Matthew Syed

0:00Do you know, we've been very lucky. We've recently had some amazing reviews. Somebody described Rosebud as remarkable Somebody else said it was original Somebody even said it was sexy Don't know what episode they were thinking about Oh, maybe that was Diana Riggs' daughter Or even Charles Dance Several people have said it was excellent Somebody said it was brilliant Even better, somebody said it was unique I like the person who said it was occasionally devilish But always delightful So, remarkable, original, sexy, extraordinary brilliant, unique, devilish and delightful. R-O-S-E-B-U-D. That's Rosebud.

0:41Cue the music.

1:04My guest today is the writer, journalist and former Olympic table tennis champion Matthew Said. You might know Matthew for his columns in The Times and The Sunday Times, his BBC Radio 4 show Sideways, or one of his best-selling books, Black Box Thinking and Rebel Ideas. And you'll find out about the special connection Matthew has with Rosebud in the first part of our conversation. I think his is a genuinely unique and inspiring story about immigration, sport, success and determination, which I think you're going to find fascinating. I hope so. Enjoy this. It's Rosebud with Matthew Syed.

1:59Matthew Syed is my special guest on Rosebud today. And we first met, I think it was the first time, in this very hotel where we're speaking from now. We're at the Grovenhouse Park Lane. And it was at a conference 10 or more years ago. Do you remember it? I think I was hosting the conference and you were the keynote speaker. I was, that's correct, Charles. And it's lovely to be back and to see you again. But I'll never forget it because when one is doing corporate speaking, or in fact any speaking, the introduction can often set the tone. If it's an underwhelming introduction, then you have to really pick up the energy in those opening few minutes.

2:39And I knew of you, and I had been a big admirer for a long time, and I can see you nodding here graciously. And the introduction, it started with my background in table tennis, and then it started to build and build. And sort of a minute or so into this introduction, the audience is thinking, thinking, this guy sounds incredible. And it was not, I think, a British order. It was an international order, many of whom wouldn't have known of me before the introduction. But by the end, it was so effusive and so wonderful that the bar was so high. How on earth am I going to meet the expectation that has been very kindly generated by Giles with this intro?

3:22And I don't remember the client, but I do remember those opening minutes trying so hard to justify this wonderful introduction. But I also remember that you surmounted the bar effortlessly, both by your presentation and more by your content, because it was the black box idea of yours that you were unpacking. And that was a new idea at the time. I mean, we're partly meeting today because your big book on black box thinking is being reissued, isn't it? Yes, that's right. Yes, that's a very good point. You were comparing and contrasting the way the airline industry actually goes towards a problem and has the black box, which I remember you telling me was orange, not black.

4:04That's right. Is that right? So I remember it in detail. And then comparing and contrasting the NHS, where, have a problem, they cover it up. Well, that's exactly right. And thank you for mentioning the 10-year anniversary of the book. So maybe it is 10 years ago that we met here. But you're absolutely right. I was struck when I was thinking about organizations that seem to get better over time. And often it's because they have a very healthy and empowering attitude to those occasions when they get things wrong, which we all do from time to time. And aviation, yes, every commercial aircraft has a black box.

4:38It records the electronic data. And there's a voice recorder to record how the pilot and co-pilot were speaking in the build-up to a crash. and so when anything goes wrong they can excavate the box almost indestructible colored bright orange to aid visibility figure out exactly what went wrong and put reforms in place to ensure the same mistake never happens again and i think through that if you like continuous improvement culture of open and transparent learning it's driven the accident rate down today to one crash for every five million takeoffs and the tragedy in health care also a safety critical industry is because I think we're too inclined to assume that when something goes wrong it's something to do with negligence of a nurse perhaps or a doctor and so we try often to punish them or to sanction them when often they're very busy people and there may have been confusing labeling or they're under pressure of time these are often inadvertent slips but it creates a cover-up culture and so there isn't the same kind of reporting not the same learning from mistakes and this is a bit of a depressing start to what i hope will be an inspiring episode but preventable medical error kills thousands of people around the world and i think unless we shift that culture it will continue to do so this needs to be an inspiring episode because i know because you've said so in print that you are a fan of rosebud more than that Charles, I must say, as somebody who has been a journalist for 20 odd years now, and there was a period where I was kind of unofficially the Times sports interviewer.

6:17So I've interviewed most of the leading sports people of the last 25 years, but I stopped doing it because I'd go and meet David Beckham or Serena Williams or Lewis Hamilton or Joe Frazier. And you go into a room and often there is a media team looking on. So you want to get to know this person. You want to get under the skin and find out who they really are. And every time you'd ask a mildly interesting question, the PR team would say, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not going to go there. And it's a very artificial environment to have a conversation, even as we are now with two microphones, two or three inches from our lips and lights in this beautiful room.

6:55Producer, your wife is here. But you, Giles, if I may say so, when I first listened to the Rosebud I was feeling a bit gloomy that particular day I said okay I'm gonna go for a run in Richmond Park but I didn't want to listen to one of the political podcasts I write about politics I wanted a bit of escapism I put into the search engine something like relaxed conversation I came across you and I looked down the list and I saw the name of Gary Oldman, who is a marvellous actor, of whom I knew very little, but I thought he might be quite quirky and interesting. So I put it on, and I started to run uphill rise.

7:37And within minutes, I was captivated by your ability to bring this person, who's quite reticent, I think I'm right in saying in general terms, out of his shell to explore his early life, to find out what made him tick. and even when he was about to open up about an explosive revelation you were it was his personal life he said we don't need to talk about that because you were on his side and i could feel the trust and it's it's a very difficult thing to pull off the run in richmond park by the way i normally go for about 40 minutes i went for the whole podcast i just kept going and then oh here's the thing you're getting to the end of the podcast is this a good enough pr the producers loving this um we're getting to the end and you you asked about favorite music and and gary had alluded to love of i think dylan mentioned the beatles classical music was an eclectic taste maybe jazz if i remember correctly and i had this most incredibly powerful intuition that i can't explain that when he said what his favorite song was it would be here there and everywhere by the Beatles which is also my favorite song and sure enough that's what he said and I thought my goodness this is incredible because well there was empathy right from the beginning yeah so that you were on the same way I felt I knew him by the end and I'm glad to say he has invited me to go to slow horses and to and to meet in next month well there we are looking forward to this is the Rosebud effect people listen to episodes and next thing you know they are Gary old man's bestie i've changed your life it's fantastic you'll probably find that you are a guest star in the next series of slow horses well that would be good i think it's virtually a done deal well he one of the things that captivated me about him is my family on my mum's side are working class londoners and the lilt and rhythm of how he talked was just identical to my cousin paul and my cousin james and ben and all the rest of them so i'm glad you've connected us i wonder who I'm going to be connected to after this.

9:45Yeah, well, it's a game we could play. You've mentioned touch on your family. So let's begin now by asking you, Matthew, what is your very first memory? I'm two years old, and I'm outside a small house in Bromley, Kent. And I'm a little distressed because my father is about to leave to go to Reading to work where he was in the civil service. and I want you to picture this this man Pakistani immigrant dark-skinned huge smile high voltage charisma the most wonderful and infectious laugh and I just remember thinking I want this man near me and he's going away for the week he would go Monday to Friday and I missed him terribly and in a way I think he has been along with my mum the big influence on on my life so i just remember him and my feelings about him leaving me tell me more about him when did he come to britain so his story yes he he was born in uh india in hyderabad and then moved to pakistan after the partition he was a muslim shia and then he came to england to study law in the early 1960s but something interesting happened he's he's a very open-minded person and he had got to know some Christians in Bromley, where he was living in a bedsit.

11:17And he decided to go along to church to get to know them a bit better. And one evening in his bedsit, and I asked him to describe this to me many years later, and it's a remarkable thing, he had a vision of Jesus Christ. And in that moment, he turned on a sixpence from sheer Islam to born-again Christianity. because the friends he had met were born-again Christians. And so he started going to the church. Did he see, when you say he had a vision of Jesus Christ, did he actually see Christ appear in front of him? That's right. So he saw Christ. Did he describe him to you? He did, because this was not a kind of frivolous conversion.

12:00He was a born-again Christian from that moment until the day he died. And was absolutely convinced. I have to say, we would be as well if Jesus Christ walked into this room and appeared before our eyes. This is true. That is a manifestation. I mean, did he look, I mean, you may not have asked him this, but did he look like a picture of Christ? Yes, I did ask him that. And yes, he described him in the way that one would imagine Christ to look, based on the Western iconography that we have seen. and he came into the room with my father's late father, the grandfather that I never met, who my father missed terribly.

12:38He idolized his father and they came together and they had a conversation. It lasted for, he says, half an hour. And as I say, it became a completely transformative Damascene conversion. And he started going to church and his whole life changed. He became a worshipper of Jesus Christ, an evangelical Christian, and he met a young, at the time I think they met my mum, he's 15, my father is probably 27, and they're at the church in Bromley, and my mother, white, freckly, ginger hair from a Welsh farming background, grew up in Wrexham and came with her mum and dad down to London, both of her parents born again Christians, the great Welsh revival and they see each other across a crowded church hall and they fall in love and you i mean are we accepting this that they fell in love immediately i mean i love the story i think yes i think yes i do think that that's plausible because my my mum had my older brother when she was 16 yeah well we know that they fell in love in that sense oh i see oh did it happen did it happen instantly this is such an extraordinary story i mean i have to say if i were a freckled girl from rexham and i i met a man who was a friend of jesus on personal terms i and i was a born and grand christian too not being cynical no but i think it was the exotic the way mum describes it now my father passed away in 2020 my mum's still going and i'll see her at the cheltenham festival this weekend i think she was blown away by this exotic charismatic extraordinary man huge self-confidence and she's quite a timid girl um and as i say her life changes i mean but this is a scandal in the family even though my father is a christian he's he's he's a pakistani immigrant who's much older than my my mother and of course in the 60s the racism was still i mean it's not disappeared today but it was dark skinned pakistan very dark and she is a very pale skinned red-headed yes welsh girl she's a child really at 15 16 she's a child and that so the scandal i think is two parts partly her age although it was less unusual for people to fall in love at that age but it was more that the the color distinction and the cultural contrast in my mum's family in wales for many years struggled to accept my dad but even worse a muslim has converted to christianity this is apostasy and he was completely disowned for a while by his beloved family back in Karachi so this is a massive schism in both of their families and my mum became a mother at 16 she had me at 18 not got a lot of money she has left school with no o-levels at all um my father is working as a junior civil servant so struggling to make ends meet but her parents because it was happening in england they went to the wedding they did yeah well actually that's a good question did they get so we have wedding photos but did my mum say that these were taken retrospectively it may well be that they weren't at the wedding itself but then they had a as it were a staged wedding photo for posterity but my mother's parents reconciled themselves to it reasonably quickly when they saw the depth and strength of my father's faith took his family a little bit longer Because, of course, in the 1960s, you wouldn't sleep with someone unless you were married to them, particularly if you're a born-again Christian.

16:16Yes. So if they wanted to fulfil their love and lust for each other, they would have to get married. You're asking me to speculate about the sex life of my parents. I know. There's nothing more uncomfortable than thinking about your own conception. Which is why I'm looking forward to interviewing your daughter, who's an MPM, about her conception. Oh, God. your wife is looking horrified at this my wife is here and she can tell you it was a very brief moment and it happened quite a while ago i doubt that she has any recollection of it at all so you are born when your mother is 18 what what is the sort of marital setup with this unusual couple in their early years so they're in bromley in kent a small house i think it was pegley gardens Then they move to Silverdale Road in a suburb of Reading, a small house.

17:11And they then have my sister, Rebecca, who's four years younger than me. He works as a junior civil servant. We start going to the local school just up the road. And it's a bit of a struggle to make ends meet. My mum is at home. I mean, I often wonder, I'm a father and I have two kids, and how unbelievably difficult it is. But for this girl in her early 20s, still very naive person to have three children and this remarkable, highly adventurous husband. One of the most profound insights I've got from your podcast is you interview people who are often, not always, but in their 60s, 70s, sometimes 80s and 90s.

17:52And you get a sense that people managed, that they faced difficulties and challenges. They didn't complain about it. They felt that part of life was to overcome them. And I think there is something extremely interesting culturally that has shifted somehow in our collective psychology. But they were very much like that. They were very hard work, extremely hard. My father, junior civil servant, struggled to get promoted, Giles. So this is a big deal. Because of his colour. His colour. And this was a very significant part of my youth. because my father innately optimistic feeling that could take on the world and make a great life very talented highly intelligent but he can't get promoted and other people are getting promoted and he would come home and he would say it was very odd because they all went out last night but i didn't get invited they went for a drink after work all my colleagues and i wasn't there well he go up to them in the having a chat in the corridor and they would disperse and he said i think it must be racism, must be racism.

18:58But none of them use the P word or anything like that. And after a while, he started to think, maybe it's me. And this is what psychologists call attritional ambiguity, when you're not sure why you're being excluded, and you begin to question yourself. And I did see over the course of my childhood, my father's self-esteem being chipped away. And what he did is he thought, okay, I'm not going to get promoted here. I'm not going to get any higher and he started waking up at the crack of dawn and reading and studying for a postgraduate diploma and he got a you won't be surprised to hear a distinction i have a very vivid memory of walking down the stairs in silverdale road my mum's still there in the house and my father would be deep in his study reading away in the living room on that sofa that we used to sometimes turn into a kind of like a makeshift ship when we were playing our games and he would be reading deep, hi son, reading away, and then he would do his skipping.

19:55But because he didn't have a skipping rope, he would be stood there, moving his hands and jumping up. Because the curtains would be, people would walk by, they'd see this man doing the skipping action, but without a skipping rope. It must have looked like some kind of an epileptic fit of some kind, if that's not politically incorrect but i'm watching this person this extraordinary drive that he has and he eventually because he gets his postgraduate diploma moves sideways from the civil service into academia and then because it was a bit more enlightened and a bit less discriminatory he makes it to professor and that was the proudest moment i think of his life when he gets his professorship professor side brilliant and by the way it would no matter where we went your name side mr side no no professor side you turn up at a restaurant professor side yes it was a museum but i'm so glad he found was your mother also a victim of racial prejudice in the sense that she was married to a pakistani yes she was and and uh you know i don't want to overdo it she she's never wanted to be portrayed as a victim in any way she does remember um walking with my father, with my brother in a pushchair and somebody spitting at her.

21:13And occasionally people not wanting to be friends with her because of the colour of her husband. But I think they would say overall, and my father would definitely say this, they had a fantastic life. My father felt, even though he faced that discrimination I described, he became a great patriot. He thought this was the best country in the world. He was a, as you are, an ardent monarchist. He loved listening to Radio 4. He loved the institutions. He always used to say to me, my brother and sister, you're so lucky to be here. Because when he thought of discrimination, he thought of the caste system in India, which is incredibly divisive.

21:52Or the inter-klan rivalry in Pakistan. And he knew about what was happening, the tribal, endemic tribal divisions. He thought this was about as meritocratic a society as any in the world. And so neither of them ever felt like victims. I thought, yeah, we're a bit different. Yeah, a few people aren't going to like us, but they were embraced by the church, by many other, deep friendships for most of their life. So yes, tough, but my goodness, they had a terrific time. The cousins you mentioned, are they on the Pakistan side or on the Welsh side? They're on the Welsh side. So my mum's father, he and his brothers converted during the great Welsh revival and they became born again Christians.

22:33Uncle Michael, who's still the but last one surviving was a preacher all his life. Uncle Ralph, a great preacher. They had a church that they set up in Latimer Road. And when we were visiting, we would go to the church and there would be fire and brimstone. Like your introduction to me at the Grosvenor House Hotel, corporate event, they would give it some from the pulpit. They were wonderful orators. And that side of the family, the children of Uncle Michael and Uncle Ralph in particular, but some of the other brothers, you know, they live in there's taxi drivers piano tuners you know a wonderful group of of cousins in and around london and are you now christian so we all grew up as christians so we were born again me andrew and rebecca born again christians my mother so my father was till he died my brother is still a born again christian my mother is a backslider is the phrase charles not during your father's lifetime i hope yes she she no she uh she came to the conclusion that it wasn't true this was not interestingly it was not her turning away from the church because she had a bad experience or you know there was a nasty pastor or something of that kind she loved the church she loved the people but intellectually she thought is this a fairy story life after death in a wonderful place do I really believe it have I questioned what I was told when I was growing up and as she became more mature I think intellectually she had left school with no o-levels I encouraged her to go and do a degree as a I think it's called a mature student and she excelled such an intelligent brilliant woman and I think when she started questioning the assumptions she had built her life around she but she was still they still married they were married until my father passed away and they were happy together were they they were happy I mean I so my mum I once said they had a good marriage and she she emailed me and said the best phrase is complex it was a complex marriage because i hope my father wouldn't mind me saying this because because of the culture in which he grew up there's no doubt that he felt as many older british people do too that the man was the head of the house and his wife was there in part not to serve him that's not the right phrase but certainly to be subordinate in that relationship and so when my mum tried to explain that this should be a quality this is something my father would agree to verbally but found it quite difficult to put into action um and there were other you know complexities but yes my mum's whatsapp uh photo i think i'm right in saying remains a lovely photo of her together with my father and the photos are still we'll put that You will be able to see there my father, my mum, and my grandparents with my brother.

25:29Grandparents on my mother's side. Oh, I can see what he's like exactly, your father. Well done, Amy. He is Mr. Charisma. He's smiling at the camera. He's giving us his all. And who's the baby in your mother's? That's my brother. That's your brother. And who's the girl? So the ginger-haired girl, that's my mum. And, ah, gosh, that's your mum. And she does look very young there. Yes. Wow. So she there would have been 16, about to turn 17, maybe just turned 17. And her parents are there. So you can see that they were reconciled to it by that stage. That's a fascinating picture. There's a whole world in that one photograph, isn't there?

26:13Indeed, indeed. Tell me about your father and this encounter with Jesus. I'm not mocking it, but what you are saying, if you are no longer a Christian, if you, as it were, followed the sceptical route of your mother. Well, I did, I did. I changed my mind. I told my father openly. I kind of was beginning to doubt in my teens, Giles. Is it true? I wanted it to be true. It's a lovely thought, is it not? I'm so wanting it to be true. And I'm clinging on to the fact that your father met Jesus. Now, if you are no longer a Christian, you're in denial of your father's fundamental story. Yes. The thing that sustained him from that age to his dying day.

26:54Indeed. And he clearly was a remarkable man. Remarkable. I mean, my goodness. The best sort of man, wasn't he? Oh, yeah, he was. I mean, his determination, his persistence, his achievement, his goodness in accepting dark things in the world, but coming through. But the fundamental tenet of his life, you're saying, Dad, I don't believe that story. That's right. That's right. That's difficult, isn't it? Well, it is. And that's why religious wars have been so divisive. If somebody is absolutely sure, absolute truth, and they feel that those who don't believe are infidels, apostates, you can see why that would lead to tension.

27:35I'm glad my father accepted. I mean, I'll go back to Silverdale Road. The other thing about growing up, Giles, was the living room was like a mini parliament. we debated every my father was quite political he was interested in politics he became a union representative and a member of the labor party i think he delivered leaflets for a while he liked thatcher by the way he wasn't he wasn't completely partisan or tribal he was quite objective in the way he thought about the world but there was no issue that we did not debate ferociously and with later friendships and in my marriage it definitely has been occasionally you know when you go at an argument it doesn't mean you're having to go at the person you're testing an idea and that was very deep in our living room me my brother sister mum and my mum would often would be like the speaker like no no that's i said no you can't say that that's not quite right that is a bit that was ad hominem um but she wouldn't have used that phrase uh but that got personal um but we would debate it that was an absolutely marvelous thing and it definitely ignited in my mind something that never really has left me you went into politics I stood for labor in my early 30s after my second Olympic games but I do still think about going back but that was a big part of it so when me and my father discussed religion he was accepting of the fact that I would so you said have you asked him to describe in detail yes I tested it did it sound as if it was a valid memory had he was it wish fulfillment you know how much detail we discussed it all how can you be sure god exists if he does or she does why is there evil in the world free will we debated it in detail and with passion and with alternative points of view and my brother would be on my dad's side of course and my mum would be mildly on my side but keeping keeping penis it's very interesting to me i want to be on your dad's side yeah because it's it's romantic

29:49describe your uh bedroom your first bedroom what was in it so it was a bunk bed my brother was on the top bunk i was on the bottom bunk my my brother quite strong stubborn personality and we would go to bed disagreeing about something so yes it is i'll say no it isn't yes it is no it isn't he would always win that those games uh and then um my mum and dad were in the bedroom the other bedroom and then there was a little box room when my sister was born she was in the little box room and we grew up there since then we've extended the house so it's not as small anymore but that was that was what it was like and it was a you say we've extended it as they used to own it she well my mum's still there oh she's still the same house it's interesting this ethic of what's yours is the family's.

30:40And so I still do think of what I have. Now I have my own family. I shouldn't think of it in those ways anymore. But yeah, I do think of it as our house. Is she living on her own now? No, she lives, my brother's with her. Oh. So it really is we. It is we. It's a real family. How lovely. Yeah. Books, what were your early books? What were you reading in this bedroom up on your bank? I didn't read much until I was in my third year junior school. So this is like nine, ten years old. And a brilliant teacher called Brian Cowan was one of the two teachers who changed my life. And he read two books to the class, not just read them.

31:24He lived and breathed them. It was just magical to be in that room. And he ignited my imagination with J.R.R. Tolkien. the only problem with that is I only read Tolkien from that moment at the age of nine or ten for the rest of your life until I got until I got to Oxford oh my goodness I arrive at Oxford and somebody said oh you know fresh as weak tell me what do you what uh what do you like reading I said oh Tolkien what else no I just read that to their absolute shock then I started moving into other uh authors but Tolkien did you know big part of my early life and you were the middle of the three children that's right and what was the dynamic between the three of you a very loving dynamic yeah wonderful uh brother younger sister rebecca um and it was almost like my mum because she was so young was almost like one of us she would get involved in the banter and take us out on adventures and she is a remarkable well i've talked a lot about my father but my mum in some ways is even more incredible because she just the amount of love she seemed to be able to give to us all and because money was short she went on something called the tops course training opportunities and she trained to do shorthand and typing and she became a secretary and for a long time she she stacked shelves at asda we had a new asda superstore opened in suburban Reading and it was opened by Kenny Dalgleish.

32:59This is one of the great moments in Reading history when we went down and got the autograph of Kenny, who's a Liverpool player at the time. And she would stack shelves there and would occasionally get a free packet of biscuits that she would bring back. Custard creams was the family treat. But then she went on this training opportunity course and she became a secretary. And she was a brilliant secretary, all the people who worked with her. And she always had wonderful friendships, but she still seemed to be a full-time, She was there for us the whole time. What sort of food did you cook at home?

33:28For breakfast, I mean, we didn't know that it was bad. We had Coco Pops and Frosties. Is it bad? Oh, it is supposed to be high in sugar. I must have eaten three, four bowls of Coco Pops. I'd have it for dinner, Charles, sometimes. Lunch, the classic lunch was if I would go home for lunch from school. A bit cheaper. Bacon and eggs. Lovely. And then in the evening, we would have, Mum, I love the food, by the way. I hope this doesn't sound in any way negative, but crispy pancakes, fish fingers, baked beans. My favourite was, by a very long way, was a gammon steak with cauliflower cheese and chips.

34:13I used to love that, Charles. She's a woman after my heart. My gosh. And then my father. My father, every now and again. I met you now on Stattings, of course. every now every now and again at the weekend he would make a curry and he would make that's what i was wondering enormous an enormous curry that he would freeze and he did he did eat english food and liked it but this curry would would be spicy and we the kids we had one go with this and it put us off curry until i was like in my 20s because it just blew our heads off so we were eating the mild English food and my dad would heat up his curry at the weekend.

34:52Did you ever hear them having rows? Yes yeah. Do you remember what they were about? Were they about the children? They would often be about they would often be about him saying you know could you get me a cup of tea? Why don't you go make the cup of tea? A completely fair question and of course when I got into my tea and so I'd say dad why don't you make the cup of tea and he'd say well hang on you should have respect for your father and I'd be like but dad come on come on he's got a and that that was a running theme with us I don't think it ever led us to completely fall out but he would always he would ostentatiously I'd arrive once I'd left home he'd say would I come a tea son but you know if you're there for a full weekend by the time it got to the end of the weekend we go love could you go get me a cup of tea they would argue about that who was your first friend outside of the home Mark Hawthorne, who I met at play school, became my best friend, lived up the road, and he became my dearest and closest friend.

35:54I was the best man at his wedding. He would have been the best man at mine, but sadly, in his, yeah, very, very sad, in his late 20s, he contracted leukemia, cancer, blood cancer, and he passed away. And of course, I'd become best friends with his wife at this point. And so that was, he wasn't just my best friend. He was a best friend. His other best friends were my mum, my dad, my nana and granddad on my mum's side and my brother and sister. He would go to school, he'd come back to our place. He'd eat with us. He'd often sleep on the sofa. His parents were great. They lived on made an early journey.

36:29We just hung out the whole time. So at his wedding, you know, a third of the guests were my family and my grandfather said the grace because every holiday would go to my grandparents in Wales or my mother's my mother's parents and he was they were so close so he was deeply a part of our all the family photos Mark Hortherson off as we call him is in there and you know he and I as a photo we've got and it captured our dynamic we're sat in the what we call the dining room opposite each other deep in conversation we talk about everything and I miss him still now so you go to this school is you is the second you said there were two teachers who influenced your life one of them was at the junior school yeah is the other one the junior school as well as it happens it was a very following year the teacher's peter charters and he another amazing man introduces me and my brother to table tennis oh he starts an after school table tennis club now why table tennis because in a tiny school hall with not much actually outside space either you can get just about one badminton court which can entertain two or at most four kids but you can get six table tennis tables four to a table you get the whole class playing so he sees this as a space efficient way of engaging these kids in sport but because of his persona charisma we fall in love with table tennis we're really falling in love with him as children how old are you now so i'm 11 and we joined the after school club it's a prefab small how can i describe it giles it's like a shack a 10 minute walk from the school that he manages to get a grant to buy and to put a table tennis table in there but there's no bathroom no toilet there's a little electric heater, ferociously hot in summer, freezing cold in winter.

38:38But we all had a key, those of us who were interested in, we could open up and play before school, after school, holidays and weekends. So this very ordinary group of kids on Silverdale Road became the best table tennis players in Britain. We had more than 50 % of the top players in the 1980s, just came from this one street. I remember taking a BB... Is this for real? I'll say that again. More than half the top players in the UK came from this one street. Yes. There were about, Giles, a million recreational players and about 50 ,000 subscribers to the English Table Tennis Association. But because in this street, we have access to a 24-hour-a-day club, most places, if you want to go and play, you have to go to the sports centre, but the yoga's on.

39:24You can't get a table. Here, we could play whenever we wished. So we're practising with each other and we're pushing each other and then we've got this amazing coach who by the way every day after school he would go to the to what was called the omega club and there's only one table so actually when there were more than four of us playing cross table you'd have to sit on one of the decaying sofas by the side and wait for your turn but we're practicing getting better and better and it became a phenomenon and there's karen witt commonwealth champion you know two doors down Andy Wellman, the National Journal, Paul Andrews, Keith Hodder, me and my brother, and there's Paul Trott, and they're like, but they don't, they're all on this, yes, all on this, and if you look at the wider postcode of people who are still in the catchment, catchment, so it was, it was, it was remarkable, and it actually was a big insight for me, because of course talent matters a lot in life, but many postcodes have a lot of talent if they have also the opportunity and the great mentoring and this guy peter charters was just he's still alive still text him to this day and it became your obsession did it well it was my brother's obsession and he became england number one very rapidly under under 12 under 13 and i was very much his practice partner but because he was better than me you can see he's pulling me along and so i'm getting better and better really but without the pressure i think he was under a bit more pressure than i was so you were venus to his serena or the other way around it's a good way of framing it venus was the older sister and serena was very much the the junior partly yeah maybe i mean we weren't as good as that obviously but yeah i think that is i was the serena to his venus maybe and this was all this was your hobby this was your passion this became your life but what happens jade with with sport and if you haven't been in it people are often unaware of how surreal it can be even in a sport like table tennis which seems like a minor sport there's a lot of people who want to be the best and once you get into the top five you know you first of all i'm the best in the school it's like wow something that i'm actually the best at so you go to the district competition there's someone a bit better than you there so you train to be the best in the district then it goes to the county and then the region and then after having played for two years you go to the nationals and there's people from shropshire and cleveland and you're like my god but it's amazing you get there and you see the first thing you see when you walk into the hall is the draw the draw where it's him against him and this person against that person all the way down and if you win you go to the second round if you lose you have to drive home and then the third round and the field is being halved each round and then the final and the amount of esteem and ego that you get from making it through and it becomes for you and the family it does become an obsession because if it is not you don't keep up with the competition so in a weird way Giles from about the age of 9 10 to when I when I retire from table tennis after winning the commonwealths in I guess 2002 too.

42:36This is, and it's ridiculous, I know, looking from the outside in, my purpose in life is to more efficiently hit a small plastic ball over the net so that I can move above Christophe Legault in the world rankings. And you did. Briefly. Well, that was enough. The mistake I made, by the way, was the last six or seven years of my career, I'm training like crazy, but I'm only holding my position at sort of 25 to 30 in the world i'm not going up but because i'm training so hard i'm not going down either but that was you know i love table tennis it was a great thing to do open doors but my goodness those last five or six years i could have been doing something else but you became an olympian in those last few years twice weren't you two olympics yes two olympics i mean that come on yes that's for the rest of your life they can't take that away from you whatever happens now you are a british olympian and i'll tell you that the olympics in barcelona was a i was in my first so table tennis small in the uk but globally quite big because of china national sport of china so it's more lucrative than people sometimes imagine so when i started playing i leave school 16 17 in order to play to play absolutely professional full-time table tennis every day and running training the works completely dedicated to being the best I could be at table tennis.

43:57My father, what are you doing? Educational aspiration. Yes, table tennis is great. Well done, son, supported me. My mum would drive me and my brother to tournaments all over the country with an A to Z. I got good with an A to Z before sat nav. When we would go to the Cotswolds Junior Select, what was it called? The Bird Lip Pass. And then we got very good at navigating. but then Charles I decide to leave school my o-level results were not that good it's in a strange way I wasn't the I was no any of the brightest at this comprehensive school they're much brighter I only became the brightest person in the class when I got to Oxford and it's never quite worked that one out um so I get a few o-levels not great I leave school but my dad is like table tennis career Matthew it's not going to last forever and even if you do make it to number one even if you do go to an Olympic Games you're gonna have a very long period after and I'm like dad come on I've got to take this opportunity I've got to seize it and he was very disappointed with that but then I'm off playing professional table tennis and I'm moving up the world slowly very slowly moving up the rank the English rankings then the world rankings I'm moving into the top 300 and I get a contract to play at a club in Sweden now Sweden was the best country in Europe at table tennis at the time.

45:23So I go up to Stockholm. It's not a lucrative contract, but I'm staying in this house, this family house, and I'm training with good players. I get a call from my father. He says, Matthew, you've got an interview for university. I said, pardon, I haven't filled out any application form. He said, I filled it out. And I forged your signature. It was called an ucker form. Do you remember that? I remember the ucker form. He said, I forged your signature. and I said well how does this all work he said you you have to get back in December you have an interview at Balliol College Oxford I'd never heard of the place to study PPE I said what's PPE philosophy politics and economics I said dad I can't be at university and play table tennis this is a full-time job and I'm beginning to move up he said why don't you at least clever man why don't you at least go and take a look and then you can reject it you probably won't get in anyway you've got your exam results we're pretty surprised you got invited for an interview yes you only got o levels right so so he got a friend of his the only person he knew who had attended oxford was somebody called gerald who felt he never met me before this person but he filled out the filled out the reference but i imagine honestly i look back now and i can't understand how they accepted me because the other students were brilliant i i remember getting there got home i drove up to up to oxford couldn't park obviously turn up in my tracksuit i walk into the porter's lodge they explain what's happening i'll go to the junior common room and these very intelligent very socially confident young men and women and they start talking about stuff they were talking about world affairs i'm slightly blown away by this um and i go for the interview and this was a very surreal moment.

47:09The two interviewers were a philosopher called Alan Montefiore, a very eminent philosopher. I didn't know them at the time, obviously, and Wilfred Beckerman, a very eminent economist. And they must have looked at me and thought this is a very odd reference because I had nothing to do with writing any of this down. But this ping pong player, I wonder what, they're obviously at this point that Bailey will think we need to diversify our intake of it. We need people who are not from the traditional background. and they asked me a series of questions one of which was we were talking about something called voluntary and involuntary unemployment are you willingly somebody on the dole as it was called and anyway i'm giving some half-cacked answer and they say well i'm interested in this your distinction between voluntary and involuntary tell me if i was to pull a gun and put it to your head and say, leave this room or I will kill you.

48:07And you then leave the room. Was that a voluntary choice or an involuntary one? And I think I'm right in saying that I gave some answer to this that they thought that I might have a bit of spark. And I got an offer. So I then teach myself the A-levels. It was on condition that you got A-levels. Correct. So you then had to go out and thought, I've got a place if I can get a couple of A-levels. And this is interesting because the motivation now instead of going to school you have to go yeah i'm now thinking this balliol place is just a different world and i want to be there and i get the textbooks and i read them i don't just read them i hoover them up it's coming from within i want to understand this stuff and i get three a levels and i start at balliol still playing table tennis i was only there a day day and a half a week i was playing for montpellier in the french league don't they require you to be in college for a certain number of nights.

49:02That's correct. So I broke the rules on residency, as it's called. And I missed, what was it called when you started? Is it called matriculation? Yeah. I wasn't there. I was playing in Japan. So you probably find you actually haven't got a degree at all. I don't have matriculation. I don't think a degree counts. That's right. Well, I gave a speech a year or so ago, Balliol alumni, and I explained part of this story. And I think the master of the college says, you do not have a degree from Oxford University. But I loved it. And the life was incredible because I would be off playing on the global table tennis circuit.

49:37But I did get back for a day. But with PP, you don't really need lectures. You need to read the books. You need to read the texts. And you could read them on the road. You could read them in the airplane. You could read them at the Olympics. I remember at the Barcelona Olympics, I read three or four wonderful books, Galbraith and Descartes. I remember a book by somebody called Lipsey. Well, Lipsy was the A-level economics. Oh, that's my level. Thank you very much. No, you're right. It was a first-year university text. I did PPE, but only for one year. I then swapped out of it because I found it too taxing.

50:09Anyway, that's by the by. Lipsy, that's right. Lipsy. It was a first-year undergraduate text. You really worked at this. Just reading on free will and Hume and Locke and Plato and Aristotle and Lipsy. and canes you're up there you you're flying the point is you are flying so it was a magical existence at balliol for a day day and a half two days i speak to people who were with me at so i didn't get to know many people because i was off so much but they said they they would often talk about this strange guy who would turn up with a tracksuit go to the library to get the books turn up at a tutorial make a couple of half decent points often quite unusual points and then would be off again they called it a shell suit it was very bright i can picture it and uh and but i found that an intoxicating period i loved the work i love what i was reading i was enjoying table tennis i got to the number one position in england in my final year just before finals i took three or four months off to make sure that i could really do it justice but then the mistake I made Giles was after graduating I could I think then have said I've had a great career in table tennis played in the Olympics all the rest of it now I'm going to do something else but I didn't I carried on playing for seven years which I think on with hindsight that that was a mistake and you did a second Olympic Games and I played a second Olympics and what was what was being in the Olympics like well I did this is something that uh my wife's family have never forgiven me for.

51:48I did write a piece about my first Olympic experience in Barcelona. Now, I want you to imagine, Giles, this is thousands of young people from around the world, lithe, athletic, wearing lycra in the Olympic village, which is a security-controlled place where only the athletes and their coaches are allowed. Yards of exposed flesh, body-beautiful people from around the world focused on their sport for which they have been building up for three four years for this big moment but once the tournament is over oh my god an explosive detonation of sexuality is the only way i could have so i wrote in 2008 i i wrote a piece for the times when they were asking it during the beijing olympics can you please take us inside the olympic village and the opening line of this it became giles the most read article in the history of the times website and remains at the top the opening line was now i must get this right people often ask me if the olympic village as is as surreal as it sounds i can only say that when I got to Barcelona, I got laid more times in that fortnight than the rest of my life put together, which is to say twice.

53:24Which, it is... It's a brilliant line. Well, it is true. The sport, yes, yes. But at the end of it, and I think off the back of this article, when it got to London 2012, in the athletes welcome pack in addition to the the program and the information about the village and the transport there was also and still remains to this day you are given a packet of of sexual protection condoms oh how wonderful if only i had known this i might have persisted in my athletic career the times readership which we'd just gone online in 2008 and i dreaded to think what the comments would say underneath you know you're saying about getting laid this this is not this is not quite the done thing Matthew and at the bottom it was teach me how to play where can I sign up I've just joined my local gym from the male and female readers

54:29can you remember your first crush yes i mean i hate to say a slightly sad story so it was in second year senior school her name's yvonne brunette thought i was in with an outside chance she seemed very friendly and i did ask her out and the reply it was a this was a crusher for me Giles she said through her friend Sharon pick on someone your own colour and that that actually led to quite a bit of insecurity with women because there's nothing you can do about you nothing you can do about your colour and that had you been conscious of your colour before that moment yes because you know back then the p word was quite common a couple of the teachers used it um in a jokey way no in a derogatory there's one there's one hardcore racist in the teaching staff extraordinary what we're talking about the 1990s no this is the 80s 80s i suppose so yes you're born in 1970 aren't you yeah so this is uh black footballers getting monkey chants out on the pitch so racism was definitely there and as you leave school on the back door of the bakery there was an nf sign with kick the p word out of this country and that had wasn't painted over for a good year in a year and a half so it was quite well you know i don't i had a great time at school but there was definitely that but that was crushing because you want to be yeah attractive to the opposite sex and getting rejected like that was a was a tough one and i didn't really have a girlfriend for many years i think i lacked the confidence to ask somebody out for quite a while and that's why i'd only i hadn't been laid that much if i can put it that is that too indelicate an expression no until i get to barcelona but of course did you act for a moment even think of it seriously and think well maybe i i should fall for or fancy a girl who is also of pakistani heritage there weren't there weren't any at that to my school i was about the only brown kid in the club no there was vcas was yeah he was only there for a bit but there weren't many girls that i can remember back then completely white suburb early in reading not anymore i mean there was the option my father said when we visited karachi for the first time you can we can we can arrange a marriage for you matthew i mean you don't have to i said but so that was there but i wanted i suppose like anyone who's grown up in a western culture i wanted to marry for as they say for love but that that um that was your experience having observed it, that some arranged marriages, in fact many arranged marriages, actually are quite successful and do work.

57:11Yeah, they do. Oh. They do, not all of them. No, but some do. So it's not an impossible way to make things happen. No, no, it isn't. But it wasn't for you. My father was up for it. I think he really was up for it. Oh, he would have done, without doubt. I mean, he was a Christian. I mean, he was a westernised Christian. Yes. So you'd have needed quite a liberal Islamic family to think, yes, we've got this Yarox. The interesting thing about Dad, you know, He loved Britain. And table tennis, yes, he was very proud, loved it. And then later in life, you know, I become a journalist and other things that are, you know, not lacking kudos.

57:51But do you know the thing he really wanted me to do? He wanted me, he said, the thing you really should do, Matthew, is become a permanent secretary in the civil service. He said, you need to go into civil and work your way up. the permanent the Sir Humphrey figure this bastion of the I said but dad yeah I get it dad I get it's a great job but I'm really enjoying life as a journalist and broadcaster you know there's some influence there too he said yeah no you're right he said but my goodness a permanent secretary I like him more and more actually I really do so at Balliol you know you're going to go on with the table tennis and you do and you're still doing well but do you have beyond that ambitions well I struggle.

58:33So I did, as I'm getting to the end of the table tennis career, and I'm realising my father was right, it was worth going to Oxford and having a degree. I applied to Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, mergers and acquisitions. I got accepted. And I start working Canary Wharf, realised very quickly, this is not quite the right fit. I'm really sorry, I don't think it's right. then i then i in 1999 so just before the olympic games in sydney i phoned directory inquiries do you remember the number of course oh of one two three oh 192 192 and i i said can i have the telephone numbers of the times and the guardian this is before taking part in the olympics just before so i'm thinking to myself maybe the fact that i'm in the olympics will get me through at to write a diary piece of some kind of good so i phoned the guardian kept phoning never got a call back from the guardian but i did get through to the sports editor of the times i didn't think they would say yes but i said could you show how long ago it was could you fax in a few ideas then and i faxed in some idea terrible i've kept the facts that i sent in are really boring ideas but they said okay maybe you could write something and give us an insight into the mindset of the professional and I wrote and nothing got published but eventually something did get published and they said to me look we've I went and bought 20 copies of the big broadsheet back there for I was very proud of that and then I would fax in ideas never get published but over it was probably five year period Giles I was probably getting in about once every three months and then eventually after a year they paid me 200 pounds in articles it's not a career you can hear and then in about 2008 i suppose they said look we think you're pretty good we're going to give you a regular weekly column in the sports section so now you've got a guaranteed place and that led to a book and then all the other yes it's evolved i see you now as a public intellectual i see you as a thoughtful person in a public sphere which is a marvellous thing because what you are now doing is not doing what many journalists regret is many journalists rather like many good conversationalists at the end of their lives feel that they've just wasted it in puffs of air 800 words here 1200 words there you know a good afternoon a speech but what is there to hold on to but you have developed that into this role, which is satisfying to you, isn't it?

1:01:08Oh, I love it. It's a very interesting life. Share with me a couple of moments of ecstasy from your life. Is there a table tennis match that you can remember? My gosh, the high. Yes. Which is the one then? Oh, it was a Czechoslovakian Open. And I was at the time unseeded. And I won the opening round match. And I thought, oh, I'm playing well. And then I won the next match. And then the next. and people are like, well, this Matthew Sides cutting a swathe through the tournament here. And I went on to win the Czechoslovakian Open, and I remember winning that tournament beating Kalinikos Krianga in the final.

1:01:4821-12 in the fifth, he says. Still proud. And getting the bus back to the hotel with the rest of the England team, the coach, and feeling a sense of utter euphoria and contentedness. I thought of my parents would be so proud back at home I would always phone home and they were like oh well win or lose they were proud and if I lost they were often more loving than if I won but that was a feeling of complete unadulterated joy yes when you were playing table tennis were there times you went out and suddenly I can't do this I don't want to do this yes it did happen to me in my second Olympics in Sydney years of build up I've mentioned that already.

1:02:34And it was very well-funded table tennis by the Sydney Olympics because of the national lottery, your friend John Majors. Great innovation. And when I flew to the Gold Coast for the holding camp before the Sydney Olympics, and I remember going for the opening match and I'm playing a German opponent, Peter Franz. And just before going out, I look into the auditorium. I can see a couple of Union Jacks. and i'm told by neil it was the name of the venue manager he said we've just found out from the international broadcast center this is going out live on bbc one i'm like wow my coach peter charters school teacher he's going to be watching my parents are going to be going to be watching and my coach said to me this is where it this is where it counts matthew what happens over the course of the next 40 minutes will determine whether the last four years were a waste of time or not so he thinks this is highly galvanizing it is in a sense but i i got a little tremor in my hand i could feel it i could feel it during the warm-up i could feel the nerves and table tennis is a very subtle game with this wooden racket and a spinning ball and you have to read the spin and you have to cope with it and i had a we call it in sport i don't know if what you call it in in the entertainment business i choked i couldn't hit the ball i could not do what i'd spent a lifetime building up to doing and i lot table tennis games back then were up to 21 and uh you know normally it'd be 21 19 22 20 21 18 i lost the first game 21 2 oh my god this is not heard of and i went back to the coach the coach is like you okay and the opponent was looking highly sympathetic at this point like if something the olympic experience in sydney was over in about 20 minutes and that was an absolute feeling of devastation i got the bus back to the olympic village and normally i'd have liked to have stayed and absorbed the olympic atmosphere i got on the phone to british airways changed my flight i was back in in england the next day that was down in your early years is there anything that you're ashamed of that comes into your head sometimes at night moment of embarrassment yes so never stole anything but i did do something me and i won't say the name of the person with whom I did it but one night behind the shops by the school we were bored and it was late in the evening and we thought we'd start a small fire and we had a box of matches and we put some paper down and we started a small fire in a cardboard box and it was it was the fire is roaring a little bit and uh we thought we'd go off and we we went around the grounds of the primary school and we came back and what we i mean we were i mean it must have been 10 11 at the time what we hadn't realized is the cardboard box was adjacent to a wooden door and it's lick when we come back the flames are licking the back of the door and somebody has put that there were homes above this above the above the shop and someone is looking out and as obviously made a phone call and they're beginning to file out of these flats pit it late at night and we hear the fire engine coming and putting it out but of course we then go and hide and um me and my friend wasn't off i should say it was not off mark of course but that is something i know i mean so the police were on the lookout at this point for some kind of a raving arsonist did you know i didn't i did tell my parents a few years later but i didn't own up at the time which is wrong it is wrong we're coming towards the end now and I always ask people and you've not got to think about this before and I'll just answer instantly a moment of joy do you know Giles do you know Richmond?

1:06:58I do know Richmond something that gives me tremendous joy it still gives me joy is going up to the Terrace Gardens and sitting down with a latte or even a tea and a piece of cake and it's a beautiful day looking out at that view and being alive that's one thing we haven't got into i'll just say it briefly i've i'm constantly have a vivid sense of my own mortality that life will end imminently for all of us i'm sorry to say but you're only 55 this is true but what i'm saying in the grand scheme of things we will be on our deathbeds the 55 years has gone very fast for me and it's only probably less than half of that before i will be saying goodbye to this earth and then it's i believe an eternity of nothingness and it seems to me an extraordinary life seems to me one of the great miracles and one of the great mysteries why are we here if it hasn't been created by god and it seems to me it's a source of and i don't want to make it sound overly philosophical but a source of never-ending amazement that we are alive but that we will die and looking out at a view and taking a little bit of time to enjoy it and to just remember the miracle of existence that does give me a sense of bittersweet but very profound joy and a moment then of sadness

1:08:21the death of my father of course i miss him so much and were you with him when he died no it's during covid oh my he's on his own which uh is crushing crushing great man and uh and i suppose can i tie it in with your last question which is often what have you learned my biggest learning in life I think is those of us who have had good loving parents being a parent is not easy try your hardest don't you and sometimes you don't get it right but having parents who even if they make mistakes care for you and love you with all their heart which my parents did my mum still does that I think is a piece of great good fortune that is more precious than diamonds that and missing my father but knowing that he was there for me and that my mum is still there for me is more important than anything else matthew side thank you so much for being with us you're our first olympian and that was if i may say so a championship conversation thank you charles gold from us when we had Gary Oldman on the podcast Matthew Said wrote a wonderful review of the podcast for the Sunday Times now I want you to know that I have genuinely emailed Gary Oldman to say this is the time to return the favour I've said to Gary, Sir Gary, forgive me please listen to Matthew if you like it just tell us, spread the word You know, this back scratching, it works both ways.

1:10:02Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, Matthew. I certainly did. And if you haven't read Black Box Thinking, you should. But before we go, time for a quick email. Who's this one from? We've heard from Wendy Critchlow. My beach walk yesterday, writes Wendy, was accompanied by your interview with Ben Elton. His first memory of a time in hospital reminded me of mine. It was the mid-1950s, and I was four years old. It was fashionable in those days for young children to have their tonsils removed, and I was taken by my parents to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle to have mine taken out. My parents passed me to someone at the door and were told to come back in one week to collect me.

1:10:44They were not allowed to visit. I think it was thought that a child would be unsettled by having visits from parents. There was no room in the children's ward, so I was put in the men's ward. Unthinkable nowadays. I remember being passed from one man's bed to the next to be entertained by them. The men could not have been kinder to me. They told me stories, taught me to tell the time and to tie a bow. They also poured my rice pudding back into the cauldron when the nurses weren't looking. This was before the days when children were given ice cream following a tonsillectomy. I remember missing my parents terribly and to this day I cannot eat rice pudding.

1:11:25I love Rosebud, so do keep it up. Yours sincerely, Wendy from Guildford. Well, I love the yours sincerely at the end. That's very formal. But I love the recollection there. I remember having my appendix removed and only my father came. Yeah, I remember being in the hospital for seemed like days and looking at the goldfish in the tank on the wall. But anyway, yes, I never liked rice pudding either. Particularly the skin on the top. if you love rice pudding do let us know we love to know your oh and by the way if you like cake check out our website rosebudpodcast.co.uk and you'll find we've got some recipes there for cakes and cupcakes and the wonderful rosebud icing that goes with them because i hope people love a rosebud cake even if they can't stomach rice pudding thanks so much for listening what's reminded me.

1:12:19I forgot to take my acid reflux pill this morning. Oh, blast. Anyway, till next week. Oh, forgive me for burping.

1:13:11That's this week's Rosebud, recorded at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane. produced by Harriet Jane who of course also appears every Tuesday with me, Giles Brandreth. Thanks for being with us. See you next time.