#20 LEON CEO: We Could Benefit From Weight-Loss Jab Revolution

0:13Hello, welcome to Big Boss Interview. I'm Fliss Hanna. We've had a couple of bosses on the pod who are on the other side of a gruelling turnaround. Will Bain is with me, though, as he's been speaking to someone who's returned to the company they founded and is just weeks into that process. Will, tell me who you've had on. Yeah, that's right, Fliss. This is John Vincent, one of the three co-founders of Leon that came in to kind of shake up fast food in the early 2000s, make it a bit better for our waistlines, to their minds, sold out the company in 2021. But as you'll hear throughout the interview, regretted it ever since, still has that passion for the company and wants to now, as it's fallen on hard times and into administration, bring it out of administration and hopefully open a new chapter in it.

1:02So we talk about that and the challenges of doing that, whether that wave that Leon Road of greener, healthier eating is still there from its customers. what the challenge of weight loss jabs might be to the wider food industry, particularly fast food, healthy or not. And we're also going to hear a little bit about his passion for music as well. Well, let's hear it then. Here is Will's interview with Leon founder and returning CEO, John Vincent.

1:32John Vincent, co-founder and the chief executive of Leon. Thanks so much for being with us on the Big Boss interview. Well, thank you. right at the top John of my notes here I've got remind John to control uh how many times he's going to make Ollie our producer play the bleep button during during this interview you're a man who doesn't mix your language it's not I'm not proud of it I did read there was a Sunday Times article I was like oh my goodness do I swear do I swear that much well there we go I think I do but it's not good is it it's not good is it stress is it a stress reliever is it I don't know I don't know look i i did this might be totally wrong but i saw some research that said that people who swear more and more intelligent i'm more honest i don't know i literally don't know whether that's true i'll tell you what happened when i was about 11 my mum i grew up in enfield and i went to this state primary school called chayside and my mum sent me to elocution lessons because i i she thought i spoke so badly and then they said well we kind of teach elocution through drama and then And for the first three weeks, we did mime.

2:38And I think she was like, I'm not really spending my money very well here, am I? Trying to get my son to speak better through mime. So now you get to swear in an RP accent. I feel really bad swearing, but I do, I do. Rain falls mainly on the bleeping plane. Yes, yes. I don't know how you guys don't do it. I mean, you must have a filter, a subconscious filter. I was going to say, don't know what it is. Well done, sorry. All right, take us back to the very start, John, then. The idea for Leon, where'd it come from? Why did you think there's a gap here and I want to fill it? Well, I mean, I was working at a company called, you'll like this, Bain.

3:12So, you know, you didn't start it, but a guy called Bill Bain did, actually. I was working with my friend, a guy who is actually, you know, no stranger to coming on to the BBC talking about food, a guy called Henry Dimbleby. And we used to think, you know, it's lovely what we do, it's good, but we don't want to be here for the next 10, 20 years. What are we going to do that is actually something which aligns to our values, which is something we can have some fun with. And actually what happened is we both sat down at lunch and we said, well, you know, let's write down 10 ideas each of what we wanted to do.

3:43And the one that completely coincidentally was on both of our lists was reinvent fast food. And then instead of being intelligent and saying, well, let's look at the others on that list, let's do that. You know, there was no strategy. It was like, oh, look, that's a coincidence. It's on our list. Let's do that. And the reason that both of us were thinking about the same thing is, you know, I loved McDonald's as a kid. So I shouldn't say I loved fast food as a kid. I remember me and Andrew Green, at the end of each term, we treat ourselves to sitting on those little plastic, some people may or may not remember this, those little plastic slidey seats that meant that you, you know, you slid off so you couldn't stay for very long.

4:20And me and Andrew Green, Andrew and I would go at the end of each term and have McDonald's. And quite frankly, I got into the habit early 20s of really eating a lot of fast food, but then realising that it wasn't I wasn't managing to keep my athletic shape, shall we say. So in the end, I thought, you know what, there's nothing in the word fast and there's nothing in the word food that means that it can't be nutritious and it can't be flavourful, it can't be full of nature and it can't be good for the planet. So that was really a sort of a turning point. Now, at the same time, there were books like Fast Food Nation.

4:56There was a, I think Morgan Spurlock was his name. He did something called Super Size Me. so there was a sort of growing understanding that perhaps not all calories do the same thing for you and that perhaps we have the metabolic issues that come from that but you guys didn't have sort of backgrounds in nutrition in food you weren't chefs any of the three of you well actually allegra was a chef actually and uh henry had trained under a guy called bruno lube as a chef and his mum was a cookery writer so his mum is called jocelyn dimblebee she was one of these Sainsbury's chefs where you'd have a Sainsbury's cookbook at the end of the aisle or the end of the counter.

5:33And she did things like marvellous meals with mince. And she knew a woman called Elizabeth David that had sort of popularised the Mediterranean diet in the UK for the first time. So Henry very much did actually come from a sort of foodie, I guess, background. Allegra was a chef. She'd worked at something called the Tabernacle with the idea of serving the best food for the most people. So it was about democratising good food, which was a very important strand of what we were trying to do. And I had really, you know, don't criticise me for this now, but I'd started studying nutrition. So I started working at the Institute of Optimum Nutrition, a guy called Patrick Holford, read a lot of his books and realised that there was really quite a lot that wasn't in the mainstream.

6:18Right. So how does it go from that then, being on your list and you guys having this sort of interest in it and an idea kind of there to an actual okay we're going to do this and this is how we're going to do it we knew that the key thing was rooting something in a location and in a site and you know we we had trotted along to a property agent and we said can you find us a site and uh he said what's your idea and we're like well it's like if god did fast food and it's like okay how about this one carnaby street and we're like yeah that's uh that's that's a great location we were thinking of like so soho basically yeah londoners we knew we wanted to be right in the middle of the competition we knew we wanted to test it we know not not run away to a town where there wasn't competition and so there was a starbucks there was a pre opposite and it's a very difficult if anyone knows that site it's very difficult site and we almost didn't do it because the configuration almost didn't work we raised a little bit of money from friends and family um and put a some money in from our ourselves that we'd saved i think i put about 25 000 pounds in that i had saved in the previous sort of four years um henry did the same and um then we had what could only be described as an incredibly stressful 12 months uh you know just i remember and henry was almost not being able to breathe with the stress of doing it.

7:39We used to have to walk down Carnaby Street, there was some bollards. And if we had a problem, we would walk from Carnaby Street all the way down Carnaby Street, round the bollards and back. And typically, by the time we got back, we'd have half solved the problem. But I remember thinking, how can it be so difficult to breathe? This is something I've done for years. Problems like what? Well, it might be, I mean, so we were four weeks delayed because the extraction didn't work. And And bless him, there were two rather well-built builders called John. And at the same time the CCTV was going in, this is a true story, because the CCTV went in and we kept delaying the opening, the rumour went round the team that they were part of a reality TV show because they were like, when are we going to open this restaurant?

8:23And they were like, look at the cameras, look at the cameras, the cameras are going in. And then one of the Johns literally got stuck in the extraction and we had to pull him out with his legs. and obviously it's difficult not to laugh but we shouldn't laugh right we shouldn't laugh because it i mean we should laugh because it's funny but we shouldn't laugh because it's it's harsh but you know it's a difficult one but we literally had to pull john out with his wise legs and so those were the sorts of things that were going on all of the time when you're actually trying to do something practical uh and i nearly said but that would be swearing things happen things happen all the time yeah can you remember when you finally did open them what was that like that feeling and could you remember the first thing what was the original menu what were the first stuff you were selling it was quite a simple menu it was um tapas so meze rice and wraps and it was chicken aioli chili chicken lamb shish moroccan meatballs and you could sort of have them in a wrap or with rice or as by itself and then a superfood salad uh that actually became the superfood salad that everyone seemed to be inspired by and maybe one soup that was basically it and maybe we should go back to that simplicity i don't know how conscious were you at the time how much of it was coincidence luck that that sort of trend that real storm of people wanting to eat greener to know where their stuff had come from the the sourcing of their products was coming right at the moment yeah where you were launching weren't they as well they were at the episode were you conscious of that as you were opening was it a deliberate strategy or did those two things just kind of coalesce it's interesting isn't it that the television got invented almost in the same week in two different continents without without either people knowing that they were invented the television there is something in the air sometimes isn't there you might call it energetically culturally that means that people are feeling that a change is required it's almost like there's this pressure builds up and then suddenly there's an earthquake because the tipping point is reached that society wants to move on to something and i think we were just part of that um semi-consciously part of that that movement and that's why people were shining a light on traditional fast food which actually hasn't gone away at all has it really has not gone away but there were you know authors there were nutritionists there were people who were in that kind of alternative movement really you know the sort of anita roddick people that wanted to do the body shop yeah exactly founder of the body shop uh people that are done cranks so this kind of good food was you know in sort of sustainable farming circles or in nutrition circles there was a coalescing that something needed to change in the mainstream and so we fast forward a little bit what is it 15 16 years or so and you decide to sell why i was a minority shareholder i didn't have board control anymore it's often a feature of a business where you have a capital intensive balance sheet where you've had to take on equity in order to grow physically by new restaurants and invest in new restaurants.

11:24So I had 10 % plus about 5 % management options. So I felt that Leon wasn't mine. I wasn't I didn't have enough control of its destiny. I had two principal sets of shareholders, both wonderful sets of shareholders, but I would have to go and recommend a strategy to one shareholder or the other. And I said, for me, it's like a captain of a ship having to recommend to turn left or right to a secret room full of people downstairs in the ship somewhere and so for me with my character I felt that having a an alignment of responsibility and freedom where the accountability you have you also have the freedom to pull the levers to deliver what you're expected to do as a CEO my character is such that I prefer having broad control of a business rather than having to recommend going to the states or recommend a slightly adjust to the concept.

12:21And even though those investors are absolutely brilliant investors, I feel that it is actually often healthier for there to be a greater alignment of control and power in a business and authority aligned with the responsibilities that you have to deliver outcomes. That's just the way I worked. separately I you know it was we were we'd been affected by Covid we were offered an amount of money that made sense I think for the for the shareholders and I felt it was my responsibility given I was a minority to recommend that we did we do that deal so I felt I had that responsibility it's still some moment isn't it though to sell a business named after you named after your own father yeah yeah after my father definitely I mean it was emotional and it's probably what clearly what led me to come back I had to almost not go to a Leon to because it was sometimes a bit painful so I I almost thought god if Leon expands I'm not gonna have to emigrate but um yes I think it was it was painful emotionally painful because you didn't like what was happening straight away or painful just because you weren't part of it it was painful because I felt that the life that I had after Leon lacked that community and the camaraderie that I really enjoyed at Leon there was a great there's a we know don't we that you know the people that really live the longest aren't necessarily the ones that have omega-3 fatty acid or you know medium chain triglycerides they're the ones that have purpose and the ones that have community positive community and relationships and having purpose with those people is really what drives longevity because it drives human satisfaction and it drives psychological physiological spiritual emotional health and so i think i missed that you know i was i was at home i was playing a little bit too much online chess and my rating was i was stalling and um and i was doing projects but none of them had that kind of that camaraderie that i felt at leon with with 2 000 people you know a part of that journey.

14:26I guess given that you're back this is a slightly obvious question but did you regret going then? Do you know what I didn't because of the structure of the me being a minority I felt that I needed to do something where I had board control so I I knew it was a regret but it wasn't a regret that I'd made the wrong decision it was a regret that there were some downsides to having to make that decision. Brings us to today doesn't it you come back at a pretty sticky time. It's a sticky time for lots of reasons isn't it i mean sticky time for the government for the country sticky time for the industry sticky time for leon yeah but coming back to a business not good sticky no exactly you know heading into administration why i mean why why not just wave it goodbye and come up with a different idea or sort of phoenix it into something else i mean i remember what someone once said a guy called mike michael markovitz said to me the sign of a good brand is one that people would miss if it wasn't there.

15:27And there was so much, speaking to people, it was clear there was so much residual goodwill for the brand and that people wanted it to be good again. When you say that, what do you think it's lost and what are you trying to bring back in there? I think it's lost. I can explain how this is manifested, but I think it's lost chutzpah leadership and confidence. and that is manifested in a lack of clarity about what it wants the menu to be. It leads to less warm, less intimate, smaller welcomes in the restaurants and it leads to, I think, a lack of fundamental purpose because what's happened really is I think, I know people talk about this Alice in Wonderland inversion that we seem to be living in, where values are in the wrong order.

16:21For me, Leon, and this is no criticism of the people that bought it, because what happened was that Mosin and Zuba Issa bought it, and then Leon became an Asda business. Those businesses are typically run for money. And my really strong belief, validated, I think, by the Leon experience, is that when you run a business for money, certainly a business like Leon, you end up making less money if you focus on soul or the doubt which i can come back to or love whatever you want to call it purpose then purpose then product then business model then people then customer and then economics the economics become good practically what does that look like in what you do then so number one i need to reassert um a purpose that becomes a real purpose because if you if you have a pretend purpose like businesses do the businesses that are fundamentally about money they meet at some golf club and have a management meeting and they create a fake purpose right if that purpose is becomes a real purpose and in our case we do want to make it easy for everyone to eat brackets and live well then that starts to drive everything that we do it drives when we encourage people to eat what they what we encourage them to eat the different types of you know are you keto friendly are you fruit mrs fruit and fiber are you someone that just wants you know um a decent balanced diet full of good fats and gut health it starts to drive everything that you do if you are truly um purpose driven and you say that about purpose i mean and ideas and values are those people still out there because it does feel like doesn't it that that you know we started talking about that didn't we that you caught a moment now in everything not just in food but in you know esg is a sort of dirty word of political football isn't it right across business now are those people still there the short answer is as long as there's one of them i will serve them uh that's the longer answer is when i brought it back when we did the administration we had a flurry of emails from people i could not believe the number of emails that we were getting from people saying please i loved leon i loved what it stood for i love what it did for me please bring it back to what it is so i don't have sitting here the data that says they represent 30 40 50 percent of total what i do know is that you know i received 800 emails to my personal inbox when we bought it back from people who were so excited some of those emailers those commenters though they're going to be disappointed aren't they you were talking to the guardian before christmas saying leon should be niche not on every high street you're going to shrink quite considerably presumably yes and my thinking is that i need three channels i would by the way i would love to have more restaurants what's stopping us having more restaurants is the 36p in the pound of every pound that goes to the government that we take and the negative 10p that goes to us so if the government changes its incredibly toxic tax regime that's impacting our industry.

19:36Is this business rates you're talking about? Or are you talking about employee taxes? It's everything. It's everything. I mean, so you go to a supermarket, you buy something, you don't pay VAT. You go to Leon and you sit in Leon, you pay 20 % VAT. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that you have business rates that were 4 % of sales. and they're now 8 % to 10 % of sales. You have national insurance that's now gone up an extra 3 % of sales. In our industry, you only ever made 3 % profit after depreciation and after head office costs. So if your business rates go from 4 % to 8 % or 10 % and the national insurance is added to 3%, everyone starts losing money.

20:19So the only people that are going to survive are those selling crap food. Crap isn't a swear word, is it? Anyway, my mum used to say it was. Crap food that's not very good quality because that's the only way that these restaurants are going to be able to survive. So I will only have as many restaurants as I can have given the fact that this is not a market. We are still fundamentally, sorry to say, in a kind of feudal structure where most of Britain, most of London is owned by five entities. It's not the market that is making something like Leon difficult. It is the incredibly high upward only rents where the legislation is entirely driven by the landlords and the 36p in every pound that goes to the government.

21:04And that is so that's not the market. If the market was left to its own devices and, you know, property was went up and down like every other asset class does in the world. Gold isn't upward only. Wheat isn't upward only. No other asset class is upward only. The only reason it's upward own is it suits the landlords. And there was almost no other industry in which 36p in every pound goes to the government. It's insane. And I know the chance of the exchequer that initially way back put them up. I don't think they did any analysis of the industry to even understand what they were doing. I don't think they do that work.

21:42I've never seen any evidence that they do that work. does this new Leon look like just a city-based just a London-based Leon though the good news is we have a great partnership with Road Chef so for transport for service stations you're actually going to see that expand so when people are on the go you're going to see that you're going to see that more airports through our franchise partners HMS Host you're going to see me want to initially concentrate in London because it just makes sense for training I can do it all in person and if someone doesn't turn up for work, I can move someone over. I can focus my media on London.

22:20So initially it's going to be London plus service stations plus train stations plus airports. But I will... Don't airports take quite a big cut from you as well though or charge you a lot? They do, they do. It's something like 30 % or 32 % goes to the airport. So literally your margins can be 2 % of sales. So what's the point in being there? Marketing, basically. The point in airports is that even though it's a small percentage, airports tend to be quite high revenue. So that 2 % just about makes it worthwhile because you might be doing two or three times the revenue in that airport than you might in a high street location.

23:02So in absolute terms, that 2 % is worth the same as a 6 % on the high street, if that makes sense. So what's the sense then? And have you got a kind of rough number in your head of the total number of stores that you'll have? I think that, well, can I just explain one thing? The answer I think probably is about 100, right, to be honest, 100 to 200. However, Leon is not, in my thinking, it's not just a restaurant business. We have to recognize the fact that we have a growing and healthy grocery business. and I do want to do a direct-to-consumer business where we're taking our food and we're sending it to people's houses.

23:41Sort of like meal kits? I would say almost more like finished meals rather than just kits. I think something that you can literally just heat and have three minutes later, ten minutes later if it's in an oven, rather than a whole, oh, look, a tiny little bit of packaging. So like a healthy ready meal almost. Exactly, exactly. And almost like it will have come straight from our kitchens. so the idea is that I can stock up for the week I can for my family I can have you know instead of instead of you batch cooking Leon will batch cook for you so we will give you a you know a beautiful chicken lemon and olive tagine a lamb and rhubarb koresh some sort of lovely meal that you can have you know if you're knackered which most people are all the time you know you can have ready in five minutes so that's that's the sort of idea direct to houses rattle through some trends in a moment with you as well but just one last one then on the administration at the moment suppliers where do your suppliers sit on all of that none of the suppliers are compromised they knew that we were going to go into administration they're very supportive none of them are going to be compromised financially in any way they're all going to be fully paid so suppliers are very happy and you mentioned landlords what about them as well landlords probably less happy although So we're working with most of the landlords and a lot of the landlords are incredibly supportive.

25:01I was speaking to the landlord of Iconaby Street one the other day. He said, I completely understand. It makes complete sense what you've done. I'm really pleasantly surprised, almost shocked by the amount of support that we have had for the administration, even for many landlords. There are probably a couple where we've exited where they would have liked to have kept us. But I'm sure those landlords will find a concept or a brand, a company, a restaurant that suits that location. So the support for the administration has been incredibly strong. That's interesting. A trend that's changed in the sort of time of you coming back.

25:38And that's changed a lot in retail as well, isn't it? It's not just for food as well. So that's clearly one challenge ahead. for the food industry, full stop, the emergence of fat jabs, particularly for the Monjaros, the Wagovis, particularly for someone at the kind of healthy end as well. So Greg's talking about this the other day, saying they were putting it down to its customers, not coming in for sausage rolls. If your customers, your core customer, is, I would have a guess, probably more health conscious already than a classic Greg's customer, right? Is that a challenge? How much of that is a challenge?

26:11Do you see that as something that could, I don't know, take your customers away from you? Funnily enough, my wife, Katie, she said six months ago, if you did do Leon, I think there's a big opportunity for you to cater for the fat jab. Is that what we call them? What do we call them these days? I was going to say, probably not weight loss jabs. No, no, no, weight loss. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I did it first, so don't worry. Sorry, we call them that. Weight loss jabs, whatever we call them. And I think there is an opportunity for any brand. I think Marks and Spencers have responded to it quite well already.

26:40I think there's definitely an opportunity for Leon type food, which is often typically made with good fats, not bad fats, low sugar, not high sugar, lots of great flavoured with herbs and spices. We're actually seeing that the type of food that we enjoy eating at Leon and we used to enjoy serving and we increasingly enjoy serving now is actually the sort of food that people on weight loss jabs want to eat. So for example, your direct to consumer stuff, would it make you think about, I don't know, the portion sizes in that, for example? Yes, definitely. Definitely. I think that's right. And we need to understand, we need to, I'm sure it's developing.

27:18I think that one of the challenges with weight loss jabs is that people, and a friend of mine is a, does gastric bypass and he, all the, he was, he was an imperial and a lot of the data that initially the weight loss jabs were based on were trying to mimic some of the metabolic results of a gastric bypass. and he says that his view is very strongly that we have a problem with people not being able to make enough muscle with these weight loss jabs and so things like can we help people get enough protein and help their body maintain their muscle mass is just as important as calories i think that's what some of us we have a nutritional and scientific advisory panel and that's what they're advising us that we might need to support people on protein not just on fats and calories Does it throw down a pricing challenge?

28:09Because even though people are having their appetite suppressed, presumably still, if a smaller portion of your product turns up still at a higher price, their brain still goes, their brain is still working right and goes, well, that's a bit of a rip off. That's half the size it was. Well, you know, it's a great question. I think people are increasingly realizing that it's – well, not everybody. Some people are realizing that they do want to spend their money on good ingredients. and I think unfortunately we are seeing a bifurcation we are seeing some people who are spending more of their money on food and they actually enjoy spending and are comfortable spending a bit more proportion and of course we have a whole bunch of people who who are financially so stretched that for which that isn't possible I do think we need to basically make sure that everybody is catered for so the Brazilian black bean I do deliberately develop because legumes is a good way of giving people nutrition, flavor and protein without actually having to go to the kind of prices of red meat, for example.

29:17So I think we do have to, as a brand, realize and remember we were always about the best food for the most people. We were not about posh food, posh fast food for posh people. That was never our intention. In fact, Allegra, she was very clear, as were we, her mission was the best food for the most people. So I think we mustn't be an elite London brand, even though strategically at the moment London and organisationally London is a good place to embed ourselves. You leading that then. In terms of the other former members of the team, any of them coming back? Henry, Allegra? Henry is doing a really great job of, A, helping the government on the national food strategy, and B, he has his own company called Bramble, which is a sort of consultancy and a private equity or VC firm to support good food businesses around, I think, both obesity and farming under the environment.

30:15And he's doing well. He's doing really well. So I don't think he has time to come back to Leon. I also think that sometimes in a real turnaround situation, it's good to have one pilot or one captain. And I think Henry and I both acknowledge that. Allegra may well come back. I texted her yesterday, you know, and she said in an interview the other day, something like, you know, I'm not back, but I'm not not coming back or something like that. So are you doing a bit of persuading? Well, I think we're both keen, actually, for Allegra to participate. She came to a tasting that we did the other day.

30:48she bought some of her her food innovation there were about 30 chefs that we had working on that day allegra very sweetly came along and showed us her wares in a beautiful way uh so it was great that'd be a boost right wouldn't it to the next chapters i think it would be great to have a involved she's an absolutely have you have you met allegra i've not no allegra is when it comes down to a for the next hurricane they should definitely use allegra when it comes around to to the start of the alphabet again. Allegra is the most powerful hurricane with the most incredible potential energy. And it would be incredible to have that energy applied at Leon again.

31:26And it already is in the background. But yeah, I mean, Henry, the other thing is, I mean, I think right now, Leon probably needs one decision maker. It doesn't need a committee at the moment. It needs me to listen intensely to lots of views. But I think it probably needs one decision maker at the moment. So if you've not got your sort of former co-pilot to go for those walks around the bollards bollars with anymore yes how are you relaxing we've got wind of a bit of your music we've seen a couple of your music videos recently is that relaxation is that passion it was a fantastic dance your sort of version of the macarena in one of them oh my god oh my god i didn't even learn that very well did i so do you know what i absolutely love music i'm very very lucky that the guy i do it with is a guy called dave calhoun he's uh rick wakeman's guitarist he played brian may in bohemian rhapsody he's brian may's favorite guitarist and he and i write music i the good news is i'm slightly more on the lyric side but he does allow me to try and sing bad melodies over his brilliant riffs but he clearly is the main sort of musical talent he credits me with adding value because i don't know anything about music sometimes i'm like why can't we do that he's like yeah i suppose we could do that so uh yeah so it's return of the human i absolutely love it it was definitely in the four years i wasn't involved in leon one of the things i spent a lot of my time on and the i don't know whether anyone has tried writing music probably ais is probably not bad either but it's whilst humans are still good at still better than ai writing music it's it's a fun thing to do i'd recommend it to anybody uh even if you don't play an instrument to give it a go.

33:06Well, here's my go at my audition for the Radio 1 breakfast show. Here's a bit of John. I always want to be somewhere that I am not. Somewhere I am not.

33:24It's like I'm sitting in the sun and you are sitting in the shade. I'm feeling far too hot and anxious. But you are cool and unafraid.

33:37I tend to get things mixed up quite a lot.

33:44They say this is the challenge when you have ADHD.

33:50It's got a bit of Mike Skinner in the streets in there, isn't it? Do you know what? Someone did say that. I mean, I'm probably nowhere near as cool as them. But ADHD, a big part of your life then as well? Well, it turns out that it is. I mean, looking back on it, it is. I mean, given the number of projects that I do or my sort of slight tendency to never switch off. And I went once, someone said, I think you should get tested or diagnosed to see whether you've got ADHD. And I turned up and I was like, excuse me, is this so-and-so, so-and-so? And I was 10 minutes late and I was dropping bags. And as I went in, the psychiatrist sort of like held the door open with his finger, let me go in and said, I think we've done our diagnosis, haven't we?

34:36And it turns out, looking back on it, it probably has been a factor of my life. But, you know, what they do is they sit there and to make you feel better, they say, oh, you know, Leonardo da Vinci probably had ADHD. And you're like, oh, yes, yes. Oh, that's me, that is. Yeah, just like Leonardo da Vinci. So, look, I think it can be called high functioning sometimes, But I know it has an effect on my behavior. It has an effect on my sometimes I can be a bit I can be a bit reactive. I can probably be a bit stressed sometimes. And I think that it comes from that character type that was subsequently more formally diagnosed by the psychiatrist as ADHD.