The Truth About London's Wildest Trading Floors | with Drugs, Insider Trading & Psychopaths

0:00I dished the dirt on myself and also my colleagues, the cocaine, the strippers, the insider trading.

0:08Richard Farleigh: You're kind of like a hippie at heart in Goa. You end up in finance and the money got you, so you're sold out to the money. They said you bit the hand that fed you. I said it deserved to be bitten. Do you see yourself as a psychopath or have any elements of it? Sir Grant Anderson, thank you for coming on the show. We're here to talk about your new book, How to Con Friends and Manipulate People. Sounds fascinating. your days working in the City of London, and also what your views on being a psychopath, or what you know about psychopaths and you're happy to share. Thank you very much, Richard. Great to be here.

0:37Richard Farleigh: So I'd love to hear about your story. So it sort of started in the world of finance, did it? It started really, if we get not too far back, being brought up by an extremely Christian mother, a Labour MP father, and spending a couple of years selling trinkets on beaches in India. from that my brother got me a job in finance because that was the good old days when you know nepotism really ruled ruled the city he got me a job an internship and I promised myself I'd just do it for two years just so I could get enough money to go back to Goa India and just spend 10 to 15 20 years selling trinkets and having fun however fate had a different idea and what ended up happening is after two years I was earning such good money twice what my father was earning I I thought, well, I'll just do it for another year.

1:25And I did that for another 10 years. You know, a bit like a bank robber in a film noir. Just one last job, just one last bonus. And it, you know, nearly drove me insane, basically.

1:34Richard Farleigh: So you're kind of a hippie at heart. I'm not stereotyping, but you're quite, you know, quite dressed like a cool, very cool fashion. Thank you. But you're, so you're kind of like a hippie at heart in Goa, selling trinkets to tourists. And then you end up in finance and the money got you. So you sold out to the money, did you? That's exactly what I did. And, you know, I got a lot of accusations of being a kind of hypocrite. And I have to just take that straight on the chin. The fact of the matter is I was 24 years old. I had a history degree. I had no work experience other than being a security guard at Wimbledon tennis championships and maybe a little bit of secretarial work at Imperial College.

2:13And suddenly my first pay packet was about 40 grand. And I think my bonus in year three was something like 50 to 60 grand. You know, my father was earning that and he'd been a public servant for 25, 30 years. So I defy anyone in their mid 20s without any other qualifications to go. You know, my principles are such that I refuse to do this. And actually, the city is not such a bad place. You know, it's what I learned after having worked there and then gone into all these other industries like, you know, publishing and journalism is that there are just as many psychopaths and bad guys almost, maybe not quite, but almost in those industries as I found in high finance.

3:01Richard Farleigh: So you were in high finance and then you started to do the dirty on the rest of the industry on the industry, did you, by writing a secret column called City Boy? Yeah, that's right. So there was a paper started called the London paper in 2006. And I got the gig writing an anonymous column called City Boy, in which I dished the dirt on myself and also my colleagues and talked about the more salacious, dubious aspects, the cocaine, the strippers, the insider trading, the rumor spreading to, you know, the pump and dump. and really it was I think it was a confessional for me I'd been brought up by an incredibly religious mother I had a you know this Labour MP father I had a bit of a hippie myself and this allowed me to get all this stuff off my chest I'd also just split up with a fiancé and was frankly engaging in too much recreational drug use and I think all these combined the guilt the need for confessional and those supposedly a million londoners who read that column every week were basically my therapist they just didn't realize it i just you know got rid of all this sort of anger and confusion um in my my system what what side of finance were you on because finance is a very broad industry so uh you know i was in equity i was in specifically i was by the end of it heading up the utilities team.

4:32So the most boring sector in the whole of the pan-European economy is the gas, water and electricity companies, arguably. Regulated, dull, predictable, essentially often looked at as yield stocks just for the income that they gained. So all my contemporaries were going, you know, technology, media, all these exciting things, and there was me stuck looking at UK water companies and stuff. You were on the sales side or the fund management side? I was on the sales side, but I was a hybrid. So I did cover the most boring sector within the utility sector, which is UK water. But I was also the specialist salesman because I worked out very early on.

5:11And I think this is really important that everyone does this when they get a new career, that the most fun and interesting and suitable part of the job for me was selling. Doing spreadsheets. I had a colleague who was a genius who could do all that stuff. I was able to go out and, you know, call me old-fashioned. Frankly, doing cocaine at strip joints with my clients was a bit more interesting and a bit more fun than straining over the discounted cash flow model for a UK water company. And so I got into what's called specialist sales. I was the salesman, but specifically for that team. Yeah.

5:47Richard Farleigh: So you kind of, I mean, again, not stereotypes or no stereotypes, but you kind of brought the Goa lifestyle into finance. Although that would be more weed and less cocaine. Probably healthier in Goa than it was. Oh, no doubt. But, you know, finance sort of divides into two parts. I mean, there's the analytical side, this decision-making side, and there's the sales side. Yes. And I was in finance for a long time, and I was on the sort of decision-making spreadsheet that you mentioned side where I'd never had client lunches. In fact, I had 10 years in finance or longer, and for that period, I never once had a drink at lunchtime.

6:25Richard Farleigh: Blimey. I never once didn't have a drink at lunchtime. Never, yeah. But that was also my, you know, I wanted to do that. And it was funny. This was in the 1980s, 1990s. and often, particularly on a Friday, you'd find everyone's been out for lunch. The market sometimes actually did strange things on Friday afternoons because everyone had had a few skin. Fat finger problems. So I benefited occasionally from being sort of sober in the afternoons, but also I was sort of wedded to the spreadsheet and then I had a team of 12 people or more and I'd do a trade based on the advice and the information that they prepared for me.

7:01Richard Farleigh: So that was fascinating, but that was a completely different world to the sales guys. So you're in a dealing room and the sales guys would go out, they'd be taking clients out, they had experience, you know, and they were just almost different personality types. They were like extroverted, whereas, you know, I was introverted. We were sort of sitting there, you know. Well, the old joke, isn't it, that how do you tell the introverted research analysts from the extroverted, the extroverted ones look at your shoes, whereas the introverted ones look at their shoes. Yeah, it's pretty well true. And actually, it's, the guy who was working with me was that type, your type.

7:36He loved his spreadsheets. He loved finding the answer and he was brilliant. And I leveraged. And, you know, to my fault, I did, to some extent, steal his thunder because he was a nerdy guy. I'm not saying you are, Richard. I would never say that. Let's go ahead. It's become a compliment now. Yeah, you're right. They're the ones making the money. I'm Elon Musk. But, you know, I really enjoyed basically using his ideas and then selling them. And what was nice was I was both analyst and salesman. So I would go all the way around America, Japan, all the way around Europe. And I was able to talk about the whole lot.

8:12But if it came down to it and they said, just a minute, what is the discounted cash flow from this minor subdivision year 2025? I would say, you know what, I'll get back to you with the analyst. And that was quite a nice get out of jail free card.

8:24Richard Farleigh: Yeah, but that's a good pairing because, you know, it takes different sort of, you know, you obviously knew a lot about the industry, but maybe not the latest numbers. Exactly. That was wonderful. And I would, again, I'd say to anyone, you know, find yourself a genius. Well, my salary, you know, I took this as way, you know, and this was in the 1990s, sort of, 80s to 90s, you know, went from sort of 25 ,000, you know, to 50 ,000, 100 ,000, 250 ,000, half a million to a million and beyond. Yes. I didn't quite reach that level. When I was in my 20s. So it was phenomenal. You had drive, didn't you?

9:04I think that is the key thing. I felt in the city, it was all about competition. People say, what's the key features that typify the city person? They say, oh, is it greedy or materialist? I say, no, it's being competitive. And there was the old apocryphal rumour that Goldman Sachs used to look for people who were probably bullied at school. Because they had the drive. I'm not suggesting, again, you were.

9:27Richard Farleigh: low self-esteem you know obviously from the care system you have something to prove which is a superpower that a lot of people coming out of that background come you have something to prove and it's not always something to someone else and it's not maybe not normal competition you want to beat someone else yes you want to beat yourself yeah you want to improve yourself because you feel not worthy when i invest in friends companies which i do yeah principal thing i look for is is that person got on the insecurity to want to prove himself to work all hours god sends and that is the principle determinant of whether I go for it or not.

9:58If someone's too secure in their own skin and it's a bit of a kind of where I can take it or leave it, then I'm not interested in investing.

10:04Richard Farleigh: Well, it is almost the risk of, can I do it, you know, the entitled generation is a little bit of too comfortable where it's just like, oh, don't make mistakes. Everything I do is perfect. Whereas, you know, the sort of generation, you know, I was a bit like, even if I did something well, I'd still be like, that wasn't good enough. Yeah. Which is never quite worthy of. Yes. But City Boy, so what was a big, give us a few sort of, to get to the readership you got to, what sort of stories were you telling? You know, as a City Boy, I adhered to a lot of the cliches. You know, I did do a lot of cocaine and I spent a lot of money on strippers and champagne.

10:40And, you know, what's worse is that I wasted the rest, you know. Yeah, yeah. The old gag, sorry. But, you know, it was about that. But it was also about insider trading. Wow. I would never state, but I just say, look. Is this in the 90s? Is it 2000s? This is between 96 and 2008. So the exact period that Gordon Brown referred to as the age of financial irresponsibility. I joined in, he said, mid-90s to 2008. It was an extraordinary period. So you sort of told stories about the parting. Excesses, the parting. Sometimes I'd say, look, this share price has gone up 15%. And lo and behold, a day later, the company's chairman has said, yes, we have received an offer that may or may not lead to a bid.

11:22What do you think that 15 % rise is? I never talked about specifically, but, you know, I know from my personal experience, for example, Eon was looking to buy PowerGen. My company, Dresner, was the bank that was organized, one of two banks or three banks, really, who were organizing that purchase. What would all the hedge funds do? they'd come and say, Garrett, can we just go and have a quick meeting, quick lunch? And I'd say, I'd start boring them about UK water companies. They'd say, we don't want that. We want to know what you know from your corporate finance department regarding that purchase.

11:54And that was just inside information. So that, you know...

11:57Richard Farleigh: I wonder if it's gotten better. I mean, you know, even in the 2000s, I used to notice on AIM stocks because I used to take companies and list them on AIM, do with the IPO. And I'd follow the AIM stocks and so often there'd be the price move, then the announcement. Instead of being what it should be, the announcement comes out, then the price moves. Your price would move up, as you say, 15%, and you go, then the next day. I mean, I never did it. I wasn't particularly in the stock market that often, so I didn't really come across that. But no one on my team would ever be allowed to do that. So I was a very pure...

12:32Well, I mean, if I know that Eon's about to take over PowerGen and I go and meet my Auntie Marge and say, put in 500 grand into PowerGen. And all that is proven, apart from what I actually said to Mark Lodge, how can they actually prove that it wasn't just a bit of luck? It's very hard to prove, but it's not a victimless crime inside of trading because those guys, those nice pension funds who've sold their stock knowingly, unknowingly rather, to a hedge fund, they've just missed out on that massive premium.

13:03Richard Farleigh: It's taking out of the pool. There's no doubt. There's victims. People, the corporations, but even at the end of a fund, there's individual fund. You've been tricked, essentially. And that's why insider trading is quite insidious. As someone who's only ever suffered from it, I think it's like the cancer. But hopefully, you know, so you were able to write about things like that. On the parting side, if you're giving someone a lot of money, I mean, maybe it's like it can happen with their professional footballers. You know, they get a lot of money young. Yes. And they just like, they have no, you know, they just treat it like it's coming forever and they just want to party.

13:36Richard Farleigh: But the only difference is... And also they don't know how to say no, maybe. Yes. And your young man in London at the time of the height of the cocaine blizzard that really hit in the mid-90s, the only difference between the broker and the footballers, of course, we didn't have to worry about our health. They probably have to lay off certain things, and they get drug tests, I imagine. And there was some people in The Guardian, not a paper I'm necessarily saying is Gospel, who viewed the 2008 crisis as a kind of like the hangover after the party. And it was a kind of drug-fueled, champagne-fueled party of excess.

14:11It was a, you know, there was a kind of bubble in the air. And it did feel a bit like that. It felt like we were all living on borrowed time, the end of the Roman Empire. And that's one of the reasons, you know, I ended up leaving in early 2008. Left the industry entirely. Left the industry. I just secured my book deal. So I saw another kind of career potential. I saw the writing on the wall with that. Unlike most, you know, I mean, I wrote in my book, City Boy, I said that was finished in late 2007, came out in June 08 between the fall of Bear Stearns and Lehmann. So the timing was a little fortunate.

14:50Although, what was it? Arnold Palmer always said, the harder I practice, the luckier I get. but it was you know i had that and also the career was destroying me mentally it was it was

15:03Richard Farleigh: or the parting side of the double then did you but did the did did you have to party could you have entertained quietly over a glass of water is that just impossible it was impossible because my client base uh and they know who they are they they were those guys they wanted to do the madonna concerts with two grams of coke in my pocket they wanted to go to the you know champions league final or you know this this do three thousand spend three thousand uh pounds on a lunch at petrus you know in mayfair whatever it might be and that and you know my it was my unique selling point because all those autumn you know automatons from goldman sachs and morgan stanley may have known a little bit more about discounted cash flow but i knew how to have a good time they lacked character i'm not just just sort of being rude but i'm you know i was a bit more fun but the bar wasn't very high for how fun you had to be well you're setting a pretty high but in return in return then sort of you know sort of give you business yeah yeah so it was well and that's the other thing that's quite interesting the reason why i did quite well in the city was i did get commissioned and so forth but what i realized was the real way to make lots of money and have a secure job and be headhunted constantly was to get high up the rankings so there was a company called extel and the fund managers would vote for you as how how you know who was the best in the utilities sector who was the best in the oil sector and i would obviously take them all out for lunch two days before the voting or you know not all of them but you know that staggered in that sort of three three week period i would make it quite clear what i felt in return i said if got a choice between giving me commission in my sector or giving me a vote in that i would prefer that because that's how i actually ended up heading up the second highest ranked team in the whole of city yeah not because i was brilliant or my team was my team were pretty brilliant but it was and i you know it was mainly because i saw how to game the the the voting schedule and that again is i think an interesting take-home point find out what really actually right gives you the competitive advantage helps you earn money and do that instead of what they actually tell you is what because they are always going to say boring things like teamwork and and you know commission but what's the real thing that actually differentiates between the high salary and the low salary were you worried about going public with all this no well there is a code of silence in the city which or you know like the mafia have got a murder they've got the same thing and after i came out of the book i got a huge amount of abuse i mean loads of people you didn't name names i'm assuming i didn't know i it's theoretically it says you know any sort of resemblance to people but everyone knew who i was talking about and i'd make short blonde people tall and dark haired and so forth fat people became skinny and you know so i'd not be able to be sued but on two or three occasions when i came back to do some filming because i did quite a lot of time tv and radio stuff after city boy came out uh i um was pushed around so we'd go back to the city bar and then guys would say you're the asshole who kind of whistle blew us you're the one who's essentially given away the secrets made out that it's not such an amazing career that we're not just for everyone else well that's it that's how they might say no that's exactly they said you bit the hand that fed you yeah i said it deserved to be bitten they said you're giving away our secrets you're denigrating which but that i mean not not condoning it or condemning it but but it's a bit rich to to you know be at the trough for 10 years and then leave it and then tell it was all wrong anyway yeah no absolutely no no so you can see you can see an argument there oh without a shadow of a doubt and you know as as the editor of the um the standard said to me didn't give back any of those bonuses you hate so much did you i was like yeah all right um yeah but you know what the hand deserve to be bitten frankly i was drawing attention to the reckless short-term gambling more than anything and i came out the my book came out and ended oh seven the financial crisis proper happened a year later and i i said in the book this is going to happen there's going to be a crisis and you saw you saw people what you call gambling recklessly with with company money yeah i mean with not not their money other people's money i call it opium the bonus other people's money opm yeah so i i felt that needed to be exposed and i was like to think i've proven right when the 2008 so you say you're a you're a thief turned uh i'm a games games games that one poacher yes and and your your your big point there's a lot of psychopaths yes in their city you know yeah it's caring about you know do you think that's that's justifiable i think that psychopathy as I understand it, which is a lack of empathy, a lack of conscience, great ruthless manipulation, an ability to lie without any problems, often being quite glibly charming and so forth, that suits the city ideally.

20:11And when Robert Hare, who's one of the experts on psychopathy, was looking at places to find psychopaths, obviously prisoners up first one, 20, 25%, depending on what figures you use, the city will stop broking next, 14%. Because psychopaths hate jobs where you have to get loads of qualifications and so forth. They like jobs which are high risk, high reward. And if you are a great manipulator, and if you can really brown those successfully, steal thunder, maybe spread some dubious rumours about a colleague who you want to denigrate his bonus. The bonus pool... I wonder, I mean, I think it would win.

20:46Richard Farleigh: No, I was at, you know, I was at, you know, 10 years at Bankist Trust, and I never saw that behavior. I mean, it was a meritocracy. Well, if they're doing it right, the psychopaths will not be found out. They're doing it subtly. People were promoted because they did well, you know, because of performance-based promotion, you know. So I didn't really say that. Having said that, interestingly, my daughter, when she was little, came home from school once, you know, when she was a young teenager, came home from school once, and she had, oh, there's this psychopath test. Yes. which she gave me and i failed oh when you say you failed you weren't a psychopath you were i'll tell you in a minute and she said no one no one no one failed like they'd asked all these people and i was the only one that that anyone had heard of failing yeah interestingly i gave it to my brothers and sisters and one of my sisters failed it so there's only two people i know who failed one one being me but i don't know uh so i'll give you the test just okay and And whether it's valid or not, it's not interesting what your writer friend says about, you know, the person you're quoting.

21:47Richard Farleigh: But a woman, sorry, a man's sister dies, and he goes to a funeral, and he meets a woman he likes. And then a week later, he murders his other sister. Yes. Unfortunately, I do know this test. Oh, okay. Because he's a psychopath. He wants to meet the girl again, so he wants to he hasn't got a number to me that is just mathematical you know what's the piece of information you go to a funeral you meet someone you like what caused that the death of a sister so you repeat the you know so if that's a psychopath to me that's kind of a chess problem well it is but then someone has died so my daughter's like 14 or 15 and she's horrified she's like my father's a psychopath yeah yeah anyway for those listeners out there ask a few people it'll be interesting to know who passes or fails in my case that test you could also you know when I was talking to Anya Hindmarsh who's a very successful businesswoman, she said something like, entrepreneurs are the mad people who take crazy risks.

22:46Richard Farleigh: And you could almost say that in a lot of fields, you know, like if you're a sports, a very successful sports person, you know, to have the dedication to practice the same thing, which can be pretty boring, practicing the same thing over and over, you know, Roger Federer, practicing over and over and over again, you know, to the degree where 1 % change is all important, you know, or in anything, you know, and so to become good at anything, you know maybe you have to be obsessive well that's slightly different from psychopathy yeah but maybe maybe that's correlated maybe obsession is correlated with with uh you know i can get involved in a task and you just want to can it be done even better you know yeah which can be a waste of time you know so but maybe something like that is a is a trait which in industries gets people to perform well i agree with you and i think there's parts of psychopathy and this is what you know the book the book i've written how to con friends and manipulate people is a parody of a self-help book.

23:40It's written by a psychopath. You are a psychopath. Well, no, it's the voice I choose for the book. No, just one of your voices? It's one of my voices. And what is slightly unnerving is that the advice in it is disturbingly effective. So he is a person, the voice I'm using, who chooses to see people as pawns in his game. He has no empathy, no conscience. he is completely ruthless and an arch manipulator and his methods work and you mentioned politicians or sportsmen you mentioned and i believe that many of the people who reach the top at sport politicians and maybe in banking as well they are definitely um more likely to be psychopaths than the general population the general population about one percent of people are psychopaths But, you know, chief executives, the estimate is 4%.

24:33Richard Farleigh: Yeah, but they're more likely to be psychopaths. That's probably correct. But equally, psychopaths are not more likely to be managing directors. You know, it'll draw from that pool, but it's still probably a net bad thing if you're a psychopath. I tell you what I do to differentiate. Well, this is the interesting thing. So Kevin Dutton, who's a professor who's looked at this, actually looks at the positives of being a psychopath. If someone's doing surgery on your chest because you've got a heart problem, I'd want a surgeon to be a psychopath without any kind of shake in his hand as he's opening your chest cavity.

25:05If someone's special forces, if someone's politicians, you know, they are the most self-serving, narcissistic, manipulative people on this earth. Some of the comments being made at the moment. They have bad qualities as well.

25:18Richard Farleigh: But, you know, some of the comments being made at the moment, you would just wonder if they really believe the stuff that comes in. But they seem to believe it. What I see in certain politicians and the so-called strongmen who seem to be taking over is this total willingness to lie, manipulate others, retribution, cold calculating, ruthless manipulation of the population. What I see in certain sports people is that win at any costs mindset. I've actually just written an article stating that what England need to do as a football team is start thinking like psychopaths if they're to succeed. If they're going to get that penalty in, they need to have no emotions attached to it.

25:54If they're going to be willing to cheat like Diego Maradona did with the hand of God, good, go for it. And it's slightly tongue-in-cheek, just like my book is. But the point is that there are positives to being a psychopath. And they can help you really cut through.

26:11Richard Farleigh: If you're in a competitive world and everyone else is behaving in a way that's an advantage, then you need to imitate or die in a way, don't you? That's right. I mean, it's a similar thing with squirrels. you know, when everyone wants to save the red squirrels, to me it's immediately obvious we need to kill the grey ones. Maybe you are a psychopath. But again, it's mathematical. You know, there's all this, I encourage the red ones, we need to kill the grey ones. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's probably true. I wonder if you're just holding back the inevitable. I mean, there are lots of tests. There is a, the most famous test is called the, it's the psychopathic checklist revised.

26:4620 questions, you can get naught, one or two. I did it on myself, I got eight. And that's quite reasonably high. 8 out of 40. Which are a psychopath? Yes. So over 35, you're going to be in serial killer type range. Over 30, you're considered a psychopath. Report yourself to the police. Yes, immediately. Do not pass go. I did this test. Go straight to jail. But it would be interesting if you did that test. I mean, you really need a trained psychologist. But I believe that amongst the jokes, which there are many in the book, I do believe that if you are a psychopath, and I differentiate that with a sociopath, which is slightly artificial, but sociopath is the person who you look at funny in the bar and they stab you in the neck with a glass.

27:29They can't help them. They can't. They're impulsive. They're reckless. They've actually got often perceived as having high anxiety. Psychopaths will, you look them in the bar funny or you knock their drink. They'll follow you home. They'll spend three weeks thinking about how to do you wrong. Maybe cut the brake cables three weeks later.

27:46Richard Farleigh: Maybe I would be capable, but I have a nice life, so I really have that situation. Yeah. I mean, I did a, did a, you know, because I went through the care system, I did, I was given this attachment disorder test, a hundred multiple choices, multiple questions. And I got 97 for being detached. Yes. Yes. But I, you know, and I said to this. That's very, I mean, that sounds incredibly hard. Yeah. The woman was like, she thought I'd seen the test before or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, well, which three did I get wrong? If I'm going to do a test, I want to get a hundred percent. But, and then I was saying to her, well, you know, and this is attachment disorder, so maybe it doesn't have the, you suffer.

28:24Richard Farleigh: This is what she was saying, that I suffered from having attachment disorder in terms of having long-term relationships and everything. And I said, no, I benefit. You know, I see everyone that's over-attached. They get too, you know, they'll love someone one minute, and the next minute they hate them. I said, I've never experienced jealousy. I said, if I've ever split up with someone, I'd have no resentment. I don't, to me, I just see all these weaknesses. Richard, I'm beginning to think you might be a psychopath because they famously don't form connections and they famously are... They have a lot of friends.

28:51Richard Farleigh: And I care about people. But it's not dependent on them giving something back. Yes. And so I see that as a weakness. She said, well, we can work on that. I'm like, I don't want to work on it. I see everyone else as having a weakness. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, you do sound a bit psychopathic. I'm sorry, Richard, to say this, but the famous psychopath phrase is, we are cats in a world of mice. and they don't like to form connections and attachments and they often live quite itinerant lives. They move on from city to city and so forth and they don't have strong emotional bonds but they often view themselves almost as the next stage of human development.

29:31Richard Farleigh: Well, you know, I've met a lot of the world chess champions, you know, being a chess player. Are they autistic generally? I would assume they are. Some of them are incredibly nice. Yeah. There's one in particular who just screams out the qualities that you're talking about. Yes, yes. Like a proper psychopath. I won't say who it is. Pardon? Proper psychopath, you think? Yeah, just completely self-obsessed. Like wouldn't have a... That sounds more like narcissist. I had dinner. Well, maybe. But I had dinner with him. I can say him because they're all hims. Yeah, I know. I had dinner with him and sitting next to him on a table about six or seven people.

30:03Richard Farleigh: And he was completely and utterly self-obsessed. Even if the conversation was something he was about him. that sounds more like you know we could talk about tennis but he would assume it's in reference to his chess yeah i mean that would be that's that sounds more like narcissism when the winner's narcissism it's tricky psychopath it's there's the dark triad so there's machiavellianism narcissism psychopathy uh psychopathy is all about this lack of empathy conscience and so forth ruthless manipulation. Narcissism really is a massive ego, feeling you're special, wanting to draw attention to yourself.

30:41And, you know, certain politicians you should name main nameless. I would argue they're more likely to be malignant narcissists than psychopaths. If you're thin skinned, impulsive, reckless, that's not really my vision of the true psychopath.

30:56Richard Farleigh: So having written your book and thought a lot about this, you know, can people who don't have these traits succeed in competitive in very competitive environments i mean finance is very competitive because you know in a way if you're making money for the bank or for the fund or whatever you will you know you'll you'll do well yes and it's very easy to measure because money is is the ultimate scorecard yes that's right it's very easy to measure so it is competitive um you know there's cooperation in the industry but but you know do you think do you think is there room for anyone else to survive in those worlds?

31:31Absolutely. And the point, absolutely anyone who's not a psychopath can obviously succeed in all these careers because, frankly, it's only 1 % of the population and not every single stockbroker, banker, politician, sportsman in Excel is going to be a psychopath. And the point of my book actually is that you fake it, then you make it. so I say in the introduction look if you're reading this book you're probably a fruit picker not a lion killer that's how I differentiate between back in the day when there was a cave and there was a lion in there and people needed shelter who did the caveman who did the stone age people choose they chose the psychopath they said go in get busy and here come back.

32:13Richard Farleigh: Well it might be the brute who's got the muscle and then the brainy guy at the back figuring out the strategy you need to throw some meat over there to distract the lion and then. No absolutely you're quite right you're quite right but you know in terms of fearlessness and so forth their amygdala doesn't function often correctly and the amygdala kind of modulates things like fear and so forth but i would say that given two people of equal ability work and so forth the psychopath as i envisage it will beat that person will be getting twice the bonus pool because remember the bonus pool is a finite amount of money if if john over there or tarquin over there gets 10 quid more than me that you know that's directly out of the it's 10 quid less I'm getting.

32:52That's the perception that it gets.

32:54Richard Farleigh: But you can change the size of that pool if you're an effective operator. Of course. So it's not just... But sometimes it didn't feel that way in a business perspective. The organization was too big. I did incredibly well. But sometimes they'd say, we lost a lot of money on Russian bonds. Sorry, it wouldn't affect me because I was at a guaranteed bonus. But did you... I wonder two things. One, do you see yourself as a psychopath or have any elements of it. And two, I feel you've got a little bit of sort of hidden admiration for psychopaths. Look, it's, okay, to answer the first question, I did the test as honestly as I could.

33:31Eight out of 40. And I got eight out of 40. So you can breathe these. You can breathe these. Well, the average American man is four out of 40. So 10 would be a big score. You're getting 15, 20, you're getting quite high. And that would be, you know, and I was trying to be honest. I mean, my wife might say I should have scored a two on lack of empathy as opposed to the one I gave myself. What's the name of the test? It's called The Psychopath Checklist Revised. It's by Robert Hare. 20 questions, not the two. It's very interesting. But you really need a trained psychologist to do it. I just did it on myself just to see.

34:05There's certain qualities that psychopaths often have that I think in any, you know, their fearlessness, self-confidence, determination and focus. You know, when Bill Gates met Warren Buffett the first time at dinner party, apparently the host said, you know, what's the thing you've got? And they both said that that's made your success. And they both said, without any hesitation, focus. This is a probably true story. It may be apocryphal. And focus and the single mindedness that you require, that's something that comes naturally to a psychopath.

34:36Richard Farleigh: So you're suggesting to people some good qualities, which is what we've been sort of talking about. But there's some good quality. Is that what you're sort of half recommending in your book, to adopt the bits that are useful? Yeah, some of the advice is disturbingly effective. And that's the concern. And I've given it to my American friends, a couple of American friends. You're like Anthropic, not wanting to release, you know, because it's so deadly. It feels like that. You know, I mean, it's, you know, who wouldn't gain from spreading a false rumor about someone who's a competitor for the bonus pool?

35:07Who wouldn't gain from subtly being able to steal thunder from a colleague who, you know, spread those false rumors? All those things will help you. The question is, can you sleep at night?

35:19Richard Farleigh: Well, I always had this thing. I would rather drive a beaten up old car that I'd earned myself, you know, than some BMW or whatever that I'd sort of ripped off. Yeah. You know, that done something, you know, so I always had that sort of moral, you know, because maybe because you've got a lot of drive. This suggests you're not a psychopath. Huh? This suggests you're not a psychopathic. Oh, okay, because I'm competing against myself. Yeah. So, you know, so I want to win for myself, which if I got a car that I don't like that, then I don't care if other people like it or not. To me, that's what matters.

35:48Richard Farleigh: Yeah. Do you enjoy writing? How long does it take you to write a book like that? I love writing. I love it. And you know what I love most is actually writing something that elicits a laugh from the reader because how can these little black symbols on this white page make you have that physical response? So my aim, always I have some kind of meaning. So this, I want to talk about why politics, the manosphere, and, you know, high business is becoming more, more corrupt and egregious and unpleasant. But really, my main task is actually just to make the reader laugh. It's out now, right? So I can't.

36:25July the 2nd. It's coming out.

36:26Richard Farleigh: I can't wait to read it. So, you know, maybe I don't need to. Yeah, you sound like you've read it and written it. so we've had a fascinating uh conversation i feel like i've been talking sitting down talking to a therapist or maybe you do i do we've swapped out our sort of deep stories about everything yeah and uh all the way from from you know from selling trinkets on the on the on the beach in goa to uh sniffing things in nightclubs in london to now being a very successful author thank you and uh with a lot of commentary so it's been really interesting to talk to you garant thanks for coming on the show it's my pleasure thank you very much richard

37:05Thank you.