E113 - Lessons & Stories From the Most Successful Male Model Ever | David Gandy

0:28People want to have the benefits of everything. and then come back doing something big. The people I respect now, the Daniel Day-Lewises, the Daniel Craigs, their personal lives I know nothing about. So many people expect to have it all in their early 20s. They just look at social media, they compare their lives to everyone else's, and they're just like, oh, why do I not have that? It's like, look, if you sort yourself out, just keep your head in the game, the best years will be ahead of you. Everyone wakes up, grabs their phones, you go, why is that person doing that? Why is that person got that?

0:54Straight away, your stress levels, your anger levels are here, and that you're taking it throughout the day. What was the closest that you came to just being like, ah, screw this? Like, this is it. This is the one I wanted. And as I was literally turning the door to get out, they went, cancel you. And I just sat down and went, I can't do this anymore. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I just want to mention that this podcast is brought to you by me and everything that I have built to help you guys level up. If you want to transform your physique, build muscle, lose body fat, build strength, then you have the thirst app.

1:24This has everything inside that you could possibly need to get yourself in shape. to hold yourself accountable as well. I also have the digital playbook, which is a step-by-step guide to help you guys build a following, monetize the following, and also build a strong personal brand. This is everything which I have done over the past nearly 10 years to allow myself to live a life of financial freedom and also geographical freedom. I can basically do whatever I want. Life is good. And I also have my newsletter, which has been revamped, where I'll share exclusive podcast insights, my raw thoughts on business, fitness, and much, much more.

2:00So if you're interested about any of those, check out the description. You'll find the links to all of them. Let's get cracking with the episode. Dave Gandy, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, sir. I'm very excited for today's episode. I don't know why. I think it's just because when I was younger, as a teenager, I'd see some of your campaigns and the pictures. Thanks, mate. That makes me feel very old now. Yeah, when I was five years old. yeah it's been a while now in the industry coming up to 25 years now wow when did you uh start originally nearly um started when i was 21 nearly yeah i was late 21 nearly 22 and if you didn't have the that's quite late into the industry though yeah like 21 22 back in the day that's um i mean everyone even for a guy it's less late hmm yeah even for guys especially these days i think we're getting uh younger and younger i think with guys it's slightly different girls are a lot younger um something i don't really agree with like that you know some of the girls can start very very early at sort of like 14 15 yeah that's pushing it a little bit but the guys yeah i mean they were i mean they are scouting scouting guys and bringing them in at sort of 16 17 quite quite young too young i think personally but that's just my point.

3:14And with you, did you have the intention of ever going down this route or did it just happen? Oh God, no, no, no, no. Was put into a competition on TV for my housemate at university. I was intrigued by the fashion industry is all I could say but I didn't know anything more about it than anyone else really. It definitely wasn't like an aspirational thing to say you want to be a model and actually lots of the guys there's lots of big guys, when I say big guys, lots of the guys who were doing very well at the time, the older guys would never say they were in modeling. They would say they were in advertising or pretty advertising or marketing.

3:58Well, yeah, imagine you come in conversation and someone says, oh, what do you do for a living? You're like, go male model. Male model. It was kind of like the Zoolander days as well, so you kind of didn't really want to do that. That was about the only sort of, I suppose, tangible element people had to the fashion industry was almost that that point was kind of male modeling is is zoolander yeah and there's quite a few of them don't get me wrong i mean i know all those characters are slightly based on i swear people that are in the industry and agents and stuff like that um it's very comical but yeah that was it so no one really admitted to it i always did i mean i you know not to the point i went around saying i'm a male model but said i went i'm in fashion i'm a model um and i don't think guys had at all but now it's a very sort of aspirational thing to do and of course you now have your um digital influences of course that that is what they are doing in uh for want of a better word yeah so it's become quite an aspirational thing to be to be into fashion there was a point in my life where i was i think i was 21 or 22 i hadn't really figured out what it was that i wanted to do at that point this is kind of when instagram was on the rise i'd got myself in pretty good shape and there was i was in newcastle at the time and i was starting to get a few invitations to go down to london for castings right so i was like hmm i mean at the time i was happy to get any money because i have literally no money so it's like if i just have to take some pictures then i'll happily do that yeah but i remember after doing a couple of the castings they would always say the same thing and they were like you're too big like you you're if you want to potentially go down this route you're gonna need to lose a bit of size were you the size you are now or you i was pretty big yeah yeah okay because this was i started training when i was 17 so you got to think i'd already i got four five years of consistent training under me already and the chest i mean the chest is already pretty uh yeah i had to ease off me to want to start i on the training um ease off as into the fact of um pretty a bit like yourself you're pushing yourself constantly and i don't quite think sometimes you're actually seeing the size you are getting because it's in increments um but i think as well because you're you're going to be well i guess it depends on the type of modeling you're doing but you're going to be wearing clothes a lot of the time and what you wear and how the clothes would fit on your body are probably not going to sit the same on 90 to 99 % of the population or male population.

6:36Like if I, if I wear a t-shirt like this, for example, it looks a certain way. Whereas someone with another body shape, they put the same t-shirt on. It looks very different. The same with the models we use at Wellwear, you know, I cannot do the fitting for my own brand because as the people in um uh our product girl says she just literally takes the piss out of my fit she went no one is a 31 32 waisted with a 42 inch chest like and i kind of forget um and sometimes i'm trying you know i'm designing something like this fits perfectly for me she went won't fit perfectly for a while so it was quickly i had to learn i was never making clothes for me i was making clothes for the other sort of you know 75 80 90 of the population of course like something like you exactly the same it would fit exactly how i would want it but then another model would come in um we would put it on him and it would be loose and we'd be bagging it wouldn't look as good um so we always constantly sort of uh we're we're very aware we don't we don't sort of base this on how i wear things um but yeah i mean to I was the same.

7:44Even before I was training as heavily, I didn't fit into anything because the average sample size was a 30-inch waist and a 36, maybe a 38-inch chest. I was always sort of bigger than that anyway. So, of course, I used to go in and try back in the androgynous days and probably still don't fit sample sizes. that I would go and try and I wouldn't be able to get trousers on. Yeah. Just about past my knee and then they would go, nope, okay. And so everyone would, you know, they said, you've got to get smaller, you've got to get smaller. I didn't, I just got bigger. I was going to get smaller at the end of the day.

8:27You'd be still, you still got the jobs though. Well, you get to a certain point where the clothes are then fitted to you or made for you or of course, instead of sample sizes being made in 38, they're made into a 40 or 42 to fit you. not all the time doesn't always happen um but no that that's kind of how it changes and i did a lot of kind of like commercial work and of course that is um you know not not high fashion it's always a high fashion that the sample size was a lot smaller um but i got bigger but to a to a point then when i was training and to the point where if they put a suit on you you know your lats your biceps it looks good if you're standing still not doing anything yeah as soon as you sit down everything you know it just goes and you then realize you've got to you got too big and you've got to be aware of that that yes i want to be a certain size and i always felt better i always trained for me i didn't train for the industry i always trained how i wanted to you know how i felt the best yeah um but then i knew i had to um take it easy not doing too much you know you can't your traps are coming up and that that kind of affects everything the biggest things and your shoulders um and i would do you know i would um be a tailor's nightmare you know sometimes as well like we're going to tailor a suit for you and of course then you might have been heavy training for two months and they would measured you two months later back and they're like they always say that to me like your back like you've suddenly gone wide i'm like oh yeah i've been training for two months i get sized up and they're like okay it's done just don't change like don't get any smaller or bigger yeah and there's periods of my training where i'll just smash my legs for whatever reason and then i still fit into the trousers anymore yeah yeah yeah but that's i think is a um a competitive edge so when you have um i don't know if you're a competitive person not i am i i i didn't think i was but then i think people i would describe myself and then they're like yeah you're competitive i'm like oh okay i guess i am yeah and i think you probably are with i don't know why i'm with myself in the gym so my idea of everything is to keep pushing i can never really keep to something you know because i would just do as you know you do lighter weights more perhaps and yeah you don't get too big and i go yeah i'll do that and so you know i'll go down to pushing a 38 kilogram sort of bench pressure but like yeah okay do 10 days of i'm not quite bored of this now yeah i wonder if i can do a 42 so i do a 42 and then i do a 44 and then you start getting bigger yeah um it's quite easy to do yeah but i think the older i've got it's kind of you know taught me to calm down a little bit now there's more into the longevity yes well not anti-aging but just i i did i think you would find out the hardware there's no massive point in pushing very very heavy weights anymore especially when you get to a certain age yeah um and it is all about form and yeah all those things that we should have been doing in our in my 20s you know stretching the absolute lack of stretching

11:38so yeah um but yeah but i'm you know kind of paying the price for stuff as well you know i've got a dist degeneration which I have to manage. How do you do that? I mean, to be honest mate, probably the combination of Wild Party. Probably just a while down the gym mate, to be honest, yeah, probably pushing too much down the gym or pulling too much down the gym back. Car racing accidents, skiing accidents, power boating, generally just life yeah i suppose it's funny because when i used to ski when i was 21 i was i was doing all the the wildest stuff that i could try and do yeah going for all these jumps and things like that and then as i get a little bit older i'm like yeah i'll just stay on peace and just yes gradually my and my and my way down the path so yeah we used to be doing the double probably but like so the double black diamonds again pushing yourself i think there is a side to it to see if you can do it but it's not much fun if you're a great skier you can um yeah my skiing now is and i used to be up at like you know with friends first lift up last lift back just skiing permanently all day i'm like what was the fun in that now yeah now i'm kind of like a 10 a.m and about 12 a.m i'm in the in the restaurant having something nice to drink a glass of rose a much better way of skiing i think yeah yeah did you have this uh competitiveness when you were working as model in the early days like do you think like oh i've got competitive of everything I have to like rein it in I mean I can't even be we can't have family Christmas games I can host the family Christmas games or I can't participate because I hate losing to anyone or anything that sounds like the most terrible thing in the world the only person the only people I don't mind losing to are my children like of anything and I think and that is to the point because you want them to be better than you in some ways so So yeah, I've always had that competitive edge made of absolutely everything I would try and make into a race or a competition or something else.

13:49Was there any times when that would work against you or not in your favor?

14:00I mean, probably. I can't think of any times it would have done. I'm a bad loser but I'm a gentleman when I lose if you want to get that point I'm not a bad loser if someone's better than you I always thought that was good I then need to see where you need to go where I need to take myself to live and sometimes with certain things I played cricket to quite a decent level and then you just got to a certain point where you saw the other guys coming in and how fast they were you know I was bowling at 78 they were bowling at you know sort of 86 um and then you go i'm not sure if i can i can't get any faster yeah and then you know you're you're cast away and the other one sort of take you take over um but i guess it's good to have that drive when you're in business the driving competitive side you know my um commitment i suppose um to everything i do people like saying i don't know your dedication to to just literally hitting the gym and still training after all these years and getting in shape and i don't really look at it like that and so what i'm gonna be sure about yourself and i've always sort of said to other people there's times when i always say to people if they're looking to train or looking to then then um make sure you you kind of like either book a 10k or a bicycle race or something it's something that you have to aim for um but i've just got that perseverance i don't need anything particularly aimed for it's always nice you know if i've got a campaign to anything to really push myself but the perseverance really and commitment and dedication is just something i've done for every part of my career um and it wasn't ever a sacrifice for me and that that you know the training and the work and everything the work ethic is just part of everyday life where a lot of people would go i'm good i'm training and i'll train for it and then they'll fall off again or i just don't see it like that i'm like oh no you change and then you're just training for i can't see a point where i can't not change yeah and i'm sorry not train ever really was it was there anything that you would do in the lead up to a particular campaign or a shoot or something but i mean the first light blue is probably most people probably know me for i was in training but i look back at that and don't think i was in that greater shape at all um was that in capri by the way i was in capri yeah 2006 yeah um so i would look at that and I sort of critiqued myself from that, just like, you weren't in.

16:26But I wasn't expecting it in some ways. You know, I was training and then I was still bigger and trained more than most guys because everyone went down the androgynous or skinny look at that time. So there was a smaller pool to fish from for brands. So when we went back to shoot those campaigns, I was then, like, I knew we were shooting in two months' time, so I was then in training for it and got in going in better shape. Because I always get asked, Mike, I'm going on holiday or I need to look good in like one month or two months. And I'd always recommend there's certain things that you can do to help yourself visually look better or look a little bit leaner.

17:10But obviously if you're fat to begin with, there's not much you can do in a two-month period. No. But there's definitely certain things that you can do to give yourself the appearance of looking a little bit leaner. and even like visually to to look slightly different i don't know if you ever did something like this but if i knew i had a shoot coming up or i'm filming something i would really clean up my diet and definitely make sure you know the night before i wouldn't eat anything too late because sometimes if you like i remember i did a recent video collaboration with mike oherd we're doing a workout video we were also filming a full day of eating video yeah and the night before i'd like so much meat and like all like this delicious food but it was just i overate yeah i went to bed like felt horrible woke up and my face was like all puffy and i was like yeah wow that looked pretty horrendous today yeah i learned i mean it was hard when you know back in the day i was on sort of 90 odd flights a year so a lot of like your food consumption is on planes and you know the only thing about plane food is you can't actually really taste much yeah when you're up in the air so they put a lot of salt and stuff so you would you know it would taste yeah great but you were i remember getting off and you were just from flying you were just bloated from sort and um that was quite a hard thing to manage at times but no the only thing i have done is sort depletion and i've just done it for the underwear campaign which is shot so i don't do it to extreme i literally do one day of drinking water getting all the sort out and then one day one day of dehydration when we're shooting um that's that's what i've really do but i think you i think subconsciously you know don't you've got something coming up so you're learning what what to do do it's um and you know people say do you know i eat carbs i eat by a lot of carbohydrates um but good carbohydrates and fats i eat lots of fats saturated fats but you know you're going into a shoot people go oh you say you must be just on proteins and everything else i'm like no no the couple of days before shoot i'm in on to you know um onto carbs because it pumps you up a bit you've got to make sure your muscles do well the thing is as well which is quite interesting things people just assume you look a certain way because you were just born like that so that you look like that regardless of what you do you're always gonna look like that which is not the case like you you have to look after yourself you have to eat the right things you have to exercise you have to sleep yeah you have to do all these things to help yourself look the best that you can possibly but there are so many sort of people that's not there were stereotypical ways they think they have to get fit.

19:35And I always try and buck the trend on that. People go, oh, you must just not eat anything. I said, if you're a, I'm 14 and a half stone, if you're a 14 and a half stone guy and I'm training, I've got to keep on with my calories. Otherwise I'm, I shrink basically. So I've got to keep that protein content, that calorie content, the carbohydrate content. So I'm kind of, I forget to eat. Sometimes my problem is having to eat enough or having to consume enough proteins and everything I need. and people don't quite see it that way they're just there's an automatic it's like carbs are bad that's not the way to go and you know proteins and then if you ever suggest i mean we ever heard if you used to go we do you have a protein shake do you and they go well i don't look like arnold schwarzenegger and you go i don't want to get too big yeah i don't get too as if it's you just drink protein shakes but i look at it certainly i always sort of say to people go within you know within your limits as well so i train for 40 minutes a day um that's about it now i will look at people and everything god you know they're like yourself like they're in amazing shape but i know the commitment that you are putting in to get in that shape and i probably haven't got the commitment as much as like you and so when somebody's got yeah but i haven't got the commitment to do that if it was for something then yes i could push myself and do it um i wonder how the commitment will change when I have kids.

20:52That's always an interesting what I think about. That's fine. You can just use bench press and get two and make sure, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because my brother's just had a kid. She's going to be turning one year old very soon. Okay. And it has been interesting to observe how life has changed. Everything's changing. Yeah. I hate real kids. Yeah, everything does. Hence the home gym worked with Techno. Yeah, absolutely. To get the gym there. Yeah, so you're not... You're always training there. around yeah it's one of those things you know even if you're when you know i'm wearing with the kids the kids are in bed i don't have to go out to the gym the gym is there um and that's where i try i go to another just very sort of small cheap gym to um have the equipment like that i don't have in the gym yeah everything is there and that's changed my way of working out because it's a lot more uh free weights a lot less machines a lot more body weights and stuff so i've had to sort of change it up what i think has been the better for it mate to be honest yeah um well you're looking good okay well thank you i'm not i mean i had a i had a thing called golf elbow ironically i hate golf i can't play um but yeah it's the inner part of my elbow and i had to to to get in shape it it started to uh give me some grief before training for the underwear you can't stop yeah so i was literally training through it taking painkillers to be able to train through it and you i couldn't stuck there was no way i couldn't just go sorry guys i'm you know let's ai my body and um let's let's do it that way and so i just carried on through and of course i just really really hurt it how was the business going i actually do you know what i bought some of the uh the underwear charcoal underwear what for from when from the website okay we haven't done underwear yet no not underwear sorry the pajamas pajamas yeah sorry pajamas yeah um but i got it delivered to my brother's house and it got delivered today so okay i was gonna rock up wearing it and be like i'm a bit worried looking at the size of you how we're gonna fit you in those well they look like they were they are stretchy yeah yeah yeah they've got a lot of stretch and comfort in them but you have to let me know so uh yeah unfortunately we can't when we go make sizes for you not with those biceps um yes it's getting very well so it's not easy it's the hardest thing i've ever done I have a clothing company.

23:10It's more so swimwear. Okay. So basically, I came up with the idea of putting together this swimwear that would fit people like me. So I train legs. I wanted to show my legs off. But anytime I was looking for swim shorts, they were either too long or they just didn't look the way I wanted them to look. So the thing about shorts is if when they're quite baggy, it gives off the appearance that your legs are not actually that big which is obviously for people like me not very good so i wanted more like not too tight but something tighter shorter that would show off the leg and also look good um so i'd i launched that 2019 um and as you probably experienced this bit of a wake up call uh to have a business in clothing it's uh so many people have this idea of like oh i'm going to start my own clothing brand and it's like okay do you know what you're getting yourself in someone came up to me other day so i was thinking i started my own clothing man i was waiting can i give advice don't and they were like is it that bad i was like sorry even you know i'm always speaking to um very experienced like people in retail at the moment guys who own so many brands and they're still like that clothing is a bloody nightmare yeah and you're like yeah it kind of is um but yeah we're doing okay i mean i had i did david gandy with mns you know for autographs so there was a i mean we were doing 15 to 20 million for five years solidly for that so we did okay so i came off the back of that but even even that it is um you know when you've got the the mns backing the mns database you know the spark kind of everything to to market to people That's fine.

24:55You're suddenly starting from you. You've got to get them. And it's becoming so expensive online to acquire customers. So we're all trying to think of different things to do. But yes, it's still what people knew me for for M &S was the t-shirts, the pajamas, the loungewear, the swim shorts. And they're still trusting me to this day and this game where we can't make enough t-shirts, or pajamas, or loungewear at the moment. But it's tough. And there's a lot of competition, of course. Yeah. i think a lot of the guys some people who come on my podcast what i've noticed is those that are successful with it it is that it's like their main focus you can't have like a little side project of trying to grow a clothing business you have you can do it you have to do it properly and i think what i've learned is for me and for what i have all these other things going on it makes much more sense for me to partner up with somebody who knows the industry understands the game i don't know if you've done that if it's just all you or if you partner up with people but to have somebody who has skin in the game they understand how the fashion industry works and the more so like the logistics and everything the factories everything yeah you can help if you get someone who i think um and they have leverage and they in the factories and financing and all those different areas i think that's good when you go into the factories and you're making the same factors as you know people who are making a thousand times more than you then you're not just laughing you're not the priority of course then charging more for making less of course so people don't understand the same factors are a constant challenge so yeah that that would be the um the more sensible way of time we've got something we've got a lot of experience within within the crew but um within the team at well but we're still very small we're a team of five or six it's not big but um no we are hearing you know i'm in the fashion uh trade and still working for brands and still among people that uh start throwing brands and stuff and um yeah there's a lot of you know sort of brands that belong into names within the industry that are now administration and and don't don't don't exist anymore there's lots of brands going bust um you know bell staff have just been bought again so there's you know i'm still i i'm very respectful it's it's a tough a tough tough industry at the moment especially with sort of consumer confidence and and uh you know not people having as much money as they as they used to but going forward kind of looking at that because of what i've always said is that we rival the you know the top brands with quality um and style but with i've always said we'll make it attainable and that was my one thing with with uh with my brand is that with mns you know we were doing t-shirts for 20 pounds i couldn't venture away from that too much now with you know 35 plus but yeah you know if you look at the quality of what you know who we're going against you know sort of like sunspur and everything else they're oh yeah they're pretty good twice or three times what we are yeah and And that's, but I said, I just can't do that to the loyal customers already.

28:03How can I sell a t-shirt of 20 pounds and ask them to go and buy it for 80? So that's why we've kept it as low as we can. But including sort of, you know, started just after COVID, then we had increases in the prices of everything, then the cost of living. So Brexit, apart from that, it's been really smooth running rates. It's been really nice, relaxing three and a half years. How do you balance it between obviously doing your own brand and then still deciding to collaborate with other brands? I mean, not really ever competing with your own brand. I mean, that's the thing. So you wouldn't work with another brand that would be selling similar products?

28:44Yeah, okay. There's plenty of categories. I mean, still have the relationships. You know, stuff like, I mean, it's not clothing, but Technogym, Jaguar, Land Rover. they're not going to affect you at all and actually can collaborate on stuff we did all the clothing for the Jaguar race team the Formula E team we did all their travel sets and yeah and then tailoring suiting never probably well I say probably I always start off saying I'm never going to do it because I'm not a tailor but you look freaking good in the suit though Yeah, but that's why I work with Hackett. And there's another project I've just signed for, so that would be Zooter and Taylor and again.

29:29So yeah, there's plenty of categories to get your teeth into. I imagine you're still on good terms with M &S, though. Very good terms with M &S. Yeah, M &S, but we didn't have a bad breakup or anything like that. I've been working with me for getting on eight, nine years. We did six years, including the runoff period of David Gandy. um, autograph. But in that time as well, I was also the tailoring ambassador. I was the face of collections. I did David Gandhi autograph. I was doing a lot of the creative. I mean, it was, that was all time consuming and I couldn't, you know, really do anything else.

30:06And, and six years ago, MNS, uh, were very different company to, to who they are today. They've got a new, you know, CEOing called, um, Stuart Manching, who has turned around the food. He's turned around the women, you know, the women's clothing. Um, and now he's working on the men's and he has, you know he's done an extraordinary job with mns and you're not sure you're not here but you see the trajectory of where that where they are going yeah um i don't think anyone wants to see mns not succeed i think everyone's got a bit of a soft spot for mns and they wanted to do well and it is a great company at the moment so yeah i've i've always kept in contact with them you know column who used to design my stuff there still sort of writing an email saying how's it going and um yeah yeah and i always had this thought process whereby if if i was working with other brands what if one day they would decide that i'm not what's hot anymore or i'm not the look and i'm very disposable then what happens after that and particularly in my industry and even though the fitness industry has changed over time back in the day i would work with other brands and collaborate with them but then i think well okay now i look good maybe now i'm like quite relevant but what happens when i get older like what happens if maybe you know i don't have that look anymore i start to you know things start to sag a little bit they'll just be like okay cool i'm just gonna find the new the the new young guy who's hot on the block then what happens after that and i think from a very early age that that scenario would kind of scare me a little bit so from very early on I was like well I want I want to have my own thing whereby you know I don't feel like I have to follow any specific rules or behave in a certain way I can just be who I am and you know people don't like it they don't like it if they do they do yeah yeah no you are you're you're I've constantly thrown away has been at the the mercy of other brands of course but then I've never looked at anything I always take a positivity so when you come out of something so if I'm so associated with Dolce you've got so many brands that because i'm so synonymous with dolce and gabbana they're never going to approach you for projects because you're just like that everyone will just see you as dolce so when something happens like that or mns is you it's scary but you're then planning on your next uh your next move your next you know your next area because there are so many brands out there it's about pitching ideas and getting to know them things that's quite exciting because now there could be an element of going somewhere else and starting that new story and starting that longevity with someone else and that is that next chapter yeah so um but yes i mean i there wasn't there isn't a day when i never thought someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and go and that's it and you don't know you know you're you're hoping they're going to renew the contract um but it but it's difficult and they don't exist like i don't think brands are as loyal anymore i don't think these the contracts of the 10 years the 18 years the longevity because of the world we're living with social media it they just kind of think there's just total um total newness um and no longevity in relationships i think the younger people coming have never experienced that within the brand but what are these big brands look for now is it is of course the luck is going to be part of it but are they now looking at social media following and influence massive they're massively looking at yeah your social numbers um it doesn't really affect me that much in in because i've built my name and the brand yeah you're like your name holds weight so that that can hold weight and that can be an advantage so not necessarily looking at me but of course with any brand personally i think it's a slightly laziness of a brand to do that you're just buying you're just like well we don't worry about the creative or worry about um you know creating this incredible story to then cast the right person into that they're just like who's got the numbers yeah they kind of fit let's fit them into a story or story around them because the and they are just buying those persons number that that those people's engagement but i think brand to be very careful.

34:22I've seen a mistake being made so many times when, and heard mistakes so many times when they've chosen someone, but their following isn't right for the product. You know, they may have a following of young teenagers with no money. Great. That's, there's awareness. You get your brand in front of them, which is, of course, important, and they're not going to buy anything. So, because they haven't got, you know, disposable money. So, you're matching the wrong merchandise, the wrong product at the right, the wrong, pricing point to the wrong people. So that's another factor as well. But we have, I think, we've lost a lot of brilliant creative as well.

35:01I grew up in the fashion history of Mario Testino's and Mariano Vavanko's and Bruce Webber's and Avedon and Steve Meisel. And that's why you had the coffee table books. They were changing fashion. You were in that in that set of like being um amongst those pictures like rankings just ask me can we use that picture we did from my goodness me like probably 15 years ago for one of his books which of course i agreed and then there's you know there's that picture but now we don't have that of course um because it's just such disposable creative everyone's just yep yep next one next one not even looking at something um until something sometimes they do they do stand out i think when someone stands out they've thought about the creative and done very well we try and do that with all the brands why i kind of go on as a sometimes a creative director as well to say because i want to still create you know i still love being part of that process of course that's where we are with ai at the moment i'm going to do an interview tomorrow talking about where ai is coming into fashion because of course you've got guests who have just done something with vogue where the model doesn't exist uh h and m are using ai to create their campaigns was vogue done that vogue do with guests so it was guests was it guest denim guest jeans they had an ai model the model doesn't exist yeah and then i i heard there's quite a few other brands are looking how to do it as well um and it's using people's um excuse me it's using people's image and uh even ai creating a model is probably uh scraping bits from other to create this model so we're kind of fighting we're going to have to fight back a bit again doesn't really impact me but it's going to impact the the younger guys coming into the industry um because brands when you know the first thing they want to do is cut budget so instead of having to take a team of 25 on location to to uh to shoot you know some new creative they just go okay well what can we do and we'll just create it on a computer and it literally does take 10 minutes yeah it's absolutely mad so But you've also got to look at all these teams and all these people that I have with me when I go away on a shoot.

37:19And it's hair and the makeup, the videographer, the digital guys like you have. People don't understand how expensive it is. The team is big. But if you imagine one of those campaigns, you make every one of those people redundant. Yeah. even down to the drivers driving to shoot you know the location itself um the caterers the hair makeup it just it is endless the amount of people you are making i did one in a seychelles that was cheap yeah that was that complete first of all there's no models in seychelles you have to get everybody out there and it's actually not that cheap of a place to do stuff it's quite an expensive place obviously it's an island so that was um from some of the campaigns which i've done i was up there with one of the most expensive ones but look pretty cool though and the thing is whenever i i do a campaign it's it's content so i would do the behind the scenes and it would be part of a vlog of course and you've also got all the socials that can come be put on instagram yeah so that's that's where i think maybe ai can't fully replace the story maybe behind you're right because everything now is behind you've got behind the scenes and then the model and photographer is doing their bts behind the scenes um and you you are creating that um creating that story about the making of it which is sometimes more engaging than the actual campaign itself yeah um so yeah you are writing that but you know when when you can sort of imagine magazines who are in some of the biggest high street brands and they're just all catalogs i think we get catalogs anymore but if you know what i mean like the commercial stuff they're shooting probably every day with a different model um and they're sort of going on a minute instead of shooting every day you know the model was going to use a model for five days to do a work collection in a studio there's no bts we We don't need the story behind it, where they can take the pictures or take the filming of the model in a couple of hours, and then they don't need them anymore.

39:30They just put the clothing on that model. Of course, the model gets paid for a couple of hours, and his or her image is used quite substantially for a lot less pay. That's the other side to it, but I think we need some regulations. What is the pay like now for models versus back in the day. It's, it's, it's, um, I can't, it's one thing I can't really tell you. I, it's a lot less. There's sort of different ways of sort of negotiations as well. For both male and female. Yeah. I mean, again, it's the different higher tiers of, of where you are within the industry. And, um, but what I hear from the, from the younger guys and a lot, you know, a lot of guys had to go off and go and, go and get other jobs, part-time jobs to supplement what they, were doing because the rates were have got so low or were getting so low um so yeah it's but but listen this is it's a you know within the modeling industry the amount of people that actually make a good living some people make a great living but actually make a good living and they and the longevity to have a career of 20 years and that is absolutely tiny so um it's not i think people again perceive that you're in the modeling industry you're making tens of thousands a day and it's all going well and it's simply not the case yeah a few people they would message me i think they were a little bit misunderstood with what it is that i actually did for a living but because they probably looked at my instagram they were just like oh we probably should model something and they were like oh how do i become a model i'm like probably don't want to be a model because i don't know like how lucrative it is it's gonna be for you um so yeah i don't know that's what i was asking like what is it even worth pursuing like if someone has someone who's a young male for example who is maybe you know they're genetically gifted they look a certain way and they think hey i'm gonna be like number one top model yeah what would you tell them it depends what your idea of of success if it is money um for example i can give you when i did my first ever dolce and gabbana campaign this was the apparel campaign not the light blue i got paid 900 euros and i remember i had to have an extra night in a hotel that that they refused to pay for and that cost me 300 dollars so by the time i actually got paid 900 euros paid my agency had something to wait but i probably had 100 quid in my coffee so um but it leads to something that that is all part of the the bigger plan and and um you know that puts you in the in the in the in the focus of the fashion industry because you've done that campaign um it's not always it's not always the way so yes i'm asked the same how do i become model is it luke truth um and i have to you know and when i explain to especially the younger generation now and say look i'll tell you now it took me in 2000 when i started 2006 i got the dolce glite that's five years of graft of you know being denied every you know being laughed at when you're walking in can't fit suits on um just being told you're not right for this you're not right for that casting after casting after casting after casting going to new york going to malign just trying to make something happen that's five years so if you start today if you can imagine five years later you might get something that and that puts a lot of people off when was the closest that you came to just being like oh screw this there was um actually i got booked maybe about three four maybe like sort of four years in um and ralph loren booked me for a job and they went literally right they want you out in the states pack a bag i was like i finally and i loved ralph loren and i was like i've got i've got ralph loren like this is it this is the one i wanted and as i was literally turning the turning the door to get out and they went cancelled you and i just sat down i went i can't i can't do this anymore this is just that's the one that i remember getting to me the worst because it was you know i never got excited about anything until it was like you're out or you're getting on the plane that false hope and then it's just taken away from me yeah that was the worst one we got you know we progressed and got torture because it's like it's it's so uncertain you could massively uncertain it's uh it's it's not for say the faint-hearted but it's not for if you want to know where your money is coming from the right you know your regular payments all these different things it's so you know it's not it's not the business to being yeah kind of whatsoever it's hard quick interruption guys have you noticed how a lot of guests that i've been speaking to on this podcast have taken the leap and built something meaningful for themselves they didn't just think about it or make excuses they took a risk and they made it happen i don't want to hear about why you can't do it and why your situation is different it's exactly why i have created the digital playbook for you this is a step-by-step guide to you building your online presence your social media following and ultimately monetizing that following so you can live a life of freedom both financially and geographically i want to get into a little bit about um personal branding because i feel like that's a very hot topic at the moment everyone's talking about a personal brand i will i have a course to help you with building your personal brand yeah i feel like you've really successfully managed to do that because you're just you're the name itself dave and gandhi is powerful like you you think about it and you just automatically associate all these things with your name but that just doesn't happen by accident like surely there's things which you've done decisions which you've made which has all been part of the strategy to get yourself to that point yeah it's definitely i mean saying no to a lot of things saying no is i always say the most important most important thing of course when we did dolce and and and then all these brands that didn't want you before don't want you now to do stuff and it was quite a pleasure in saying no because my loyalty was then dolce and new brands coming and they were brands before dolce you know massimo duty and these brands i was very very loyal to them and and still are to this day.

45:43So yeah, what you say no to. In this world where everyone, see, I feel a bit of an alien in the world I live in, especially now, is everything has to be photographed, everything has to be on film, everything has to be on social. The main aim of people now is trying to get as much coverage as they can i've never been like that i've always been happy to disappear for a while and then come back with doing something big and then it's pushed quite a lot um and i've always sort of the people i have looked back in history and the people i respect now are the people i don't really know anything about the daniel day lewises the daniel craigs their personal lives I know nothing about and I really like that.

46:38So when they actually do something, I'm intrigued about what they're doing. There's an interview, I'll read it. Maybe in a film, I'll watch it. But you don't know anything else about them. There was this old sort of mystique about, and it was the mystique about fashion, I think, which everyone was the appeal to because everyone had these ideas and these stories and everything to do with the fashion industry, not really knowing, but everyone wanted to be part of it. and the more that the fashion industry has been accessible to people the more the you know the the smoke and mirrors and the more the more the it's all kind of changed a bit and it's not as this mysterious thing that we can't use to have anymore it's weird there's there's some actors who've really gone into social media and i don't think it's necessarily worked in their favor i mean it's it's each their own and i think um but the ones i respect haven't this is why my my private life is still very very you know my daughters and my family no one really knows anything about them we'll talk about them but they'll yeah no one knows what they even particularly look like um that's just being luckily you're with a partner who's not forcing you back why are you not posting no yeah well exactly yeah and and that's something we very much uh agreed on um that that you know that in the day i've always told people even if they're not in the line like i'm like always be very careful about putting your images of children i know you think it's you know for many many years but now the use of ai um because more people don't realize that everything you're putting on social you don't own anymore you don't have those rights to those images um and the use of ai of taking bus and scraping thick you know scraping images and is uh it's all unregulated really at the end of the day i'm like so you've got to be very careful with that but um but i think that's what i've always done and i think people generally knew that anyone i was working for it wasn't i didn't go off and say for a brand i did techno gym you know vitriotics well man i talked about i was on the front of men's health now i couldn't turn around and then you'd see me in a coca-cola advert or a ice cream advert or cigarettes and whatever what would that make sense it would it would it would that was just it wouldn't be logical for me to do that yeah so and i've been offered them but i've always just said that you know i'd have the responsibility for for me not to do that um that's just making a bit of a fall of the consumer where anything you know i'm i when i'm like working for hackett i've never worked for hackett always had a relationship with them never worked for them so when we started talking about i was like this is a genuine relationship that i've liked i've knew jamie hackett for for 20 years and i finally got to work with hackett so it's been lovely progression there on several row everything i was known for Savile Row tailoring British brands was Hackett.

49:33So I thought it was like that next step to start working with them. And that's what we did. And it's been, you know, they sort of got me into start that Savile Row number 14 brand, which has been a great success over the last couple of years. So yes, it's about what you say no to a lot of the time. But the world has changed. Listen, I wouldn't, my format, the way I did it was, we didn't have the internet, we didn't have Instagram um it was very early early days Facebook was the biggest thing so I didn't have the industries of that that medium to work with um and I'm glad I didn't a better time I think uh yeah yeah I mean mate if if there was a big lever over there and you said go and switch off to cancel all social media I think I could I think it would solve a lot of problems in the world um not that I'm saying I don't like anything because I love people pushing the boundaries of stuff so when people have you know um done very well in different means as in they are digital influencers podcasts all these things i haven't done i think people think i'm not going to like them because they perceive i'm in competition with them but i love seeing that i did something different within the game i looked at where the um male models were and saw this glass ceiling and why were we not breaking through that to be on a level terms with the girls with you know with female supermodels so i branded i mean you're saying everyone is talking about that now it's used far too much everyone is a brand a creator a entrepreneur entrepreneurs use way too much um so those words but i you know kind of did it myself but now people are doing it because there is a much more opportunity to get your brand out without having to be part of a major brand and having to do all the marketing and everything along you know and and the media along to it instagram is your media you know and uh tiktok and tiktok i still don't understand but yeah this is best i just yeah it's best to have the team do that absolutely so with with your uh the wellware how much do you want that to be like your brand image versus it you kind of creating something separate because it's something which i have had an issue with sometimes because if you if you're too closely associated with a brand sometimes the success of the brand is very dependent upon you which you ideally don't necessarily want you you want the brand and the business to flourish without you necessarily having to always be there yeah yeah i mean i think generally the idea in the L is to david gandy world where to become its own entity um this is why we still use other models this is why i'm you know we use other model on the website yes i will be in the campaigns sometimes we bring other models into being the campaigns with me and i generally do do that because we're a startup you know i'm i'm hopefully still an asset that sells clothing well and part of the whole creative to do that um and because that creative i mean i i come up with creators sometimes thinking this is not going to work for me we need to cast someone else um which which we've done in the past um so yes it's not as i said before i'm not necessarily designing clothes for me i'm designing clothes that my brand which was david gandy at autograph was known for and our well wear is known for and that's where we where we continue um and that's why we use other models and i want to eventually get to that point um where we are given that opportunity to you know a young guy and we have we've given the opportunity to to young guys marving is very proud of he was a um a young guy that came in and he did probably two or three of our shoots uh and he came in he's quite young quite shy innocent guy came in never took a bad picture i mean he's so so good um and then the funny that he's shy yeah i'm i'm but i'm naturally shy like so i could i can see where you know how how hard that is um and then by the third time he was in he had a couple years under his belt and he had a bit more confidence and growing into a bit more of a man and blue steel was out in full force yeah and then i saw him in the the dolce gabbana he was down the runway i was watching the dolce gabbana show and he wasn't in a in a small pair of pants i literally texted him and went welcome to the the dolce gabbana pant club but I was so proud that we had maybe have been part of to get him there you know because we were bridging pictures and great bits of him to get there and that's what I want to do you know that's other brands did it for me and that's what I would like my brand to do for other guys you're modelling for the new underwear that you've got coming out I am modelling oh yeah it has to be done really that's the last time I probably said that last time but this is the last time yeah it was call it Randy Gandhi.

54:30Randy Gandhi, yeah. We can do a collaboration. I'll have mine Thirsty Thirst and Randy Gandhi and just take over. Mate, you can happily train for it. We'll just put mine on yours. Yeah, I mean saying like training and through that to getting shape for the underwear. How old are you? I'm 35. You're 35. I'm 45. I've got 10 years on you. It gets harder. it gets a lot harder these days well I've got I've got greys creaking through now that's not a welcomed thing that's happening everything else is like I feel like physique wise and strength is good but there's just little signs of aging I don't mind grey I'm looking forward to getting a bit more George Clooney like I've been over the years I think he plays it very well definitely no I think a very disgraced like distinguished guys have this grey so they go salt and pepper and then they go and they look even better.

55:27It's good being a man sometimes. It is. I mean, for the initial years between the age of like 18 to 25, sucks. Can suck a lot of the time. Can suck, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, I say to a lot of young guys, like, look, if you sort yourself out, just keep your head in the game, the best years will be ahead of you. Absolutely. Like, don't, so many people expect to have it all in their early 20s. They just look at social media and compare their lives to everyone else's and they're just like, oh, why do i not have that it's like look you still like you you just get into the game like you can't this is achievable you just gotta yeah i think a lot of people training is a good example is people want to have the benefits of everything of everything they're seeing maybe on social and life but they don't want to have the commitment to have together to do it so when you start talking like going back to modern days right you know like i said to young guys right well imagine five years like this and i tell them they're like oh god like so you imagine i'm not really earning in five years no no not much straight away that's that's not an appealing uh appealing cost um concept to them and training is you know how do you know how do you train i'm sure people ask you people ask me you go i don't know like two years three years of solid training of watching watching a diet but you know being a bit more careful of commitment how many days five days a week maybe six days a week and i guess is that not a pill or is that not you know something you're good no there's not it's commitment you know to this day and and when i tell people that i you know i go home tonight have to cook the dinner with the girls and do their homework put them to bed and at 9 30 i'm then you know have to be in the gym 9 30 well 9 9 30 i'll be in the gym and I come out I won't eat until 10 o 'clock yeah cool yeah and then I'll cook dinner and then and I'm still working you know throughout and then after that it's relax a bit and then the next influx of of work then prepping for tomorrow and comes in and then you get to bed at one and you're up at 6 45 and take the kids to school it's commitment yeah um but it but it's it's it's hard work and I think that's the problem maybe these days is that dedication that people have later.

57:45But I think it's, as you said, if you write it so, on social media, it is in your face of everyone comparing themselves. I don't think I've ever really done that. I think that's one thing I've never done. I've never been on Instagram less or social media less than I am today. Because I realized I've just, I couldn't really see, there is so much information on there. And I wasn't sure if anything what I was actually looking at is now truthful, of course. like is it ai is it not is it created and i get that and it's um it's a lot of rage baiting now rage rage baiting where there's these these posts which are put out which are designed to make people angry so not only does this get more reaction out of people get more of their attention more engagement but it also is there to kind of spread a false message like i've i've been caught up in it a few times where i'll scroll through some things and then there'll be a post or a statement and i get a little bit like makes me angry and i'm like hang on is this even is this true or is this worded in a particular way to get me wound up so a psychiatrist explained it to me well once he said remember the days before social media or even your phones is you coming and you put your maybe your radio on or your music on that you enjoyed that you liked the radio station and it would keep you calm.

59:07It's with the music you like. You're happy. You read a paper, whether you want to read The Sun, The Telegraph, The Guardian, but you're reading it because it's the news you want to read. And generally, it's the same views as yours, and you're laying that information. You might put the TV on and tell you about the news, and it's a channel you probably watch. You're choosing all of those. And then social media comes on, which everyone wakes up, grabs their phones, and straight away, even if they're not probably... um, designed to create anger, you might be wound up by one of them or you can, why is that person doing that?

59:44Why is that person got that? Why, why are I on that trip? Why is this straight away? Your stress levels, your anger levels are here and that you're taking out throughout the day. And that's as soon as you get up in the morning. And now it's, it doesn't stop. It's a, it's a feed, a never ending feed where it's changed. It's not even the people you choose to follow now. It's just, this is defeat. We're going to give you what we think you'll engage in. I don't even see half the stuff that my friends post anymore. Yeah, when you are caught up on, you know, that 20 minutes I spent watching ski people crashing skiing, probably didn't need to watch that.

1:00:29Yeah. And I just went, I'm not doing it anymore. So not taking phones into bathrooms, not going for a book to my daughter not taking phones not just going to watch a film with my daughter not having my phone in front of me all those different things i think being a father has taught me a lot because there's always something better to yeah to you know to be doing and now my aim is just not to have to keep my keep my girls away from social media as long as possible a good look at that yeah i've just got to the point now i've i've had to download a blocker to actually have you yeah now called opal no affiliation with them but i just found myself like because of what i do is there's a lot of social media stuff i have to do i have to go on i have to reply to something even though i try and get my team to do most of it because i have different accounts like i still need to go on and do some stuff from time to time and then it gets me every time every time i'm just like and then i put my phone away and i'm like i didn't even do the thing i was supposed to do so i have to make it very hard for myself to get into it yeah and then there's a time limit and then the time's up time's up it's like okay cool okay that's interesting yeah because i know i'd like it will just get me every time it'll get me gets the best of us um unfortunately but then again it's like i have built my business and career off it so i can't knock it too much because it's provided me like a very good living but i think there's different platforms which are have their pros and cons i still think youtube's amazing because for some reason if i go to youtube it will just suggest all these amazing videos for me like really informative documentary style videos and podcasts yeah which i would be interested in i probably learned something from it but it's every all the short form content stuff is usually not very good yeah it's the yeah i think i think youtube's great and it's one of those forms though but as soon as your children start and there's YouTube for kids and again it's an unregulated form so we watch something and go load of rubbish and turn it off but of course your children are learning and if they watch something and I understood that for almost like the hardware is going okay well I'll put all the settings on so you can't watch this and you listen to something going what is that but they're transfixed by it they're like oh we didn't they don't know it's stupid or wrong or anything else so that's educating our children as well understand what to watch, what to turn off and of course they get an hour a day and on their little iPad it's all connected to my phone, they're exactly what's downloaded, they're not even allowed to download anything they're not allowed on the internet, not allowed to download anything and trying to explain to them they're 7 and 4 and talking about, Daddy did you have this cartoon when you were young?

1:03:19we had four channels four channels what do you mean so I literally had to go and go one two three four that's all we had yeah okay but did you not watch your stuff on your phone did you not watch stuff on the iPad how did you commute and yeah went out played football you did went on the bike I tell my parents I tell my parents that a lot go and you know if there's ever and they're never bored actually they have a great imagination but I just played into them like go and find something to do which again you know and they do built a den we did this right you know so yeah it's um it's it's it's very but it as you said it's very very difficult you know all her friends have minecraft she has not had minecraft she can daddy minecraft nope you can't really explain why it's the addiction because you can't explain addiction to it and the stimuli they're getting from it um but there was this interesting concept that actually one of the biggest things is sort of peer pressure and as a parent you kind of giving in the end because they go my friends got it all my friends are on it and you go well you know you don't want to be the ones behind everybody care about that but you kind of don't want them to be left behind where actually when you speak to the parents and then they go oh yeah i had to take them off minecraft i had to take them off because the stimuli we take it away and they were you know almost like angry about it we were taking taking it away from them is actually to have a little community of the closest friends where you sort of talk to the parents and say right what do we not want our children on minecraft snapchat as they grow older instagram all these different things so that none of the children have it that's a good idea yeah so none of the kids can go our best friends have got it um because you go majority of them haven't yeah so um yeah it was the tip yeah i think we just got to look at sort of navigation this sort of differently with children these days but um yeah i remember when i grew up i always thought it was so unfair that we didn't have sky tv or not that i necessarily really wanted a dog that badly my dad didn't like pets or animals so i would get my little fix by hanging out with one of my friends who could spoil friend who got everything every friday yeah so he had the trampoline he had like the sky tv he had like two animals running around so i'd get that yeah on the friday afternoon it makes you learn that um to be patient yeah being patient is one of the most important qualities of anyone and of not wanting you just another thing with people nowadays is just that patience to wait and perseverance to get somewhere and do something and wait for something you know and um the the reward for getting there the reward to saving up of achieving to buy something um is something you can't underestimate really it's like i read something about children who you give chores to the feeling of them achieving something is so great for them yes they don't like doing it you keep having to pester them to do it um they like the feeling of achieving something my responsibility was always to cut the lawn yeah and clean everybody's rugby boots oh mate wait till you get to my age you're obsessed with like lawn cutting once you get your own lawn obsessed with that it's another thing on instagram i would say like most of my algorithms is guys cutting their own lawn.

1:06:38There you go. What is most of your day spent doing? Is it primarily on the wellware? No, I mean I've never particularly on one project and if there's enough, at the moment we've been for example we've got wellware, and the wellware is the underwear, which is launching so we've got all the media, we've got all the PR to do with that we've shot all the campaign the hack it is launched yesterday so that was being launched yesterday and today. Interview with the BBC tomorrow about AI algorithms and AI and image rights. Media interviews, shoot. And then in between that is thinking about the next campaigns, finding locations.

1:07:23I've got the mini project with Callum, which we designed the mini together, this new sort of... And then the charities. We're working with one called Over the Wall, which is Paul Newman's campaign with one of my i'm a trustee for a for a charity watch the switzerland charity so trying to fund that there's another four other sort of charities i'm involved in so it's one of my it's very widespread yeah that's my aim for them and that's that's what i enjoyed but yeah it's going from it's 10 20 different things yeah that i i kind of get distracted by all the other things that i could be doing sometimes but then i realize i can't do everything as much as i would like to everything.

1:08:04You've got to prioritize certain things. And there's a lot of people like that. There's a lot of people that have stuff going, that's just work wise, you know, without children and kids in school and drop off and taking dogs to walk and everything else. So yeah, it's intense. But that is the way I like, I mean, I always say when I haven't got anything to do is the scariest time. Then I'm, this very rarely happens, but that's when I, I think my mental side, my mental well-being side doesn't, take well for not doing much at all it really doesn't so i've always got a few things on what would you do aside from the gym what would you do to unwind every morning um i take the dog walk i've always taken my dog walk so um that has not i'm not saying i'm not working on and emailing and calling and stuff like that on the way but that is my first sort of clear head take the kids to school come back take home it's about three and a half mile walk and we start from there and that's um that's just again so i'm quite a solitary person to be honest like crowds people friends i love my friends and everything else but i do love my solitary moments um my wife is exactly the opposite she needs crowds and people and friends and chatting and talking and if we go to you know big parties together she um she does all the talk she gets a buzz from that you know she and it drains me yeah same i literally just i'm just like let's we let's go yeah a lot of people like it um so there's no right or wrong people would confuse it and think that i'm just being rude but i'm like my social battery is empty yeah i need to leave it's not it's not a terrible thing at all um it was um so yeah it's uh i bet it's just i don't get anything particularly from it it's just um i get it from being quite quite solitary in myself and i will need some some but it's quite hard to explain your relationship that because actually you're deemed as we don't want to do that together or you're just going off and i said i'd always need these times like people you know when i first started dating dating steph she'd be like um where are you going i'd be like i'm just getting cinema what are you going to cinema with we're like i'm getting anyone get cinema on your own and i'll be like no but i've had 20 years for meeting of being by myself literally in the industry of flying traveling eating everything alone so when you you know you get accustomed to that actually being with people is quite another yeah so and i would go i quite happily go into a restaurant and eat by myself again some of these and stuff would be like so like so strange you always wonder why i'd get up in the middle of the night and just um are we going to be i said because that's my solitary moment no one's no not against anyone but that's why no one is around i've always quite enjoyed my night times I was a terrible sleeper but because no one's around no one's to disturb me and that's my sometimes those relationships work quite well because they they just do a load of the talking you just sit there which is very true and you're like yeah yeah there it is like she is we entertain at home and I'm the cook and I cook because one of the things I don't really want to socialize I don't want to talk and that's not I don't want to talk you know we have a great time but I know she is the entertainer and like she loves chatting and loves talking two different things and you know men and women again mates amongst I think yeah and you're a big car fan as well aren't you Jaguar was your favourite brand it's the brand that I've got Jag you have F-Type 2017 model the amount of people that are buying F-Types now I've got the F-Pace SVR so with the V8 engine in them like that so yeah I can it's my it's my family car press a few buttons isn't so family orientated anymore that not family friendly no not so much but i love i love jaguar and i always have appreciated and love what they're doing obviously there's a big transition at the moment what do you think of that um i was there i was there for the launch in miami the car looks incredible it's honest it really does it's a very difficult thing to explain because i don't think the colors and the light something weird happened to it like with the width and it doesn't look that great if you see it in person and they did it in this um classic e classic e type light blue it is stunning i mean there's to the point where you know it's it's you have to appreciate which i agree it's probably not um you know i i'm into lightweight sports car xk porsche 356s stuff like this and everything now is getting heavier it's all battery it's all electric so you're never really going to i think be i'm definitely not as interesting new cars as i used to so it's going to be a lot on aesthetics and with if you think about electric cars there is no point you don't have to have a bonnet no because the battery is generally underneath you don't have to have a boot why does it still look like a car it's a good point you're still making cars that look like cars you don't need to anymore and i think jaguar the first brand to really go ahead and actually change and make it look completely different and i think it's so far left that people are quite scared of it yeah it takes balls to do that so there's a brand you know with jaguar and warry said they either made very good cars or great cars f-type f-pace svr um xc was great they're all you know they're all good cars i would probably say the ipace was ahead of its time um i'd probably criticize the uh the e-pace um didn't make sense didn't wasn't it wasn't a great car um but apart from that so how can you build those cars but not sell enough of them so something's going to be wrong somewhere whatever that is um and you can't keep rehashing you can't just bring out another f-type you can't bring out another sfr you've got to go in some way like i can look at this from a marketing point of view you've got to go left um and and go down that um to left field where people go it's completely different and of course in doing that you're going to alienate a lot of people but when people have said to me you know you love jaguar are you not sad to see the growler go and the the the jaguar logo and everything else i said did you buy a jaguar when they had the ground logo no so what's the point what are you talking about i did you didn't so when you're the one complaining about it i'd rather see a brand that i'm you know part of and working with that is advancing with the future and that car if you know bruce wayne drives a car he's driving that new what's he called zero zero one yeah it looks incredible it really really does have you been a fan of aston martin as well like recently they've come out with some nice well recently the new i was actually speaking to the team i was my mini was at Hampton Court.

1:14:44The Vanquish. The Vanquish. My, like I saw one in London for the first time. That is one of the best looking cars on the road at the moment. What was it? 7, 8, 800. I think it's over 800. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Got to work a bit harder to afford one, but apart from that. Yeah, I think I, because I like convertibles just because I don't think you can beat the feeling of driving around when the weather's good. Especially like if you're in a warm place when the weather's good, the top is down, feel the breeze, blasting music. that's one of the simple things like well of course you have to have a nice car which is not that simple to get but I could happily just do that and never get bored of it is your F-Type a soft top was it?