Stephen Fry | Extraordinary Life Stories

17:32John Reynolds:That's memory. And a lot of cab drivers, therefore, teach themselves as Italian or the form book for racing because they realise that their brain has all this power. And the problem with so much in our education system is that it's a way of proving to people their levels of inadequacy. You can't do that, you can't do that, you fail that. A lot of judgement isn't it? A lot of judgement.

18:02Stephen Fry:A bit like the careers. I just didn't show an interest, I didn't know what to ask. So I was actually just sort of...

18:08John Reynolds:Very few children are told you are extraordinary. And yet they all are. Of course some seem more extraordinary because they're quicker at learning, their language facilities are better or they do maths problems more quickly. and that is somehow privileged and they go in a fast stream and they're well away. But that's not the point. The point is everybody has an extraordinary thing between their ears that is capable of amazing and remarkable.

18:36Stephen Fry:And how do you encourage that? Because you're an inspiration. You are someone that has just decided I'm going to do it and done it. And there's plenty of things I'm sure that haven't worked out for you but we all know the ones that have. And I make that point that to be able to try to do something and to succeed you're going to fail along the way. But you have then found the things that you excel in. And what I sort of love about when you first sort of answered that question was that when I asked you, what have you not done? You're doing the things you love and you're doing the things we all want you to do and you're really good at, which goes back to that contentment.

19:08Stephen Fry:So actually, I love that. Hence being happy right now. But to someone that could be at a young stage of their life or even at a sort of career crossroads now, what do they do to just get off these rails and actually kind of go okay because there's a fear isn't there there's a fear of the unknown which you would say is a good thing but how do you take those steps to kind of go okay I'm going to break tradition I'm going to what would you do well I

19:37John Reynolds:suppose the first thing is to recognize the power of your mind to do remarkable things we favor the kind of things that I like and the kind of things that I find not easy, but welcoming, like literature and art and language. And so if people don't have that, they think, oh, I've got a disadvantage because I don't express myself as well as some people. And but look at what you can do. And when you do express yourself, for example, I mean, there are a lot of young people who know an astonishing amount about cars, their football club, fashion, things that are looked down on perhaps because they're not intellectual and academic, but actually are an example of how with enthusiasm and passion for the subject it's no work to learn about it.

20:33John Reynolds:So I've spoken to children, girls who are really fascinated by by fashion or boys who are fascinated and they will talk about all these things I know nothing about I say how do you know all that and they say well just do and of course they do because that's exactly how the mind works and for some boys it might be football they'll be able to tell you everything about Layton Orient. You go, wow, how do you know this? Again, they just, you know, or it might be Second World War claims. Yeah.

21:10Stephen Fry:There's been a disconnect though, isn't it? And I think social media might be joining us up more now in a positive way actually, where the person knows everything about Layton Orient has no context of how to make that kind of the ikigai, making money out of it and feeling fulfilled and sharing as well as sort of ultimately enduring their passion yes i think social media has given a lot of people an outlet sometimes not for the best you know i think mr beast is the most watched on youtube and you're like ah you know but point is that it's resonated with other people who have then chosen to subscribe and watch so i think what you're saying which i really like is that actually people have got a passion and the knowledge for something just try and maybe then work, how you can build that into a business, how you could monetize that and make that more of an opportunity rather than just doing a nine to five employment?

22:00Yeah, I think there are, I mean, the most crucial element, I compare it to food.

22:08John Reynolds:Why would someone be overweight? Because they eat a lot, because they're hungry, because they're greedy, as I am. Why do people know a lot? For the same reason. They're greedy. for it the word we use for that is curiosity or passion yeah that you are driven towards something by your passion and sometimes what you're driven towards is not on the list of sensible things according to society yeah you are what you feed your mind yeah so yeah and so you end up instead at a call center or in an office where you're not really passionately engaged with it because that seems the sensible thing to do, whereas your heart is somewhere else.

22:52John Reynolds:And it's very easy for people like us to say, follow your heart, because, you know, but the person has probably got something like a student loan or goodness knows what else. And it's not...

23:04Stephen Fry:The pressure of school fees or whatever it is, the mortgage. Yeah, I get that. But I think if you're naturally trying to aspire to do that, and you're actually, you have that thought process, then at least you're on the right trajectory and you'll work towards it almost like a manifesting. If you're just on those rails and you're just like, this is my life and that will be your life. And that's probably the key message here is that actually just start thinking, start looking because then you'll open the doors, the doors will open before you. I really liked it when you talked about being out in the...

23:34Stephen Fry:I really power it. I live in the New Forest. I spend a lot of time in London. And you're so right. I'll be out for a walk and Kingfisher goes by or whatever. Bloody Packham. Yeah, exactly. It's that world, right? And then I come into Oxford Street, just as you say, but I think you need to immerse yourself into diverse situations to cope with that. Because you can see some people that come to London for the first time, it's just like, it's too much. I've always known it that way. But what works for you with all the things you've done and still do for your kind of mental fitness, if you like, as well as, it sounds like walking is a bit more humorous.

24:09Stephen Fry:Is that where you get a lot of your stimulation as well as the physical exercise?

24:12John Reynolds:enormously yes absolutely right you you there was a painter early 20th century medical Paul clay K L double E and he said something that I absolutely love when he was asked how he got an idea for a painting he said I take a line for a walk and and that's how most of my ideas come in the literal sense go for a walk but also you take an idea for a walk. You walk the idea as you walk. You stretch it. So whether it's a story, you think of a person, someone who hates their brother. Oh, what would they do? And then you just, you know, you keep going with it. And you think, no, that's not going anywhere.

24:58John Reynolds:So you go for another walk with another idea. Because you're getting natural endorphins. You're away from everything else. And then your creativity. You've got green. You've got the seasons. I mean, even in the middle of London, and I like to walk in Regents Park a lot, even though, which is a planned garden sort of park, it's hardly a wilderness. But nonetheless, you see the seasons come and go, and it's just moving. It's very, very the older I get, the more emotionally stirred I am by the sight of Blossom coming out at spring springtime. You know, I just find it beautiful. And actually, I don't know if you remember the lockdown, But when it began in March, it turned into a spring that was particularly gorgeous.

25:42John Reynolds:Yes. I think it probably kept the country going.

25:45Stephen Fry:I think in the UK, right? Because it was just incredible weather.

25:47John Reynolds:And obviously not everyone was able to go out for a walk, but it was usually possible, even if it's just the streets of a city where there are trees, you were able to watch things and hear the birds, you know. And I think that kept a lot of people sane and reminded people that that simple act of walking in nature and engaging with nature. Yeah, I think it has a cascade of good.

26:13Stephen Fry:Definitely. And talking about COVID, talking about mental health. You know, when I talked to so many different people about the fact that I was going to be talking to you. And there was there were all sorts of things that were talked about. but one of the things that just was a constant and consistent message was authenticity and bravery, particularly just about the fact that, talking about mental health, you've just been a trailblazer and open about your own mental health at all times. Was that a deliberate decision or did you almost have a crisis and because you're so well-known, well-liked and in that public eye, you just felt this is what I do and maybe it helps others?

26:49Was there a conscious thought there?

26:51John Reynolds:Yeah, and I think there is a sense that keeping things secret is bad for oneself, as well as sort of morally perhaps wrong, and being open is a good way to live. And I'd already experienced that with what now seems like a very minor thing almost, I'm glad to say, but at the time was quite tricky in the public eye, and that was coming out sexuality. And that was in the 80s, I was still in my 20s, I think. that so many people kept that bottom line at that time. Yes, they did, and it was very rare. I think Ian McKellen was about the only actor who was known to be gay, who actually was open about it.

27:30John Reynolds:Surprisingly rare. And so when, you know, I had a mental health crisis in the early 90s, a really serious one, and started to come to terms with it and investigated myself and spoke to doctors and then made the decision that I would make this film about my particular condition, bipolar disorder. It seemed a natural thing to do, and I was very surprised by the fact that it hadn't really been done and that no one had... I mean, there'd been books. People had written books. Darkness Visible was a remarkable book about mental health, and Redfield Jamison, an American academic, really extraordinary.

28:16John Reynolds:She's written about it. She's also one of the most important doctors in America. So she is both a practising clinician and someone on very, very serious bipolar disorder. She's written really well on it in the 80s and 90s and continues to. But otherwise there wasn't much out there, especially in the public accessible way. There were books, yes, but there wasn't someone talking about it. So it just happened to time well with the age. So in the early part of this century, I made this two-part film, and I got this extraordinary response from people, and even from doctors, saying, you know, thank you, and this is important.

29:02John Reynolds:And I was asked to be an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, which is an amazing honour, and president of Mind, the mental health charity. And so I found myself. But it's really important to state that I'm not an expert. I'm not a doctor. It's not for me to tell people how to help their mental health, especially if it's serious, because it can be very serious. At the time we're talking to each other, one of my heroes from 20 years ago in cricket, Graham Thorpe, a fantastic batsman, he died two days ago. and his family released the news yesterday that he took his own life. And I'd known that he had suffered from depression.

29:45John Reynolds:And one has to remember that in an age where we talk a lot about mental health and mindfulness and anxiety, that there is a difference between the way to think of it is like our physical health. The technical terms are exogenous and endogenous, But we'll call them from outside and from inside. If you're physically ill from inside, like I was a few years ago, I had prostate cancer that comes from inside. But then last year, I walked off stage, not knowing there was a six foot drop onto concrete, and I broke my leg and my hips. And now that came from outside. That wasn't ill health from the inside.

30:31It was what's known as trauma.

30:34John Reynolds:It's a physical trauma. and you go to a hospital and they fix your leg. It happened from outside. The cancer happened from inside. Now, with mental health, it's the same thing. You can have a mental health crisis that comes from outside. It might come from bullying, abuse, something in your past, something that's happened to you, something that's currently happening to you, something that's caused and triggered a sense of unwellness. Or, as in my case, and as in the case of Grant Thorpe, before we talk about the cricket. You can be born, it seems, with a condition, what is known in medicine as a chronic condition.

31:15John Reynolds:Chronic doesn't mean serious, it means it's permanent. It's there all the time, through time, chronic, like chronology. And it gets misused a lot, because, oh, I've got a chronic headache. No, you haven't. You've got an acute headache, that's completely different. And so asthma, diabetes, especially type 1 diabetes, these are chronic diseases that people have, that they live with. Bipolar disorder is similarly a chronic condition that you are born with. It may be genetic, it may be caused by some trauma that you're unaware of, but it's not in that sense exogenous, coming from the outside. It is something that people have.

31:58John Reynolds:schizoaffective disorders that is a similar it's a chronic condition now these are separate from i get anxiety because i'm worried about my exams i'm not looking down on people who say they've got anxiety because of their exam it's serious and and it can cause all kinds of unhappiness but it is very different from having essentially a disease uh from having bipolar disorder or or schizo disorder or, you know, or chronic anxiety, a real sense of it. So. It's particularly important, I think, that people try and think about whatever mental health issue that is affecting them and think about whether it is something that is like not being physically fit or comes from outside, that you can cope with yourself by trying to help your mental fitness or is it actually something that needs a doctor yes because one of the things you have to say is that mental ill health can be so serious really it can ruin lives people with severe bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder can end up losing their families.

33:18John Reynolds:It's very common not to be diagnosed with it and to feel these swings in mood that are huge in the case of bipolar disorder from high, manic high to terrible lows. And the easiest thing if you don't know that you've actually got this condition is to try and regulate it with alcohol or drugs. Because they can bring you down a bit if you're too high, or they can bring you up a bit if you're too low. Which only makes it worse. Yeah, it's known as self-medication. And obviously it brings its own problems, addiction, and families lose patience with people, and they end up on the street. And I've been into hospitals in the East End of London where you watch the mental health teams every night dealing with the most tragic and horrific cases of mental health disaster.

34:18John Reynolds:And this is the sharp end. You know, this is the equivalent of a cancer ward. You know, this is serious, life-threatening. People in this condition don't live long lives. It has a high, as doctors would say, morbidity rate. So to confuse that, and again, you mustn't think that I'm looking down on people who have less of a problem than that. But it's important to remember that distinction, that the real mental health crisis that is affecting us, and it can also mean that dangerous people are out in the public, as we know, as we know from Nottingham and Southport, God knows, you know, I mean, the most horrific possibilities when people's mental health is not attended to properly.

35:03John Reynolds:And obviously that's both political and structural issue that has to be looked at. On top of that, there is the crisis that is affecting particularly young people who have grown up, grown up with social media, grown up with the bullying and the sense of inadequacy, the sense of loneliness and frustration and failure and fear that comes in this whole world of social media.

35:31Stephen Fry:I'm in the trenches with that I've got 13 and 14 year old daughters and the number one search engine for mental health questions now is TikTok and I didn't even mean to interrupt you because I'm learning so much from you and sharing this is a privilege but you talk sense and you come from a position of knowledge and experience there are I believe over 80 % of the mental health answers if you like on TikTok are from influencers that are more or less being paid by TikTok to give out information which is misleading It's wrong. Yeah, that is such a fact. And then you wonder why we're in this crisis.

36:03Stephen Fry:I think the NHS, sorry, not the NHS, the police call-outs, the majority of the police call-outs now are dealing with mental health-related issues. They're not trained to do that. They're coming out and it's just a mental health basket case or whatever it might be. And then they're there going, oh, it's a crisis, right?

36:21John Reynolds:And I sometimes am asked to go to schools and talk about things. And it can be about books or sometimes AI, which is a subject I'm very interested in, or mental health and sometimes in the Q &A's afterwards. And a few, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I used to, you know, it became apparent that there's this epidemic of self-harm amongst teenagers, girls and boys, cutting themselves, hurting themselves. And I don't remember this at school at all when I was young. I can't remember a single person in my school. Me neither. And I first thought, well, you know, you go to a comprehensive in Brent Cross, say, London, and it's quite an area of some disadvantage, a lot of, you know, pretty, pretty tough situations.

37:13John Reynolds:And the kids there, maybe they don't have a father, maybe there's drugs in the family, maybe there's abuse and all kinds and that isn't support and nurture maybe that causes it but I discovered it literally literally Eton College the most exclusive and so I and I was talking there once and I said nice but obviously you probably don't have that issue of self-harm and they went Of course we bloody do. Oh, God, yes. In their Italian accents. And B-Dales was a very exclusive school as well. And we were talking about them. Lots of it. So it isn't just kids who come from obvious disadvantaged families.

37:59John Reynolds:The way that the sort of image I put of it is, as we know, all our rivers and streams in the country are polluted. A lot of our air is polluted. But our culture, our society is polluted. And the children are breathing the pollution of social media and of this idea of what it is to be a success. This absolutely skewed version of it, both physically, this pout and sucked in cheekbones look for girls, which is so revolting. Well, that alone filters. Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation. and for boys all kinds of confusion about who they are, what they're supposed to be. Yeah, it's a confusing time for man in particular, right?

38:44John Reynolds:Very, very confusing. And of course some people rise to the top. As you say, there are these influences, these people. How can I never be one of them? And there is the bullying and the sense of... I mean, you literally read about children taking their own lives or attempting to take their own life because they didn't get any likes on something that they posted.

39:08Stephen Fry:Which is a judgment. So the whole thing is about comparison. And it's pollution. It's a kind of pollution of young people. And it's only that there's no... They're breathing bad air, as it were. There's no restrictions. No. My point being, use your terminology, pollution. It's not like we're turning it off, not like we're recognising it. And actually someone I've filled with on this program, Professor Dan Nicolau, Harvard professor. I'm not sure if you were there, I'm sure you are. You probably actually can elaborate. The studies he's doing showing that inflammation, physical inflammation, caused by doom scrolling, and comparison particularly in adolescent girls.

39:46Stephen Fry:Her hair's nicer than mine. She's got a lovely boyfriend. The whole, all this comparison. And then they go to sleep with that on the head. so that whole thing is manifesting into negative. That physical inflammation is equivalent to the same as smoking. Yes. And the physical inflammation from leukemia, that is terrifying.

40:05John Reynolds:It's two words. It was two words. It started with Facebook, and they all do it. Simply two words that the algorithm is made to chase. Maximise engagement. Now, that sounds like an innocent thing. You've got a service like Facebook, and we're going back to 2007, 8, 9, 10, it's suddenly realizing, gosh, 100 million, 200 million, 300 million, look how many people are now members of this. And we can advertise them. We can, how do we get most people like, let's maximize engagement. So people, the more they use it, the more they watch it. To be kind to Zucker and everyone else, maybe they didn't see that by saying maximize engagement, it would find something extraordinary, that the way that the algorithm discovered you maximized engagement was anger, outrage, fear, all negative, powerfully negative emotions.

40:59John Reynolds:That's what drives you. If they had said maximise happiness, the algorithm would have found something completely different. It would have been less money for the advertising because they wanted to maximise engagement. Engagement means looking at adverts. It means clickbait. Which creates the addiction. And what we didn't know about our species was that what we, it's outrage and fury and resentment that maximises our engagement. That's what makes us look far more. And we're all guilty of it. I mean, we vaguely knew it through newspaper headlines that shock, scandal, disgrace is going to catch our eye more than, you know, more than fluffy niceness.

41:44John Reynolds:So we're all part of this. and none of us is exempt, as it were, and we get sucked into that doom scrolling. But we should be aware of the fact that it can be changed, and it has to be. There has to be a noise made. Schools are beginning to ban phones. That's a good start to get unplugged. I mean, if you and I were 15 now, I'm sure we would look at kids in the playground at break, you know, on their TikTok and their Snapchat and think, how lame. And we would say, you know, in the 1960s, they used to have these machines called duplicators. Let's do a magazine using a duplicate. We won't use any computers at all.

42:27John Reynolds:And let's only use real old fashioned phones with dialed. You know, I mean, I had a godson who was on holiday with his girlfriend in this old house in Cornwall. And it had a phone in it. And he he called me on his mobile. there was no signal in this house so he walked in his girlfriend walked to a pub about two miles away where there was a signal and he called me and said how do you work the phone because it doesn't seem to work that there's one in the house but it's one with the dialing yeah and I said well you know dial the number you can put your finger in it he said yeah I've got that I dial the number and then I pick up the thing and there's there's nothing there I said no no no okay you have to pick up the you have to pick it up first and listen to a thing called the dial turn and said what and and i was laughing but i thought why would he know um but what incredible fun if you were 15 to live an off you know an off-grid life an unplugged life using all these fabulous old tools you would be so you'd be the coolest people in the home and i had this idea i was going to write a TV series about it in which this kid comes to a school and completely changes the school and it starts with the teacher saying and I'll need those essays in my inbox by six this evening and he puts his up and said what's your address and he says well it's so-and-so at the school no I mean where do you live?

43:58John Reynolds:Some of them tell me where I live. Well how do I give you my essay? Did you put it in my inbox well yeah where's your your post box said no your email oh I don't have email what no I don't have email you don't have a computer no just whittle it oh we have a scheme if your parents can't afford to buy no my parents quite rich actually but I I just don't have a computer well you must have one you're telling me I have to have a computer and why can't I just write my essay and give it to you and anyway they all stare at this kid you know think who is this ridiculous child. And so the teacher said, well, all right, then you'll have to have hand me physically.

44:38John Reynolds:Which is what we all did. Which we all did in our generation, of course. But, and then he starts, yeah, he starts basically influencing everybody. And I think this is actually quite a fun way to move. It's really enjoyable. And I think it just takes that, it would just be a little, the balance would just shift. We've come to a tipping point now, where the uncoolest thing in the world is Snapchat and Instagram and TikTok. And they are just boring and we know they're harmful, but they're also vapid and shallow and silly.

45:10Stephen Fry:They achieve nothing. Snapchat is nuts because you can see, going back to my two daughters, that they feel the need to keep these threads going. So they'll spend time replying to people just to keep what they call a chat. And some of them are a year old. And for me, it's almost I was like, as a dad, should I just be taking the phones off them out of principle to break that? So that you actually have...

45:35John Reynolds:You want them to discover how uncool it is.

45:39Stephen Fry:And I think going back to that then is like we get them out for bike rides. We're doing stuff. We go and do things for big chunks of time where they are just removed from it. Jonathan Haight.

45:50John Reynolds:Have you read him? Yeah. Yeah. The Coddling of the American Mind. He's got a new one, but that point about bicycle rides. is children now just don't go out. No, they don't. There's this terrible fear that is a transmissible disease, fear as well. When a parent is afraid for their child, the children pick up on it just as dogs and horses do. It's something we do as animals. And not to let children go out on bicycle rides together, not to let them just experience, because you think there are monsters out there. There are fewer sexual crimes on strangers than now than there have ever been. In fact, I mean, but we read about them and they're awful.

46:34John Reynolds:Don't get me wrong. You've got a train of children not to take sweets from strangers and all the rest of it. But the chances of them being abused are always from within their own family and from someone who's known very, very well. And it's a group and they're sensible. Let them go. Let them travel. Let them go on buses on their own. let them let them go around and and and enjoy and find out what life is that's exactly what i am now

46:56Stephen Fry:encouraging them yes and the first time that lily went to go to um southampton on the train she she went the wrong way and she got on the wrong time and we've been on the train with them as parents but because she's always had me to say this is where we're going she's on autopilot probably on tick-tock um that sounds terrible and then when she's done it for herself she didn't like that experience she only went one stop in the wrong direction and went to that but she won't do that again. You need to, I think the expression is like helicopter parenting. And I have been guilty in younger years of trying to mollycoddle and smooth out.

47:28Stephen Fry:And then I think with that maturity and perspective where some of my best character traits and what's made me a better, more resilient person has come from when things haven't gone well. And I've needed to learn it for myself. So I'm probably flipping the narrative, I'm probably quite hard on the girls now, but it's like, it's that whole, like, I'm coming in a bit late saying, work it out for yourself. And I think that's really helping, within reason. Yeah, learn to swim in the currents of the world. But something you touched on, and I'm going to probably make you smile now, but this sort of, you mentioned Gen Z, Gen Y and Alpha and so on, but anyone I speak to sort of younger than 20, and I mentioned, I'm going to be talking to you, Harry Potter.

48:11Stephen Fry:I've not been on that. I've watched all the films, but I never became, I guess, like a super fan. But it's just, it's a national treasure. And so are you. The marriage is amazing. But my question to you, which was smart, is when I first started doing TV stuff, and so when I would listen and watch myself back, and I remember this from a young lad as well, I didn't like the sound of my own voice. I had to get used to that. You have the most beautiful voice. Are you aware of that? Do you have comfort with that and almost pride in it? Because you can be dramatic, you can be comforting, you can, which is why the Harry Potter song is coming to life and it needed, right?

48:49Stephen Fry:But I can't imagine anyone else.

48:51John Reynolds:Well, that's very good of you. And I mean, I suppose it is true. I've said this before, and it always sounds like a kind of false modesty or fishing for a compliment or something. But I was so bad at everything at school that that was that you wanted to be good at. I mean, I was smart academically, but that wasn't how you were judged or how you, you know, I couldn't swim until I was like 12 or something embarrassing. I couldn't basically run and without colliding with a tree or tripping over the white lines on the tennis court. You know, I mean, it was just hopeless. Couldn't catch a ball. I was the kind of uncoordinated person who clapped their hands at it instead of, you know, just cool, catching it and plucking it from the air like an athletic person.

49:40John Reynolds:I couldn't sing, couldn't dance, I couldn't paint or draw. So I just was you and I discovered that the one thing I could do was tell a story and use language. And I used to write compositions and stories and things. There was a boarding school I was sent away very young age to a boarding school. It wasn't Hogwarts. But I was seven years old so it was very young and you arrive in this place and as I say discovered I was hopeless and was laughed at for being you know I won't use the word that was used let's say uncoordinated but you can imagine the words that we used to just how hopeless I was falling over all the time and feeling clumsy and dreadful and not good at anything that the boys were supposed to be good at until I there was a music lesson and the teacher wrote the word orchestra up on the board and she was going to talk about the various sections of the orchestra and I shouted out cart horse and she said excuse me and and I'd seen in the word orchestra that it was an anagram of cart horse just the letters came out it's just the thing I have I'm not unique in that you see anagrams and things you just there's something about words and language that deep within me has that you know I have an instinct and a love and a curiosity and a passion for words and I discovered that was my thing and so with Latin and then I was taught Greek and so I you know um and in the dormitories at night I would read stories um either ones I'd made up myself or you know thrillers you know Alistair Maclean was big at the time so I'd read Where He Goes Dare or you know whatever the books were and people would just beg you know another chapter another chapter I'm literally under bed with torch and it never occurred to me that this would ever be a way of earning a living exactly this goes back to following the passion it does doesn't it and and it was but it for me it was just the only thing I could do in a way the only thing would allow me to be popular yeah because I would never be on picture of team in the sport or anything like that that.

51:54John Reynolds:So so I'd always had this sense that I could tell stories and read. And I had a natural, easy enough way of being able to read so that people wanted to listen. When the I mean, when the Harry Potter thing came along, it was my my agent said, oh, there's a children's story. She'd only written one book, so she wasn't famous. No one had heard of them. She said, apparently it's very good. I'll send it to you. And in those days, that meant the paper, not an attachment with email. Yes, not a PDF. Old school. Yeah, exactly. How it should be. And this thing arrived, and it was adult length, you know, 80 ,000-odd words.

52:34John Reynolds:And I thought it was going to be a children's story, which is... Oh, the cat smiled and the dog said, I love you. The end. That's a children's story. Then I started reading it, and my goodness. I thought, this is good fun. So I went along to the studio three weeks later and there was Joe Rowling who had written it. And she was a big fan of the series I did with Hugh Laurie, a bit of Ryan Laurie. And so she started talking about that. And I very touched and told her that I really liked the book. And when we finished it, I said, that was damn good. I really hope it does well. She said, thank you.

53:12John Reynolds:I said, actually, I just finished a second one. Oh, it's going to be a series. And she said, yeah. And I said, good for you. Well, she says I was that patronising and I hope I wasn't. But yeah, it was an extraordinary thing to watch this transformation of her life and this phenomenon flowering, blossoming in a way that hadn't happened since probably Charles Dickens, you know, when his books exploded in the Victorian world in their own way. it was remarkable and each launch became a bigger and bigger event and by the fourth one it was the news at six and the news at ten were saying the new Harry Potter book is being published and will come out and they'll show children queuing outside bookshops and so on and this had never happened before what a great thing to be it was it was remarkable how again sees that the marriage

54:10Stephen Fry:is just synonymous but that was that is you know i think of black adder i think of countless things and blue whale just it's so many things but that you know harry potter wow it's um yeah it's it's

54:23John Reynolds:it is lovely i mean people obviously are at the most soft and vulnerable and one hopes happy in the safe their safe place when they're listening to a story yes it's very primal so people are very charming to me sometimes because they're the warmth the respect I get from the people I've

54:44Stephen Fry:been talking to knowing I'm talking talking to you today has been massive and actually you know if you use the scenario here of what you did there with Harry Potter narration it's been a phenomenal success so much of what you have done has been successful sitting here now how do you define success?

55:02John Reynolds:Well, there is worldly success and one recognises that. Obviously, it's clear that certain things you do haven't taken very well, you know, a film that nobody saw, or there's a TV series you did that lots of people still remember and talk about, like Black Hat or something. So, you know, those are successes in worldly terms. And then there are the things that you yourself are secretly rather proud of and pleased that many people may not have known or noticed particularly and you think I did well in that I'm really I'm pleased with that or call that TV series or that documentary I mean I still we're all children my mother I'm happy to say thriving and so part of it is like when your parents are proud of you you it really makes a difference are we all striving for that deep down ultimately yeah my father died a few years ago but um he was a very brilliant man i always thought he was a bit like Sherlock Holmes because he was very intellectual very reasoning and logical and scientific and he smoked a pipe and was thin so he was quite Sherlock Holmesy um and when i started out after university doing comedy he would go yes yes and And then I would do something else like a book or a documentary.

56:28John Reynolds:Now, that was good. And I would think, oh, wow, I pleased him. Amazing. But but he wasn't that interested in sketch comedy. I thought it was slightly beneath me, I think. So and you'll never lose that sense of pleasing or not pleasing a parent. Yeah. But it's it's like you you with your children. and I don't have children, but I have 13 godchildren and I'm deeply fond of them. And you realise with parents and with you yourself and these children is that it doesn't matter how clever they are, how skilled they are at football or playing the violin or anything. It's when you if you're picking them up from school and you see you see them with a group of other children laughing and playing and think that other children like them.

57:27John Reynolds:They get on well with other children and we might see another child sitting alone on the step and think, oh, my goodness, that poor child. Heartbreaking. What's going on with that child? Why isn't that child being? Why aren't they playing? but it you realize it you want a child to be liked it sounds like such a small thing no no there's a scene in a wonderful Western called Shenandoah and Doug McClure not a very famous actor these days but he was in his time it approaches the great James Stewart to ask permission to marry James to its daughter, James Stewart, sitting in the porch way. It's a sort of Civil War movie.

58:10John Reynolds:And he's making himself a green cigar. And he says, you know, I want to marry Laura, whatever her name is. He says, do you like her? He says, well, gee, I love her. Well, that's not what I asked. He said, do you like her? It's not the same thing at all. And he thinks. Yes, sir, I do like it. Well, that's a good thing. You can marry it. And I remember thinking that's actually very profound. It is. You've got to like, to be liked, to like people. Love is overwhelming and marvellous and powerful, everything that it is, but liking is a still small voice that matters all the way through life.

58:56Stephen Fry:To the point where, actually, just really relevant to this whole conversation, in social media desperately really like you said the worst case scenario when a child doesn't even get likes but it's the same way but social media

59:07John Reynolds:can't like people because it doesn't know them no the reason anybody is liked is because they're known you see them for who they are and you like it

59:17Stephen Fry:that's why the question from the film was so yeah heartfelt because it's like okay I do love her and love can be for so many different reasons emotion it can be an attraction yeah actually do you like spending time with this person are you going to go and walk through the fields together and have dinner together. It's really, I love that. Yeah, it's great. You are so amazing to talk with. We're going to run out of time. Yes, I'm sorry. But yeah, just no, not at all. No, I meant as in, in context of there's so many things now I'd love to ask even, even with things that I still haven't. But just making time to talk with me today has been an absolute pleasure.

59:51Stephen Fry:I've enjoyed it. You make it very easy. Such a privilege to talk with you. Thank you, Stephen. Well, good to.

59:55John Reynolds:Carry on with this marvellous work you do.

59:57Stephen Fry:Oh, thank you. And thank you for supporting. It's just an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, John. Cheers.

1:00:28Stephen Fry:your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.