with uh with the skin uh uh the skin disorder so elge thank you so much thank you for having man so much fun and i look forward to people hearing this episode cheers mate thank you very much ledge thank you that was amazing it's great yeah enjoy it yeah mate loved it it's great Thank you so much.

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