There’s a lot more to this relegation than the manager and players ‘not being good enough’, and the finger must be pointed to their owners, the Venky’s.

They sacked Sam Allardyce as part of ‘wider plans for the club’.  At this time Blackburn were 13^th in the league.  I agree the football was unattractive and I heard many real fans complaining about Big Sam’s long ball tactics but what they wouldn’t give fnow for that sacking never to have happened. 

The Venky’s replaced Big Sam with Steve Kean, without consulting the board.  A bloke who thinks taking your top scorer off when defeat in a game will cement your fate of relegation, is a good idea. 

They eased out Chairman John Williams and Chief executive Tom Finn and decided to take all their footballing advice from an agent, Jerome Anderson.  Mr. Anderson is by the way Steve Kean’s agent.  Dodgy?  It gets worse.

They sell Phil Jones to Manchester United for twenty odd million quid and promise the fans reinvestment bartering such names as Ronaldinho, Beckham and Raul.  That money went to pay off the debts acquired when the Venky’s purchased the club. 

They even mentioned Maradona becoming their new manager when they sacked Allardyce and that Steve Kean, Allardyce’s assistant,  was only a caretaker option.  How did they reward Kean’s terrible win percentage record as caretaker?  They gave him a new contract!

Jerome Anderson’s involvement gets stranger when you look at the players that have been brought into the club.  Ruben Rochina to name but 1, was signed from Barcelona for 450,000 Euros (£372,000).  The agent fee’s for the transfer was £1.65 million!  Anderson worked on the deal but swears he never made any money from it.

Jason Roberts and Michel Salgado were fit senior professionals not ‘allowed’ to play because they were only a few appearances away from triggering a clause in their contract which dictated they were to be offered new 1 year deals.

Ryan Nelson, the club captain, had his contract terminated, Chris Samba was sold to a team whose name I can’t pronounce and Keith Andrews walked out on the final year of his contract (£1 million) because it was quite evident Steve Kean wasn’t in charge of picking the team.

The concern over the Venky’s involvement at BRFC was expressed in a letter to them from John Williams and Tom Finn which I have included in this piece below.  It will make your eyes water.

The terrible thing is this isn’t the end.

Many fans fear that Kean will still be their manager at the beginning of next season.  Their squad will be depleted.  Robinson, Yakubu and Hoilett (who can go on a free) all leaving.  Worst of all the Venky’s will still own the club because theyre licking their lips at the prospect of the parachute payment given to clubs demoted to the Championship (£48 million over 4 years).  By they way when they bought Rovers they thought they were buying a franchise and were not aware about the concept of relegation! 

So … before you jump on the bang wagon calling Rovers fans a disgrace for the way they’ve behaved, understand their anger.  The club that Jack built is no more.

I’ll see you in the ‘hen wlad fy nhadau!’

I’ll see you in the hen wlad fy nhadau!

In short her article insinuates that if a woman dislikes her she attributes it to said woman being intimidated by Samantha’s good looks.  It is littered with personal self praise showering us with how aesthetically pleasing to the eye Miss Brick believes she is.  In Miss Brick’s eyes women do not like attractive women and feel threatened by them.  She speaks of personal experiences where fellow females have avoided her in public and bullied her because of her beauty.

I (even though I’m a man) always judge people on the content of their character rather than how blonde their hair extensions are and ALL the company I keep whether they are male or female do the same.  Of course, I like attractive people.  I don’t like arrogant small minded bell ends.  Maybe some of the people Samantha Brick has recently come into contact with share the same view as me.

On a recent advertisement film shoot I came across a young girl working as a runner but with ambitions of one day directing film.  Interested by how she goes about pursuing this dream I asked various questions.  To nearly all of them she insinuated the challenge of achieving is more difficult for her because she is female.  In a diplomatic way, I did my best to tell her she was talking bollocks but she was adamant.

This week at the Student Radio Conference I watched an experienced female radio presenter and talent agent, Jo Good, tell an audience of wannabe radio personalities that when listening to radio demo’s she forgives the inadequacies of female presenters as they’re not as good as their male counterparts.  I could not believe my ears.  What a message to send out to the next generation of broadcasting superstars.  Thankfully not everyone shares this opinion and later that same evening a student called Jodie Bryant (yes that’s right … A GIRL) shone head and shoulders above an auditorium of mainly cock and balls who put forward their own demo’s to be judged by industry professionals.

Sex, race, weight, how big your tits are, (unless you’re a page 3 girl) play no part in whether you’re successful in your chosen career.  If you think it does, it is YOU that has the problem. 

The views expressed above by Miss’s Brick, Goode and ‘the runner’ have come (in my opinion) through their own experiences of failure. 

The runner lost out on a film job to a bloke and rather than see that he was better than her decided to think ‘oh it’s because he has a penis’.  Samantha Brick states in her article that she has lost out on various job opportunities with female bosses interviewing her because they ‘see her beauty as a threat’.  Maybe it’s because you were just a bit shit?  I don’t know enough about Jo Good to comment and maybe because I don’t know enough about her is the reason she said what she said.  I couldn’t tell you what radio station she is on.  I have no idea what she’s doing in her career.  I know she used to be on MTV, I think!

Excellence always sells irrelevant of who is selling it.

Don’t be bitter, be better!

Unlike many people, I sometimes take it to the next level and pay money to watch football games between two sides I don’t support in various stadiums at different standards of the professional game.

When attending a fixture I normally tweet about it which leads to confusion between my followers who may have seen a tweet earlier in the week with me supporting a different team.  So once and for all I thought I’d clear up who I actually support!

I was born in Blackburn, the home of the Rovers and as a kid I attended Ewood on several occasions.  There are two reasons for this.  The first, it was on my door step.  The second was because of their manager.  The King.  Kenny Dalglish.

You see, since I was 8 years old I have supported Liverpool.  My Granddad supported them and wanting to be included in his ‘click’ I decided I was going to support them too.  

Jan Molby was our favourite.  ‘For a fat lad he can pass a ball’

Opportunities to go to Anfield were few and far between but on a couple of occasions each season I would ‘blag’ a family member to take me to see the mighty reds.  As I grew into my teens the reds weren’t so mighty but I still managed to get to 2 or 3 games a season.

At the same time my home town club were winning the Premier League with King Kenny and Alan Shearer.  As it was on my doorstep and the King was in charge I held a season ticket in the Blackburn End but relinquished it when Dalglish stepped down as manager (the end of the season they won the league).

When I began working at Rock Fm (a radio station In Preston) I was approached by Preston North End to work for them as the match day pitch announcer.  I loved it and became fond of the club, often vocalising my support through my radio programme especially when it came to local derbies between Blackpool and between Burnley.  I haven’t been associated with PNE now for nearly 4 years but I still go to the odd game when I’m back in the North West and always look out for their result, more so than I do with Blackburn, even though my friends, family and In-laws are all Rovers fans.

When I moved to London, my affection for live football didn’t waver so I started regularly watching QPR and West Ham.  Why these two?  Mainly because my mates go and watch them so for a bit of a social I’d go along too.  Am I really that assed about the result of the game?  Not at all but for 90 minutes I’ll sing ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ at the top of my voice.

Liverpool are the only team I get animated about which I suppose makes me a Liverpool supporter or as the Merseyside locals refer to me as a … ‘wool’.

Hope this clears up your questions.  Bring on the abuse!

You’ll never walk alone!

Contrary to what you think … I only ever provided the voice, I was never ‘inside’ the fox!

You would think doing the job I do, I would be used to crossing paths with the rich and famous.  The prospect of meeting or interviewing a top celebrity never fazes me.  Even the time I interviewed Lionel Richie I felt totally comfortable in his company which enabled me to produce a light hearted entertaining interview for his army of fans around the world to hear and enjoy.

I therefore have never understood the term ‘being starstruck’.

I’ve always thought the celebrities people idolise were just normal people who do extra ordinary jobs and that a fans infatuation was purely down to their own unbalanced view of the world and how they categorise what is important.

Until now.

On two separate occasions this year I have been met with the prospect of coming face to face with my hero. 

A man who I have seen in concert on 8 separate occasions. 

A man whose music gave working class people from poor towns, hope. 

A man who helped inspire me to understand that where I come from doesn’t dictate where I’m going.

I’m talking about Noel Gallagher.

During the first week of January, Radio 1’s schedule was in new DJ’s we trust.  I was on the early breakfast shift and doing the main breakfast show was Zane Lowe.  One of Zane’s guests that week was indeed, the Chief. 

On the day Noel was to join Zane, my producer (knowing I was a massive fan) said ‘why don’t you stick around after your show so you can meet him?’

Initially I accepted his kind offer but after a moment or 2, crazy thoughts started whizzing around my head.

‘What am I going to say?’

‘Will he think I’m cool?’

‘Should I crack a joke?’

Within seconds I’d worked myself up so much that I couldn’t go through with meeting him.  I bottled it! 

The fear of freezing in front of a man I put on the highest of pedestals had got the better of me. 

‘FFS!  I’ve been to the Number 10 Downing Street and met the Prime Minister but yet I can’t have a chat with a lad from Burnage who writes rock and roll tunes? ’

The moment had gone, but at least I didn’t ACTUALLY freeze in real life in front of this iconic legend.  I thought it best to save that moment for about 6 weeks later!

It’s Monday 20^th February, the day before the BRIT awards and due to major train disruption from the north of England, I’m late for a voice over in London.

When I eventually arrived at Euston station the sprint was on to venture across our nations capital via the wonderful underground system.  As I sprinted towards the escalator, what can only be described as a giant (a bloke built like a brick shit house easily over the height of 6 foot 5) stepped in front of my path.  Not wanting to collide with this man mountain and not wanting to loose any speed in my pursuit of the next underground train I swayed to the right to avoid a collision, like a formula 1 car taking a chicane at high speed.  Sadly, because of this deviation, I then collided with a smaller gentleman.

I instantly turned to apologise but before I could get any words out, my brain had identified the chap who I had just shoulder barged!

Noel Gallagher!

We both stared at each other for what seemed like hours.  He, as he should, was waiting for an apology.  I, like a complete weapon, couldn’t say a thing.  I was frozen.  I don’t want to upset any devout Christians, but ‘God’ stood before me!

All I heard was … ‘what a dick’ … fall out of the mouth of the giant man who was obviously Noel’s body guard, who then ushered his client out of my eyesight and off towards a privately arranged car.

I was starstruck!

In the mid 19^th century a phrase was coined to emphasise a belief that the third time something is attempted it is more likely to succeed than the previous two attempts.

Let’s hope its ‘3^rd time lucky’ for me with my next Noel encounter!  

No one chooses the area they grow up in.  You can’t hand pick your parents.  You can’t select your siblings or extended family.  With environment, you play the hand you are dealt.

How was your childhood? 

Did you spend it in a loving household that provided you with plenty of fond memories or did you spend it in rural poverty with your guardian who used to beat you daily?

Did you wear nice clothes or did you wear garments out of a bin?

What about your siblings?

Did you play games of tig, causing the odd argument or did you watch them die at an early age because of AIDS related illnesses or maybe in their teenage years they became addicted to drugs which resulted in their death?

Did you go on family days out to the seaside or did you have family days in being molested by your uncle?

When you were 14 were you picking what GCSE subjects to study or were you in hospital giving birth to your child who sadly died shortly after?

I have met young people who sadly have come across some of the things I have mentioned.  Drug abuse, sex abuse, violence and a loved ones death, all of which they have to deal with before their morning alarm.

When I meet these young students I tell them real life stories of people who have been through the same things they are going through. 

I tell them a story about someone who lived in extreme poverty. 

I tell them a story about someone who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their family. 

I tell them a story about someone whose brother died of AIDS and then later in life their sister died of drug abuse. 

I also tell them a story of the girl who got pregnant at 14 only for her baby to die shortly after.

After this I tell them some positive stories to show them hope and how things can change.

I tell them the story of the highest rated television talk show in history and the person who created it.

I tell them about the world’s first black billionaire.

I tell them about the most influential woman in the world!

Your mind is now thinking of the individuals I refer to when I say ‘first black billionaire’ or ‘the most influential woman in the world’.  Your mind will be racing with several different answers but you only need one. 

In fact you only need to speak of one person for ALL of the statements, both the positive AND the negative, I have mentioned in this piece.

The poverty, the beatings, the siblings deaths, the sex abuse, the teenage pregnancy, the TV Talk show, the billionaire status and the title of the most influential woman in the world all happened to the same person.

Oprah Winfrey.

She didn’t choose her environment.  She chose to change it!

Competition is between the 28th July and the 1st August 2012 at the ExCel arena London.

Competition is between the 28th July and the 1st August 2012 at the ExCel arena London.

Imagine if they would have had the courage to do so when leaving school, college or university?  How far along the line towards their dream would they be?  Why didn’t they go for it?

There are several factors that cater for the answer but the main one all relies around self belief.  Whether they themselves believed they had the capabilities to make what ever they wanted to do become a reality, despite the bad advice from parents, teachers and friends.  Could they ‘live the dream’?

The answer is quite simple, ‘yes’!  The best thing is that we all make bad choices from time to time but those choices can be corrected with a little courage.

As we get older we gain more responsibility.  We buy houses, start relationships even add to the world’s population.  All these things can become excuses when attempting to ‘live the dream’.

‘I can’t because I’ve got a mortgage to pay’

‘I can’t because my wife doesn’t earn enough money on her own to look after us all’

‘I can’t because I’ve got kids to think about’

If you are at School, college or University reading this and the things above don’t apply to your life (yet) then you have no excuse.  Go with the original positive thoughts in your head and chase what is rightfully yours.  For everyone that is reading this nodding, thinking about doing something they really want despite the ‘excuses’ above then my advice (whether you want it or not) is this.

There is no point ‘dipping your toes’ in to see if it is viable when attempting to make your dream come true.  Putting 10% of your time into something will only get 10% of the reward back.  If you are going for it then give it everything you’ve got, get ‘both feet in’.  If that means quitting your current full time job, working for free, getting a Saturday job, spending all your savings or all of the above then so be it.  The dream is worth ALL your working attention. 

Will it cause arguments with your loved ones?  Yes

Will it put me under financial strain? Yes

Will everyone think I’m crazy? Yes

Achieving it will be worth all the pain.

The second bit of advice is regarding … timescales.  Forget them.  

The amount of times I’ve heard people say ‘give it a year’ or ‘give it 6 months’ is unbelievable when they’ve been dishing out advice to friends.  We are talking about your dream!  There is no timescale on this.  It’s here when its here.  How do you know how close you are to achieving what you want?  The answer is that you don’t, so I have never understood the ‘give it a year’ approach.  It’s like swimming the English Channel getting three quarters of the way there, deciding you’re tired and swimming back!  Keep going!

All that I’ve written in this blog is a lot easier SAID … than done, hence only a small percentage of people I know are doing for a living what they dreamed about doing when they were younger.

The equation for success (Intensity x frequency) is easy to write but carrying it out?  That depends on the attitude of the individual.

Good Luck x

“Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Greatcoat flapping in the breeze, feet placed squarely on the very edge of the rooftop, it certainly looked as though Sherlock had been outsmarted by Moriarty as last night’s final Sherlock instalment came to a close. Phone discarded, the consulting detective stepped off the building and began his plummet to earth – arms outstretched, legs cycling furiously as the pavement came up to meet him. Moments later, we saw him lying in a pretty terminal-looking pool of blood.

So the only place you’d have expected to see Sherlock again, was in a graveyard. That is unmoving, below the earth – rather than watching mourners pay their respect from behind a tree. He even had John and Mrs Hudson fooled.

Question is: how? I’m pretty sure the cyclist knocking John over played a crucial part in proceedings – allowing enough of a delay for something to happen that John would otherwise have spotted. And then there’s Molly of course. Sherlock needed her help. But for what?

Your theories please. Let me know how you think Sherlock managed to fool Moriarty’s assassins and – more tricky – John, Mrs Hudson and even (perhaps?) Mycroft.

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” 

When you set out to do something new, something you are fully committing to, at first no one is going to pay attention.  If you stick with it long enough, hopefully some people will start to take notice and some of those people will begin to ridicule you.  Sad but very true. 

This is probably where most start to feel like giving up, but it is absolutely the most important time to bite down and double your effort. 

If you’re anything like me though, what you really want is for some people to try and fight you.  Not physically of course but to attack you mentally, to stand in your way.  If you get to this stage of onslaught then you are here because you are well past mere ridicule.  When people want to fight you, then you know you’re doing something meaningful.  At the same time, you want a strong force of people who love what you’re doing.  The worst place to be is in the middle, where no one hates you and no one really loves you.  It means no one is paying attention and you should go back to the drawing board altogether.  If you have both sides of this, then it is up to you to stay positive and stick with the ones that love you, because love tends to be contagious, and as they say, love always wins.

When I quit my breakfast show on Rock FM in Preston during the middle of a recession when opportunities in the radio industry were shrinking, I lost count of how many people who said I was mad.  Imagine their reaction when I told them the reason for doing this is because I wanted to be on Radio 1.

It took 15 months from the moment I decided to quit to the moment I received my first opportunity with the BBC station.  15 months without ‘being on the radio’.  15 months of being ignored. 

Of course during this time I had conversations about opportunities but nothing became real for 15 months.  How would your brain work during this time?  Would you quit?

During that 15 month period the ridicule went up a notch too.  Everyone has people in their life that love to watch them fail.  Believe me I have plenty, and they were having a field day.  How is your brain working now?  Nothing is materialising and people are slagging you off?  Have you quit yet? 

Everyone now knows that I have been called to deputise the early breakfast programme for the last 9 months on Radio 1.   During this time I’m sure the amount of people that don’t like what I do on the radio has risen , but I’d like to think that at an even greater rate the people who do like what I do has also grown.  Turning the haters into lovers is a battle I enjoy.

So, as it stands, they’ve stopped ignoring me because I didn’t quit and the ridiculing vanished a long time ago because again I refused to listen to the nego’s.  I’m currently embroiled in a fight which I’m not going to give up on and if Gandhi is right (which he normally is) we all know what comes next!

I’m not into some weird fetish or anything, I was trying my hand at acting.

Before you think I’m changing direction in career I best give you the back story of how all this came about.  A friend of mine, a talented ACTUAL actress, has written a pilot for a sit-com she is after getting commissioned.  It’s set in a dodgy little café and the story revolves around four main characters.  One of these characters is a cocky northern café owner whose family history stems all the way back to Greece.  And that’s were I come in, apart from the Greece bit, because I’m not Greek!

In no way shape or form do I believe I can act but I am up for a laugh and do enjoy ‘dicking’ about.  Plus for a friend I’ll always try to do a favour. 

At this point you’re probably saying ‘come on then lets see a clip’ but the footage is currently being edited so you’ll have to be satisfied with this picture I took of me in character on set at the weekend.  When the pilot is ready I will post another link to it for you! 

Sorted.  2012 will be starting with a bang!

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction to where you are supposed to be going?  However, instead of just turning around and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to do something first like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the pavement.

Also, in my house I am the one lumbered with the ‘big shop’.  My missus can’t stand shopping in supermarkets for food so ‘muggings’ here, trundles off once a week to the local Asda to collect our groceries.  When you do your food shopping this way you obviously buy 7 days worth of food in one go.  Getting that food back into your house can often prove tricky, especially if you live on the 3^rd floor of an apartment building which doesn’t have a lift (elevator if you’re reading in the states).  As I am a man, I would rather try to carry 10 plastic bags full to the brim of food in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in, cutting off the circulation in several of my fingers, scarring me for several hours afterwards.

Another thing, have you ever had to spell something phonetically over the phone to someone?  I had to give an address to a taxi firm.  Every time I have to spell a word using ‘as in’ examples, I undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot.  My best effort came with the letter G.  I’ve watched ‘The Bill’ plenty of times, I know that ‘Golf’ is G in the phonetic alphabet, but on this occasion I decided to roll with a 1980’s film classic!

“Yes that’s G as in … (10 second lapse )… ummm … GOONIES”

The first question to ask yourself when goal setting is: What do I really want?  The answer produces a list of things.  Some are tame and some are farfetched.  Many millionaires and athletes today were once told their dreams were too lofty to attain.  What people don’t see are the struggles behind the scenes that people who have achieved a lot have faced. 

What sacrifices are you prepared to make to achieve your goals?

The way to answer that question involves mapping out a plan for the goal you have written down.  It’s important to write it down or it will just disappear into nothing.  The dream may never be fulfilled.

Mapping your goals means writing down the steps it will take from inception to completion.

If the goal requires money, one step will be finding capital.  Depending on your current options, this may not be an easy step.  If a step of the goal is laying out a large amount of cash, that could mean going without certain extras until the goal is achieved.  This is an investment.

“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.”  Dennis Waitley, author of The Psychology of Winning

Recently, I spoke at a high school presentation evening about what sacrifices are needed in order to achieve your dream.  I spoke about my own personal journey.

18 months ago I left my position as breakfast presenter at my local radio station.  The programme was the most successful the station had ever experienced from listening figures to industry awards.  The reason for leaving such a great place to work was simple.  My dream was never to be ‘just’ a radio presenter.  My dream was to be a presenter on BBC Radio 1.  There is a major difference.

I knew that in order to make my dream come true I would have to make major sacrifices.  I walked out on a very secure job (radio is an industry which is notoriously unsecure), in the middle of a recession, without another job to go to let alone the one that I really wanted.

I then relocated to London, a place which is totally foreign to me, leaving my entire family behind.

I spent large chunks of my savings, slept on floors and various sofas and even sold my prized possession, my car.  There are plenty of things I could reveal as obstacles that may have changed my course over the last 18 months but throughout all of this, my eyes were always firmly fixed on the prize.  

In April 2011 I made my debut on BBC Radio 1, the greatest radio station in the world!

Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty more to do in order to achieve the things that I dream about on a day to day basis but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. 

What ever you set your goal as, make sure you REALLY want it, more than anything in the world.  When you achieve it, it will make the sacrifices (investment) you made along the way worth while!

Boring-  Little risk.  Little reward.  Lazy. Not much to talk about.

Mediocre – You get paid every month but hate your job.  Life seems okay from the outside but you’re always complaining.  You refuse to take action to correct it.

Above average – You’re moving up.  You’re following your passion but something is still missing. You don’t take the extra step needed and quit too easily.

Epic – You’re doing what people only wish. You’ve done the unrealistic. Much more difficult but the rewards last a lifetime. You’re in the top 1% of the population.

Whether you like this or not you will spend around 91,520 hours of your lifetime, working!  Why spend that amount of time doing something that you don’t want to do?  Ask yourself this question right now.  “What do you do for a living?” 

How does answering that question make you feel?  If your job totally rocks, your body and soul feels proud to give that answer every time.  You would be happy to keep on talking about it, for as long as anyone will listen.

Everything that we have become up until now was based on a choice.  The choice may have come from you or someone else.  There was always a choice.   When we were younger, many of those choices were made for us but once we became adults, the power to make choices shifted to us.  Some have embraced that power while others still let other people and other factors determine their choices.

You had a choice what to wear today.  You had a choice of what to eat.  You had a choice of how you felt at any moment today.  You had a choice to read this far in my post (thank you!).

Those who live epic lives love having the power to choose and take full advantage of it.  Those who are struggling haven’t made many choices.  They’ve never taken the bull by the horns.  They do the same thing day in day out.

When we were born, we were wide eyed and saw the world as full of possibilities.  As we got older, we were told to follow a certain map given to us by our parents and society.

I had a map given to me all because I told my parents I didn’t want to go to University.  I didn’t need a degree to be a radio presenter.  However being a ‘radio presenter’ in the eyes of my Mum wasn’t a ‘proper job’ and she made me follow a route she thought was best for me.

Honestly I hated it.  I cried.  I cursed.  I hated life.  Finally, I made a choice.  I took that map and incinerated it.  I began creating my own.

The only map we have in life has a point A and a point B.  It goes from birth to death.  That’s all we are guaranteed.  We’re all going to get to point B at some point.

However, what you do between those two points is what will shape your life.

If anything, it should have lots of zigs and zags. It should never look linear.  It should look like the most expensive painting ever sold.  Lots of lines, patterns, confusing but beautiful to the one who created it.

It should be filled with laughter, love, family, friends, gratitude, giving and excitement.  Sure, there will be rough stretches but we won’t let that ruin the overall journey.  If anything they make the journey worth while!

When we arrive at point B, we will have left our legacy, made sure people knew we were here on this earth, affected as many lives as possible, and have no regrets.

Now that is what I call ….. EPIC!

I did the unthinkable and watched parts of the Labour one on the telly.

Away from my programmes on radio I work with young people from under privileged backgrounds on raising their aspirations.  For the first time in a long time I found myself nodding along with what a politician was saying, and the man in question was Ed Miliband!  I know, SHOCK!

He highlighted the injustice of bright children who are full of potential, but held back by low aspirations.  Too many working-class British communities are blighted by low expectations for their children.  

Politicians often fail to see the benefit of raising hopes for the future in the young.  Increasing the cost of a university education by the people who received their own university education for free has left these kids on the scrap heap and the simmering monster of youthful unrest, like we saw in the recent riots, will only grow.

I spoke at a school recently highlighting environment as a key excuse that people use for failure.  My primary school sat in the middle of one of the roughest estates in Blackburn.  It was so rough that my mother took my sister out of the school when she found out there was a child in my sister’s class dealing cocaine.  The kid was 9 years of age!

I had four proper mates at primary school.  We all lived in and around the same area.  We were all academically equal when it came to performance in class.  Out of the 5 of us, I am the only one not to serve any time in prison to this date.

What was the difference between us?  Ambition! 

That ambition was given to me by my parents.  From an early age it was evident to me that if you want something, you work hard to get it.  Without embarrassing him, my Dad didn’t have the greatest of childhoods.  He spent the majority of it in a children’s home.  If anyone had an excuse to be bitter with the world it was him.  However, luckily for me he decided that despite the shitty hand he had been dealt in life he was going to be the person responsible for making it a whole lot better.  His desire to make sure his children never missed a meal and always had a warm bed to sleep in inspired my thought process and made me believe that if a man with no academic education who used to worry about where he was going to sleep of a night can make shit happen, imagine what I can do!

Sadly not everyone is blessed with parents like mine.

They have parents whose own mother and father had no aspirations for them and now have no expectation of academic success for their offspring.  I’ve lost count of the number of young people I’ve met who not only have low ambitions for themselves, but also for their peers.

I spoke to a young 16 year old girl in April this year who was a straight A* student.  In August she collected her GCSE results and as predicted she acquired 12 A* passes.  She had many interests including science and various technologies.  We explored the career possibilities for her to pursue once she left secondary education.  We spoke of various routes in the medical profession.  Her excitement was a joy to see as for the first time in her life someone had opened up a whole new world to her and gave her the belief that these types of jobs were easily in her reach with a little bit of hard graft.

Imagine how disheartened I was to learn that she is now studying to become a hairdresser, a job that her Mum, her aunty and her older sister have all had on their CV at some point in their life.  No offence to hairdressers by the way but this kid could have been a surgeon!

This culture of aiming low and expecting little ruins the lives of thousands of bright British children.  In my opinion the school system needs to change because parents wont.  Let our teachers become inspirational leaders rather than crowd control merchants who have to ‘dot I’s and cross t’s’ with ridiculous amounts of legislation bestowed upon them by government officials who last went to a school when Michael Jackson was firstly alive and secondly black!  Stop teaching our kids to pass exams.  Put some fire in their bellies.  Make them winners!

Mr Miliband, you talked the talk, if we give you a chance, can you walk the walk?

The negotiations for Mayweather and Pacquiao are as infuriating a sports story as any reporter will cover, or as any fan will ever read about.  The two sides negotiate, then, one denies the negotiations ever happened.  They come to a fundamental agreement on key issues like money, site and weight but are divided over blood and urine testing.  It is Mayweather’s camp insisting on the random testing which leads those who are not altogether erudite to believe Floyd Junior is running scared.  

Pacquiao began his professional career fighting at a weight of 98 pounds which is 7 pounds under the required minimum to make the light flyweight regulations.  He is now a 10 time world champion at 8 different weight classes, the first man ever to do this, at his heaviest winning the WBC light middleweight Championship at 150 pounds.

How is this humanly possible?

A naturally small Filipino guy increases his bodyweight by 50% over a period of 5 years, all the while never losing a fight.  In the previous 10 years of his career he lost on 3 separate occasions without really fighting anybody of note.  He then refuses to do random drug testing in preparation for one of the greatest fighters of all time.  If you were Floyd Mayweather would you just put this down to coincidence?  Or would you think ‘Hang on, there’s something not quite right here!’

Unless this saga is sorted I fear that there will always be a ‘yeah but … Floyd never fought Manny’ tag lurking over a phenomenal champion, which is totally unfair.

Mayweather has never ducked a challenge, always taking elite fighters at the peak of their powers.  He beat Ricky Hatton when the Mancunian was undefeated.  He gave away 10 pounds in a fight with 6 division world champion Oscar De La Hoya and beat him.  Pacquiao took on a demoralised Hatton after Ricky’s fight with Floyd.  He fought De La Hoya after Mayweather had done the business on the Mexican the year previous.  Juan Marquez and Shane Mosley, the Filipino’s last two fights, had both previously been beaten by the ‘Pretty Boy’.

When faced with the actual facts surrounding this saga and not just the cosmetics you are made to believe about a mouthy undefeated champion, it’s extremely hard not conclude that Mayweather isnt the one shying away from the challenge.

We are all individuals with our own circumstances that either help or hinder our endeavour for success.  I have always believed that whether a person achieves what they want depends solely on the character that is taking on the challenge.  With this as my starting point I’ve thrown together a few thoughts that may help you in your own ventures.

Firstly and most importantly you need a goal.  So many people make the error at this point by not being really specific.  You don’t just get in your car and drive without having a specific destination to go to.  Students at school often say ‘I want to do well in Maths’, but for me this is too general.  What exactly is ‘doing well?’  It is better to say ‘I’m going to get an A in Maths’, that way there is no escaping the realm of failure.  The same applies at work.  How many times have you thought ‘I’d like to earn more money’?  Get specific by putting an actual monetary value on what ‘more money’ means to you!

The second step is to focus.  Always keep your specific goal in your mind.  I’ve known people to write their specific goals down on post it notes and leave them around their house or their office at work.  One person I know even sent himself an alarm with the goal via his mobile phone everyday just to remind him of where he was supposed to be going.

Be prepared for obstacles.

There will be times when you will fail.  You can not change this, it’s guaranteed to happen.  The test of a true champion is how they recover after a defeat.

I often speak of sacrifices.  What are you prepared to give up to make your dream (specific goal) come true?  I have learnt that to achieve a specific goal somewhere along the line a sacrifice has to be made.  I watched the X Factor at the weekend only to see a young girl walk away from a girl group she occupied with her best friends in order to progress in the competition.

Another key element is desire.  How badly do you want to achieve your goal?  Things like making sacrifices will happen automatically if you want your dream bad enough.  People who give up on their dream didn’t want it enough and weren’t prepared to risk everything they have in order to make it happen.

Ask yourself another question.  How disciplined are you?  Discipline is how you behave when no one else is watching.  It’s when no one else will know whether you are putting in the hard yards.

It also still amazes me how many people talk about ‘luck’ when talking about achieving their dreams.  Luck has nothing to do with it!  If you work towards your specific goal every single day, stay focussed, over come the obstacles, make the sacrifices when needed because you want the goal more than anything in the world and stay disciplined, luck will take care of itself!

I could carry on but I think for now that is enough.  Good luck! (You won’t need it!)

For the last two academic years I have worked with over two hundred year 11 students at various schools in Preston, Lancashire.  These students were classed by their head teachers as GCSE C/D borderline. 

I live by the mantra that anything is possible.  It may sound cheesy and others don’t agree but that’s the secret.  I don’t care what other people think.  If I allowed what others thought of me to influence the way I tackle my life, I’d never do anything out of pure fear.

Take your self back to when you were 16 (if you are 16 hopefully this will touch base).  Whether you’re conscious of it or not you have a major need to feel accepted.  You become reluctant of following your own thoughts just in case it differs from the majority.  Think of being in a class room.  The teacher asks a question.  You have an answer but don’t raise your hand because there’s a 50/50 chance you may be wrong.  Why?  Is it because your mates will take the piss?  Does that make you feel stupid?  Does that stop you from doing it again?  The circle of failure begins because you become frightened of trying.  Once bitten, twice shy!

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.  I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.  And that is why I succeed.  I can accept failure, everyone fails at something, but I can’t accept not trying.”  – Michael Jordan.

How do you break the circle of failure?

The first thing to do is to accept the main reason why you are failing.  It’s not the teacher or your friend that keeps talking to you in class.  It’s not the environment you grow up in nor is it that you are unlucky.  These are excuses and collectively are only 10% of the situation.  The reason is YOU.

Once you accept this you can move forward.

Some of the individuals I have worked with come from the most disturbing backgrounds.  Broken families, parents in prison, addicts to alcohol and drugs, jobless and spending a life on benefits.  Their friends and family all doing the same.  Hardly the most inspirational of surroundings for a young person to grow up in, so it’s no surprise that they themselves turn to crime.  Monkey see, monkey do.

By encouraging these teenagers to speak what they really think about their lives and their future, rather than what they think you want to hear, you affect their confidence levels.  This in turn effects their own self belief, the key player in whether they will or won’t break the circle of failure and go on to do something positive with their life.

94% of the students I worked with from these backgrounds achieved five A*-C grade passes, something classed as ‘impossible’ when we began working together.  74% of them achieved five A*-C grade passes including English and Maths.  62% gained A*-C grade passes in every exam they sat (that’s 14 exams for some of them).

Receiving phone calls from these students expressing their joy on GCSE results day beats any radio award I’ve ever won for myself.

Who knows what they’ll go on to achieve next!

I have a man crush.

A man crush, according to its dictionary definition, is “a strong and extremely complicated positive emotion that a straight male feels towards another male.  It is by no means homosexual, although it could possibly involve some degree of sexual attraction.  This is not the type of sexual attraction that one would actually pursue; it is merely a complex sort of desire out of “fantasy” that is driven by jealousy and/or great admiration.”

I met my man crush in the flesh for the first time this week.

Now, this fella can work a room.  I watched as he snaked his way through the crowd, pausing to meet and greet in the manner of a homecoming hero.  He doled out big bear hugs, slobbery kisses, and vigorous handshakes, his bright, lock-and-load eyes widening in what seemed like proper delight at each brief union.  He wore a suit that made Sinatra look like a hobo and he smelt sweeter than a new born baby wrapped in talcum powder.  The women swooned, of course – but it was a lad from Blackburn who really fell for this swashbuckling hero.  As he approached me everything went into slow motion.

Like many of his fans I have always been fond of his work, admiring him from afar.  This isn’t unusual because there are loads of other chaps that I have admiration for.  I am very lucky that through my chosen career I often find myself in the presence of such people. 

I mentioned earlier I love sport.  Football is a prime example where 40,000 blokes thrust their lust towards their male hero’s every time they hit the peak of scoring a goal.  The football player runs towards his admirers, standing triumphantly, demanding his fans adoration. The crowd – big, daft, married blokes with mortgages – give it to him every time.  However, as I write this, whenever I have met said footballer I have never crumbled into the quivering wreck that I experienced this week.  The footballers become normal again.

Not this time.

This was different.

As my man crush grabbed my hand my heart pounded through my chest cavity.  I couldn’t muster any words, just a mumble of some sort that I’m sure portrayed my delight of being in this moment. 

‘Hey man’.  He spoke with the confidence of an American army general about address his troops in a blockbuster of a Hollywood film as they embark on defeating their alien enemy.

His big paw of a left hand caressed my shoulder in a ‘Yeah I know … I’m the coolest guy on the planet’ kind of way.  And then he was gone.  Disappearing into his dressing room in order to appear on one of the nation’s favourite TV shows, that afternoon.

I hope that one day we meet again in order for me to converse with a man that I know can become my new best mate.

Until that time I will never forget my 10 seconds with …..

Up until recently my mate and I have been living in an all lads house but our testosterone filled evenings of beer and FIFA have come to an end because against all the odds he’s found himself a lady friend.  They’ve been dating for a short while and have now decided to move in together.  Fair play to him because she is a top girl (that’s lad chat for ‘lovely’). 

To prove how flippin’ top she is, she has allowed ME to have their spare room!  It’s a bit like the film ‘You Me and Dupree’ but with English accents.

Now this is my mates first attempt at cohabiting  with a bird so I thought it only fair that I pass on what I learnt from my early moments with the now Mrs Catterall.

Women have a dedicated part of their brain for remembering every piece of clothing that they have ever worn, where they wore it and who they wore it with.  As a man you need to know this because if you’re ever going to an event involving your friends  it is a woman’s prerogative to state that she ‘has nothing to wear’ even though you can clearly see she has more ‘stock’ in her cupboard than Selfridges have on their shelves.  Don’t argue just agree and give her your credit card.

A man will sleep through any sound.  A women will hear any sound and be worried about burglars.  She will then make every attempt to wake you up and then demand that you check it out.  Your instinct will want to tell her to ‘go and f*** her self’.  Don’t, just do it.

Women take 20 minutes to choose food from a takeaway menu, Men will take 1 minute.  When the food arrives, women always decide that they want to eat the man’s food….. and subsequently do!  This WILL annoy the tits off you.  Don’t kick off just smile and allow her to do it.

Remember happy wife, equals a happy life! 

There will be other things that I’m sure my mate will find out for himself but I would like to remind him of the key bonus (apart from the regular sex) of cohabiting with the female of the species.  A woman will go to the toilet and notice that the toilet roll has run out before doing her business.  A man will do a shit and then notice, before shouting urgently for his partner to take him some.  Women know this and because they never want to see you in that predicament they always make sure the bog roll is fully stocked.  It’s been three years since I last wiped my ass on a Maccy D’s serviette!  Good times!

The two biggest pop acts in the world trusted with such stature this summer were Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

So between them who is the best?  As per usual with any debate I’ve ever aired on the radio this all began with a few cinzano’s and a packet of dry roasted nuts.

In no way am I a lover of what would be referred to as pop music but I am a fan of the records these two heavyweights have recorded.  However, comparing melody and lyrical content is nonsense because different songs appeal to different people.  With this in mind I have turned my attention to judging them on four different categories.  Firstly, each individuals bid for ‘indie cred’.  Ludicrous accoutrements follow and their stab at being political.  Finally what cultural impact have they had on the future generations?

Gaga, signed to Def Jam at 19 years of age crossing boundaries into the world of Hip Hop.  Kudos points have to be deducted though as she later recorded with Michael Bolton and at recent UK gig she did an ode to Wills and Kate.  Whilst LG was performing at Radio 1’s Big Weekend, Beyonce was prepping for her groundbreaking Glastonbury performance, the first female solo artist to ever headline the most famous festival in the world.  For those that saw her, she made a lot of new friends, who hadn’t had a wash for four days, want to put a ring on it.

However Knowles has recently been spotted with a chromed ‘bionic’ glove giving her the Robocop-Wacko Jacko vibe.  In the ‘mother monster’ corner of ludicrous accoutrements, meat dresses, facial horns, and 12 dozen Kermit the frogs sellotaped to her body.  Lady Gaga makes Elton John in the seventies look like a leather elbow patch wearing geography teacher.

Beyonce recently visited a school in her home town of Housten, Texas to persuade obese kids to lose weight by dancing to RnB.  Major political points!  If this child of destiny can’t make fat kids stop loving cake then who can?  However, Sasha Fierce has been top trumped by Miss Germanotta who is a vociferous campaigner on behalf of the gay community.  Not only that, she upped the human rights ante with her song Americano by tackling Arizona’s immigration laws.

Finally we go to the cultural impact.  Having seen the word Bootylicious (adj. having curvaceous buttocks) enter the Oxford English Dictionary Beyonce’s impact has resonated via a woeful attempt for one to shake ‘what their momma gave them’ on various dance floors up and down the country.  Gaga’s influence stretches as far as aristocracy and the world of soap opera.  Did you see Princess Beatrice’s ‘calamari’ head piece for the royal wedding and Phil Mitchell’s indignation when his lad, Ben, dressed up as his female hero on ‘stenders? 

Argument sorted, Gaga wins!

I, like many others, find inspiration from real life stories. 

In this blog I look at the world of Literature.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is now studied in schools across the world.  Time magazine ranked it as one of the top 100 English-language novels ever written.  The book has sold more than 14.5 million copies since it was first published in 1954. Golding won a Nobel Prize for Literature largely based on this particular work.  So I bet the person who read the original manuscript for it and declared it, “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull” spent much of his career regretting his words.

The same could be said about George Orwell’s Animal Farm.  It also made Time’s list of best English-language books ever written, ranked in at #31 on the Modern Library’s List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and won retrospective Hugo award in 1996.  Not only was Orwell’s classic written off (and completely misunderstood) by a publisher who noted, “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA,” Orwell’s peer and good friend T.S. Eliot was also less than impressed.  Orwell sent a draft to Eliot, who responded that the writing was good, but the view was “not convincing” and that publishers would only accept the book if they had personal sympathy for the “Trotskyite” viewpoint.

It doesn’t stop there. 

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.  Plenty of publishers took a gander at the Chosen One and decided not to choose him, including bigwigs like Penguin and HarperCollins.  J K Rowling finally decided to try a small London firm called Bloomsbury, who accepted only after the CEO’s eight-year-old daughter read the book and declared it a winner. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about all of the accolades and great commercial success that followed nearly immediately.

Even Gone with the Wind, one of the most enduring novels and movies of all time, didn’t score at the first time of asking.  There aren’t too many people who haven’t heard the phrase, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”   However, It was 38 publishers who didn’t give a damn originally.  When Margaret Mitchell finally found a publisher in Macmillan, the book sold in stores for $3 apiece – quite a sum for 1936. Even at this rather high price point, the book sold more than one million copies by the end of the year.  It won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, and of course became an Academy Award-winning film in 1939.

Imagine if the authors of these books decided to listen to the first publisher they pitched their respective books to.  The world deprived of pure masterpieces.

What ever your journey, you will come across some resistance from a third party.  Friends, family, enemies, teachers, bosses at work.  Their negative thoughts towards you and your dream are irrelevant unless you allow them to become your thoughts.

Believe in yourself.  If you don’t you might be depriving the world of something life changing. 

A Masterpiece!

I’ve been working on this for over 6 months.  It started when one of my friends asked me that minger of a question … ‘What do women want?’

So, I set about analysing my own lady and how she operates.

I am one of the lucky ones.  I am married to an absolutely ‘mint’ woman.  However, even ‘mint’ women are a little bit bonkers. 

Now, in no way do I profess myself to be some kind of expert but I do know one reason why understanding women isn’t such an easy thing.

Many studies indicate that women use emotion to process thought as their basis for decision making, 30% more than men do.  Due to this women come from a different angle when it comes to being in a relationship.

One reason why people expend so much effort conforming to social ‘norms’ is that they think that others are closely paying attention to what they are doing.  They want to be in the ‘cool’ crowd so they do what the majority are doing.  If you ever accidentally forgot that it was dress down day at school and you were the only one to turn up in your uniform, you felt like everyone was looking at you funny and wondering why you are such a geek.  I know I did!

If I was to ask you who is the biggest artist on the planet right now, your answer would surely be Lady Gaga.  Her ‘born this way’ attitude has propelled her into the realm of superstardom.  Don’t get me wrong she is a fantastic talent but the reason she is reaping so much success is that she has never stopped for one minute to consider what everyone else is thinking about her.  She works purely on gut instinct and stays true to what she believes.  Imagine if you did that?  How phenomenal would you be?

In the late 1990’s a team of psychologist did a survey at a university in Chicago asking which entertainer would be  the ‘un-coolest’ to display on the front of a t-shirt.  The answer, was singer Barry Manilow.  They then asked one student (captain of the football team, one of the cool kids) to wear a t-shirt with Mr. Manilow on the front for the day in and around campus.  At the end of the day the student involved in the experiment was asked to guess how many people that he had come into contact with throughout the day could identify who or what was on his t-shirt.  He guessed at 80%.  4 people in every 5.  The actual answer was 11% could.  Just over half a person in every 5!

The moral is that people are paying less attention to you than you believe.  They are only looking at you inside your head!  This mind set is stopping us flourish. 

As a child where you the one that raised your hand in class and went with the answer you created in your head or did you cower in your chair praying that someone else would be selected by the teacher to provide the information requested?

At work are you the one that sits in meetings nodding along to everything that you actually disagree with only to then bitch and moan in more familiar company that you feel confident with?  (Eg, when you get home with your loved ones)

You will never make the changes you desire if you are constantly standing in the shadows.  Its time to step up to the Spotlight!

With £6000 in his back pocket, given to him as a ‘redundancy’ pay off by his previous employers, he set about writing a business plan in the hope of raising enough capital via a bank loan to open up his own shop.  The amount of money needed, £100,000!

He went to see his local bank manager and after an hour long presentation of his idea, the man was asked for a further 16 copies of his business plan.  Unfortunately, the bank manager had no interest in actually making an investment.  He was in fact giving a talk later that afternoon about the kinds of business plans that should never be given the bank’s support.

In fact, a further 8 bank managers turned his idea down for a financial injection.

How would you feel at this point?  Sacked by your previous employer because in their eyes you weren’t good enough and then rejected by 9 bank managers for a loan for your new idea which they believe to be idiotic.  So much so that one of those bank managers ridiculed you to your face by, in no uncertain terms, brandishing your business plan as the ‘worst they’ve ever seen’.  Time to give up on your dream?

My man thought he would give it one last shot and this time it was different.  The bank manager he met, after reading the business plan, said the same as the previous 9 but had a different conclusion.  He was retiring in two weeks and didn’t really care for the banks money he was lending.  He thought that if the man in front of him blew all the cash it wasn’t going to be the his (the bank managers) problem, so he granted the loan.

Nine years after that loan was granted, the man who was sacked by WH Smith for being ‘useless’, the man who was refused bank loans by 9 different banks and the same man who was told his business plan was the worst that one particular bank manager had ever seen, sold his company for … 47 million pounds! 

Here’s the best bit. 

He sold his company to WH Smiths!

The man’s name is … Tim Waterstone, founder of Waterstones books, HMV and Daisy and Tom.

We all face rejection at some point.  It’s how you deal with it and move on that sets you apart.

“Ignore the received wisdom of any industry you’re entering.  Never be trapped by dogma.  Never let other people’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – Tim Waterstone

I had decided to take a leap of faith and leave a safe secure position in the hope of attaining my dream job.  I made this decision in the middle of a recession and with a fiancé to support who is at university without any income of her own.

At the time everyone I spoke to thought I was mad.  The implication of taking a leap of faith can, depending on the context, carry positive or negative connotations, as some feel it is a virtue to be able to believe in something without evidence while others feel it is foolishness.  It is a hotly contested theological and philosophical concept.

The week before I told my bosses at Rock FM that I wasn’t going to renew my contract I was in a school in Preston speaking in front of a bunch of students who were about to embark on their GCSE final exams.  I do this a lot and often speak of my own experiences and stories from people in the world that I admire in the hope of inspiring the next generation to do something unthinkable with their own lives.

I remember referring to the world of sport and one particular sports star.  A man that in his own words says “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over in my life. And that’s why I succeed!”

That man is Michael Jordan.

We only ever remember that he was a six-time NBA champion or he was named MVP on 5 separate occasions or that he averaged 30 points per game.  Nobody remembers (or cares) about the number of times he failed, just what he achieved.  He left this legacy behind because he was brave enough to keep trying.

I know to achieve what you really want is hard.  You are going to come across more downs than ups on the path to success. 

When you get a moment go and look at a game of snakes and ladders.  This is a game that originates in India and was designed to teach children about the ups and downs of life.  There are double the amount of snakes on the board to that of the of ladders.  If you ‘give up’ when you hit a snake trust me you won’t reach square 100.  If you dust yourself off and go again, you eventually will.

Professionally, the last year has been the hardest of my life.  I can think now of at least two separate occasions when I was ready to ‘give up’ and settle for second best.  I was offered alternatives to my dream job which I know many of my contemporaries would have jumped at the opportunity to do.

Michael Jordan is known as the greatest of all time in the basketball world because he kept his focus, kept his self belief and more importantly kept trying.

Over the Easter weekend of 2011 I saw a chink of light.  I made my debut on Radio 1.  For those that don’t know I am also the voice on the biggest digital TV channel in this country, ITV2.  Trust me I have slid down some major snakes over the last year but the two ladders I managed to climb were well worth it.

Keep chasing your dreams!

‘I can accept failure because everyone fails at something, but I cant accept not trying’ – Michael Jordan

“Mummy, Daddy, look at me!”

Most of the time parents happily oblige and say how wonderful something is.  As children we seek praise.  We are taught that if we did something our parents approved of we would be rewarded or praised for it.  If not, then there would be no praise or even … a punishment.  Does this cycle become so engrained in us that we continue to seek praise in our adult lives?  When do we stop asking for recognition out loud?  Is it a mere shift from actually asking our parents and teachers, to silently expecting it from our loved ones and managers?

In an earlier blog I wrote about Abraham Maslow, a famous psychologist, who states in his paper “The Theory of Motivation” that humans need to be recognized.  According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, human beings have five different types of needs: basic needs like food and water, safety needs like shelter, love needs from family and friends, esteem needs which include respect for yourself and others and self-actualization which include purpose and personal growth.  Once these lower-level needs have been met, people can move on to the next level of needs.  As people progress up the pyramid, needs become increasingly psychological and social.

Esteem needs that include recognition, also include the need for things that reflect on self-esteem, personal worth, social status and accomplishment.  Esteem basically is about self-esteem which is feeling good about ourselves.  We can get such esteem in two ways.  Internally, we can judge ourselves and find ourselves worthy by our own defined standards.  Most people, however, start with the outside, seeking social approval and esteem from other people, judging themselves by what others think of them.

In our love lives we have all been in relationships with people who need to be told they are loved every single day.  They need to be told that they look nice when they dress up for a night out.  They seek constant reassurance that they are worthy and if that recognition isn’t forthcoming then their whole demeanor changes.  You might even be this person in your relationship.

The work environment is no different.

So many people need a ‘pat on the back’ or to be made a positive example of in front of colleagues.  Don’t get me wrong gaining accolades from your superiors or the person you love is fantastic and there’s not a person on earth who does not enjoy that feeling of praise but there is a difference between wanting something and needing something in your life.

In order to be free and be who we know we can be, we must let go of the praise shackles.  Don’t be tied to external recognition. 

We must learn to set our own standards.  As a child, this dependency on praise may serve us well, yet it imprisons us as we grow up.  Give yourself permission to know when you have done something well.  
In other words … LOVE YOURSELF!

Last Tuesday I was in Hertfordshire at the University for the Student Radio Conference.  Each year I am invited to host ‘Demo Factor’, an event where budding radio presenters can have their demo listened to in front of a panel of judges and a live audience.  The audience are all people who currently have some dealing in student radio.  The process is designed to give people with no professional experience of the industry an insight as to what it is really like.  There is a lot of laughter but there are also tears as the judges analyse the work offered by the students before them.  When the event is over the students clamber for a few moments with each of the six professional representatives in the room, including myself, for words of wisdom and advice on how they go about achieving their dream.

The process of achieving any dream, not just one that lies in the world of radio broadcasting, is easy to say but not easy to do as I have found out myself.

A very small percentage of the people I walked amongst at the University of Hertfordshire last week will work in radio professionally.  An even smaller amount (probably 1 out of the 250 there) will be heard on a national platform.  Why? 

The answer is nothing to do with talent.

Talent alone is not enough, not just in radio but in any industry that holds a dream for you.  I have many friends who should have been professional footballers.  If they were to be judged solely on talent, I have no doubt they would have made it, but they didn’t, because it’s not just about talent.

To achieve anything you have to really want it.  I don’t mean to think ‘oh wont that be nice if I did that’ type of wanting, I mean really wanting it so it makes you feel sick in the pit of your stomach.  You go to bed at night and it’s the thing that keeps you awake.  When you get out of bed it’s the thing that buzzes around your head all day.  When you really want something you are prepared to do anything to make it happen.  (When I say ‘anything’ I mean that is legal and without doing detriment to others).

If you have a dream I encourage you to read my blog titled ‘Daydream Believer’ on this site.  It’s the first one I ever wrote and even though the date on the blog is January 2011 I actually originally wrote it in January 2010.  I then adapted it for the launch of this website.  The point of telling you this is the decisions I talk about in the blog were made purely because of my dream.  I didn’t make them based on fact.  I believed I could make my dream come true.  In other words I took a huge leap of faith.

One day I plan to write a book in order to highlight all the times that I should have given up in the hope it might inspire someone not to give up on their dream.

It doesn’t matter HOW you get there as long as you get there!

So, what next for me I hear you ask?  The answer is like all the answers that have gone before it.  I don’t know.  What I do know though is that my dream wasn’t just to do two programmes on Radio 1 and for you never to hear of me again!

I’m still daydream believing!

Can you name the Premier League’s Top Goal Scorers by letters of the Alphabet?

Have a do at it yourself but if you can’t be bothered waiting, the answers are below.  Try it on your mates.  Its a worldy!

A = Nic Anelka

B = James Beattie

C = Andy Cole

D = Dion Dublin

E = Jason Euell

F = Robbie Fowler

G = Ryan Giggs

H = Thierry Henry

I = Paul Ince

J = Andy Johnson

K = Robbie Keane

L = Frank Lampard

M = Gary McCallister

N = Kevin Nolan

O = Michael Owen

P = Kevin Phillips

Q = Nial Quinn

R = Wayne Rooney

S = Alan Shearer

T – Fernando Torres

U = David Unsworth

V = Ruud Van Nistlerooy

W = Ian Wright

X = Abel Xavier

Y = Dwight Yorke

Z = Gianfranco Zola

How did you do??  Amazing that Drogba and Chris Ronaldo aren’t on that list!

 It’s only natural to think, but unfortunately our thoughts are often negative, self conscious, egocentric, and irrational emotions that drop us into the very pitfalls we spend most our lives climbing out of and complaining about.  Not only do we complain about the problems caused by results we initiate, but we often trick ourselves into blaming outside sources for these problems when in reality the fault ultimately lies within.  These problems start with our self–talk.
Self–talk refers to the dialogue that goes on inside your head when faced with conflict or life challenges or even simple day-to-day concerns.  This aspect of yourself has a running commentary about everything you do.  It never lets anything go by with out some comment, remark or evaluation.   You are even thinking about something right at this moment.

Becoming aware of this process is the first step in taking charge of this part of your mind that can create a lot of unnecessary stress.  The automatic reactions you have to these constant barrages of negative thoughts, judgments and evaluations can keep you feeling stressed and less able to meet life’s challenges.
You’ll recognise these thoughts because you have heard them all your life; I’m not clever enough, something is wrong, I can’t do it, I never finish anything, this is too hard, change takes too long etc. You may have initially formed these negative ideas about yourself from things you heard initially from a parent, teacher or someone who had authority over you or they were decisions you made in reaction to some event.  Now, as an adult you have incorporated them into your own personality. In effect you don’t need those people to tell you what to do anymore, they are living inside your own head!

These thoughts surface when you are faced with doing something that is counter to what your mind thinks you can do, or has a negative opinion about.  Think back over times when your own ideas or thoughts about what you could or could not accomplish got in the way of something you really wanted.

Take control of your self-talk, take control of your life.

Click on the link below and spend five minutes of your life dwelling on the statement above.  Boundaries only exist in your head!

The Deathcrawl

Imagine a game of football without the goals at each end of the pitch.  A group of 22 players would run around aimlessly with no purpose to their endeavour.  Many people live their lives this way.  They work hard every single day but without purpose or direction.  They work with no goal to aim at.

It is easy when setting a goal to fall in to the trap of being general with your target.  There is a reason as to why the goals in a game of football are a certain size.  If the rules in football stated that you score a point every time you kick the ball to the other end of the pitch then everyone would score, it would be too easy and the results of games would be equivalent to that of a basketball game.  These aren’t the rules of football though.  You only score when you put the ball in a specific area of the pitch, the goal.  The people who score the most goals are the people who are focussed every single day on putting the ‘ball in the net’.  This is a metaphor for life.

Goals should be straightforward and emphasize what you want to happen.  Specifics help us to focus our efforts and clearly define what we are going to do.  Instead of setting a goal to lose weight or be healthier, set a specific goal to lose 2 inches off your waistline or to get to the stage where you can run a marathon.

Choose a goal with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur.  Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.  When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.  If you are training for a distance race you are not going to be able to run the full distance straight away.  You start with a smaller target which is a measurable part of the path you’re taking to get to your big goal.

Goals you set which are too far out of your reach, you probably won’t commit to doing.  Although you may start with the best of intentions, the knowledge that it’s too much for you means your subconscious will keep reminding you of this fact and will stop you from even giving it your best.  A goal needs to stretch you slightly so you feel you can do it and it will need a real commitment from you.  For instance, if you aim to lose 20lbs in one week, we all know that isn’t achievable, but setting a goal to lose 1lb in a week is achievable and when you’ve achieved that, aiming to lose a further 1lb per week until you reach your target, will keep it achievable for you.

Devise a plan or a way of getting there which makes the goal realistic. The goal needs to be realistic for YOU and where YOU are at the moment.  A goal of never again eating sweets, cakes, crisps and chocolate may not be realistic for someone who really enjoys these foods.  For instance, it may be more realistic to set a goal of eating a piece of fruit each day instead of one sweet item.  You can then choose to work towards reducing the amount of sweet products gradually as and when this feels realistic for YOU.

Finally set a time frame.  If you don’t set a time, the commitment is too vague.  It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time.  Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to start taking action now.

I would like to leave you with this thought.  There is a difference between working hard and working SMART! (s-Specific, m-measurable, a-attainable, r-realistic, t-timely)

Why do businesses in England persist in employing people to answer their telephones who don’t have a full grasp of the vernacular?  The very people who struggle when it comes to conversing in the ‘Queens’, that make the whole process of ordering something so painful that it puts me off ever doing it again.

Earlier today I was online booking a hotel in London when I came across a particular website whose online booking form looked ‘a bit dodgy’.  I decided to call the hotel to make the reservation, a procedure that should have taken me no longer than five minutes.  15 minutes later I’m still on the phone speaking as slow as I possibly can in order for the young lady of far east origin at the other end of the phone to correctly input my details into her system.  When she sent me my ‘confirmation email’ I was not surprised to find that she had indeed booked me into a totally different room to what we had spoken about and I was due to check in four days after I actually intended to!  The next course of action was to spend a further ten minutes on the phone with the same Chinese lady, altering the booking to what I actually sought.

How many businesses in the country are loosing trade because of events like I experienced?

In other news I’ve grown a major dislike to ‘space invaders’.  Not the retro potato snack but other human beings that find it necessary to invade your personal space, and no space is more personal than when you are at the urinal.

I was alone in the gents on Monday en route to whipping out the trouser snake and leaking the old lizard.  There were eight different piss pots and I decided to take the one furthest to the left to relieve myself.  The other seven were completely free, so why did the next goon to occupy the lavatory decide that he would stand right next to me to do his business?  The unwritten rule is that you only stand next to a fellow ‘pisser’ when there is no other available space.  Talk about awkward!

Finally this last grumble is directed at the people who invented the rules of exiting a building when it is on fire.

Last week I was giving a motivational talk at a school and they had a fire drill, a process where the whole school practice evacuating their building in the event of a catastrophe.  During the practice you could hear members of staff shouting ‘walk in an orderly fashion to the meeting point and form an orderly line in single file’. 

What the F*%$ is all that about? 

If I was in a building and it was on fire there is no way I would walk in an orderly fashion in the direction of the meeting point and then whilst all my mates may still be trapped inside the building I had just left,  be calm enough to form an orderly line in single file!

Until next time … laters!

I was in Boots the other day shopping and I came across the aisle were they keep the condoms.  Now before you send me a load of wise cracks, ‘came across the aisle’ isn’t my attempt to copy the sordid acts of George Michael and secondly I wasn’t intending to buy any pregnancy protectors.  The thing I want to talk about though, are the brand names.  We all know about Durex and Mates but the brand that is slightly misleading is Trojan.

In the original tale, once the horse is inside of Troy (Troy is a place and not an unsuspecting man like the bloke in the porno Animal Farm) men brake out of it, and fuck everything up.  This surely is the exact opposite to what the purchaser of the Trojan product is after achieving?

Away from misleading brand names we have the world of social networking.  I am a major fan of Twitter, the idea is fantastic and for anyone who needs to get a message across, quickly, to a large group of people it is the ideal solution.  If you are in the public eye you will acquire a large amount of followers, fans of your work, or in some cases, stalkers.  These people will in time send you a complimentary message to show how much they appreciate what you do and how much of an impact you have on their life.  If someone paid you a compliment in the street or at work how would you react?  Most people would thank them for their kind words, they may even shun away from the embarrassment of being praised.  Only a complete and utter dick head would shout at the top of their voice in order to gain everyone else’s attention, who wasn’t privy to the original compliment, and once the attention of complete strangers is gained then proceed to make the person who is paying the original compliment repeat it so everyone else can hear!  Why then do people on twitter think it acceptable to ‘re-tweet’ compliments paid to them?

One more thing that gets my goat is when you miss a call on your mobile by a fraction of a second, so you call the person who has just called you straight back.  They then DON’T ANSWER!  They surely can’t all of a sudden be busy, as less than 30 seconds ago they were trying to contact you!

Right, I’m done.  If you could leave a comment for this it would be much appreciated or you can just tweet me back, and I promise that if your tweet refers to you agreeing with whatever I have written I will not re-tweet it for every Tom Dick and Harry to see.

PS.  Can someone also please tell me why Selfridges don’t actually Sell Fridges!  Confused.

Thinking about all the things that could go wrong doesn’t make life any more predictable. You may feel safer when you’re worrying, but it’s just an illusion. Focusing on worst-case scenarios won’t keep bad things from happening. It will only keep you from enjoying the good things you have in the present. So if you want to stop worrying, start by tackling your need for certainty and immediate answers.

It’s tough to be productive in your daily life when anxiety and worry are dominating your thoughts. Trying to stop worrying doesn’t work – at least not for long. You can distract yourself for a moment, but you can’t banish your anxious thoughts for good. Trying to do so often makes them stronger, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to control your worry. You just need to try a different approach. Rather than trying to totally suppress an anxious thought, develop the habit of postponing worrying.

Postponing worrying is effective because it breaks the habit of dwelling on worries in the present moment. Set aside 20 minutes everyday to do your worrying (not before bed).  When a worry pops into your head during the day tell yourself that you’ll worry about that later when you have your worry period.  As you develop the ability to postpone your anxious thoughts, you’ll experience a greater sense of control.

If you suffer from chronic anxiety and worries, chances are you look at the world in ways that make it seem more dangerous than it really is.  For example, you may overestimate the possibility that things will turn out badly, jump immediately to worst case scenarios, or treat every negative thought as if it were fact. You may also discredit your own ability to handle life’s problems, assuming you’ll fall apart at the first sign of trouble. These irrational, pessimistic attitudes are known as cognitive distortions.

Although cognitive distortions aren’t based on reality, they’re not easy to give up. Often, they’re part of a lifelong pattern of thinking that’s become so automatic you’re not even completely aware of it. In order to break these bad thinking habits and stop the worry and anxiety they bring, you must retrain your brain.

Start by identifying the frightening thought, being as detailed as possible about what scares or worries you. Then, instead of viewing your thoughts as facts, treat them as hypothesis you’re testing out. As you examine and challenge your worries and fears, you’ll develop a more balanced perspective.  Do this by asking yourself questions like ‘what is the probability that what I’m scared of will actually happen?’ and ‘If the probability is low, what are some more likely outcomes?’

There are many different types of worrier too.

There are the all or nothing worriers who look at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground.  The type of person that would say, ‘If I fall short of perfection, I’m a total failure.’ 

There are the over generalisation worriers, people who generalise from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever, ‘I didn’t get hired for the job; I’ll never get any job.’ 

The mental filterer’s who focus on the negatives while filtering out all the positives, noticing the one thing that went wrong, rather than all the things that went right. 

Then there are people who diminish the positives in their life.  They say ridiculous things like, “I did well on the test, but that was just luck”.  What’s all that about?

Let’s not forget the people who make negative interpretations without actual evidence. This lot act like mind readers, ‘I can tell she secretly hates me,’ or fortune tellers ‘I just know something terrible is going to happen.’  If you are that good at predicting the future, please can you sort out my lottery numbers?

My all time favourites though have to be the ones that expect the worst-case scenario to happen?  ‘The pilot said we’re in for some turbulence. The plane’s going to crash!’

Worrying is a thought process, that’s all.  Thought processes come from inside our own head and they are controlled by guess who?  That’s right YOU!  Believe it or not you control what goes on inside your head and if you allow worry enough time it will take over your life and destroy it because it will stop you from doing what you really want to do.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

Please ….. Don’t worry, BE HAPPY!

Back in 1992 surprisingly the first player to win the PFA player of the year as voted for by fellow professionals was a defender by the name of Paul McGrath.  Only one other defender has won the prestigious award since, giving me the argument that the greatest player from Premier league history must be some one who applied their trade further up the field. 

Alan Shearer won the award twice, once with Premier League winning Blackburn and then he won it again with his boy hood hero’s Newcastle United.  Without any doubt the greatest goal scorer the league has ever seen, still being the only player to score over 200 premier league goals and still being the only player to score 100 Premier League goals for two different clubs.  He must surely have a shout at being crowned the greatest.

Thierry Henry, the first player to win the PFA award in two consecutive seasons.  He scored 174 goals in 254 appearances for Arsenal and won 2 Premier league titles to sit alongside his 3 FA Cup winners medals.  Cristiano Ronaldo also won the award in back to back seasons which in the first of those seasons he racked up an amazing 42 goals, a total greater than anyone in the history of the league for one season.  Bergkamp, Ginola, Van Nistelrooy, Gerrard, Giggs and Rooney would all have a shout at being named the greatest but for me there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

He won four Premier League titles in five years.  In fact in his 6 years in English football he won 5 league titles as he was apart of the Leeds United team that won the last ever old first division.  In 1995, the only season he didn’t win the Premier League, he was suspended for the final four months of the campaign because of the most famous act of violence the world of football has witnessed, and because of this suspension Blackburn Rovers narrowly beat his beloved Manchester United to the title.

I am of course talking about Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona.

I hate Manchester United and when he played against my side I hated Cantona but hindsight is a wonderful thing.  When I look at modern footballers the question I ask is ‘where are all the characters?’  The first player I ever loved was Bruce Grobellaar, not because he was a good goalkeeper but because he was a clown.  A person who played with personality, a person who made me love him for who he is and didn’t make excuses for it even when it went wrong. 

Today we have Ian Holloway, the manager of Blackpool, who is fantastic when it comes to press conference time.  Comparing his boys to a flock of farm yard animals or a night out on the town looking for attractive women, he makes me smile no end.  As Premier League consumers we have also been blessed with Jose Mourinho who would make you smile with his renegade attitude of sticking it to the man.  Like Grobellaar both men do it their way with personality and I for one applaud them.

Cantona not only won major trophies but he won them with panache.  He treated his time on the football field in the same manner a gladiator would do in the coliseum in Rome or an actor in a Shakespeare play.  He wore his collar up and his shirt out.  He puffed out his chest when he ran at full throttle.  In 1996 against Sunderland to celebrate a truly magnificent chip over a helpless goalkeeper from all of 25 yards, Cantona didn’t run and celebrate like a mad man who surprised himself at the ‘worldy’ he had just created.  He stood there, perfectly nonchalant, resembling scenes of Russell Crowe in the Hollywood smash Gladiator.  All he needed was a microphone to utter the words ‘are you not entertained?’

Wayne Rooney scored the greatest goal I have ever witnessed recently against Manchester City and when the ball hit the net he looked like a little boy in comparison to King Eric.  Even with his post match interview Rooney insinuated an element of luck may have been involved with this ‘wonder goal’.  I don’t want to hear that!  I want to hear you say ‘that was nothing, you should see what I do in training’, or ‘when you’re as good as me things like that are easy’.  I can tell you a certain 6ft 2” Frenchman would have certainly played up this moment in history.

Even now 14 years after he kicked a ball on English soil Cantona is still having an impact and finds himself trending on the world wide social network site Twitter.

Asked on BBC’s Football Focus what the highlight of his career was, Cantona responded: “When I did the kung fu kick on the hooligan, because these kind of people don’t have to be at the game.  I think maybe it’s like a dream for some, you know sometimes to kick these kind of people.  So I did it for them.  It’s a great feeling.”

Of course there is a hint of sarcasm in his answer but this to me confirms his renowned status.  He doesn’t care.  He does it his way and makes no excuses for it.  To win is one thing.  To win with style is something completely different.  Eric the great!

Oliver and Channel 4 constructed a format in which untrained, specialist celebrities, ‘teach’ kids who didn’t achieve the ‘magic five’ GCSE passes that would have allowed them to progress academically.  The employment of particular field specialists insinuates that Oliver believes that the teachers in our country are the reason that these students and ‘many others’ failed, as he didn’t change any other aspect of school life. 

The class size stayed the same, a terrible idea, especially when every student in this cohort is disaffected.  Three disaffected youngsters in a classroom is a nightmare, 20 of them is hell on earth.  The lesson type, History, English and Science is exactly what these young people detested when they were regular participants in education.  The students were even made to wear a uniform.  It was Albert Einstein, one of the greatest thinkers of our time, who famously said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. 

Now, in some cases I agree that the teachers that teach our kids are sub standard.  Not in ability to relay information on their specialist subject but, in ability to connect with modern day teens. 

David Starkey, Simon Callow and Lord Robert Winston were the ‘celebrities’ brought in by Oliver to teach these disaffected youngsters. When Starkey, Callow and Winston went to school it was before England last won the World Cup, so how on God’s green earth can they talk the talk and walk the walk of these kids? 

In the 1950’s when David Starkey and his colleagues went to school, teenagers operated differently.  They spoke when they were spoken to and they lived in fear that if they ever embarrassed their parents in any way, shape or form, a whole world of thunder would be coming their way.  This embarrassment stretched to the classroom where the teacher took on the parental role and ruled the room with an iron first, quite literally.     

Fast forward 60 years and the roles have changed.  The person in charge is the teenager.  In the classroom the teacher is powerless.  Once upon a time the threat of physical discipline was enough for you to keep quiet and listen in a lesson.  That threat is no longer there.  There is no fear.  Home life has changed too.  In the 90’s when I went to school there was only one person in my class whose Mum and Dad where no longer together.  I taught a class the other day and only one student lived with both Mum and Dad.  This is modern society and it has had major psychological effect on how young people now operate in life.  Whether we like it or not we have to adapt as the 1950’s are never coming back.

At the moment, we have an education system that ‘papers over the cracks’.  It allows students to do what they want without consequences.  If they don’t fancy GCSE’s its okay because under the modern education system they’ll find you a BTEC to do, which somewhere down the line some government minister has managed to convince Head Teachers that each of these are worth up to the equivalent of four GCSE’s. 

Jamie Oliver, David Cameron or Michael Gove (Education Minister), which ever one fancies it, never mind your ridiculous TV programmes and education cuts, I have an idea for you.  Why not introduce into primary and secondary education actual lessons on the curriculum time table for BEHAVIOUR.  The thing that in years gone by parents would deliver on a day to day basis but as our society has changed so much over the last 60 years the new modern way of parenting, for the ones in charge of the unruly youngsters, is to not actually bother with this bit of their duty. 

Help these young people understand how society is supposed to work.  Teach them respect for themselves and for others and see how it transcends into the classroom.  Once you have a group of individuals who know how to behave, you then have a group of individuals who just might learn something because they are prepared to listen to the knowledge their tutor is prepared to share with them.  There is no point trying to inspire someone to aspire to greater things when they won’t sit and listen.  Listening is an art and just like people have lessons in public speaking they surely need lessons in public listening!

So what now of Arsenal?  This was supposed to be the moment that took the pressure off their young side.  The moment they ended the derogatory banter coming their way from the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea whose trophy cabinets, since Arsenal’s penalty shoot out victory in the 2005 FA Cup final, has been bulging at the seams.

I am by no means an Arsenal fan but I am a major lover of their football and their philosophy.  Firstly their football is at time breath taking.  They have a bunch of individuals who as a team appreciate the importance of their role and that it is secondary to that of the team.  Their philosophy, inflicted by the second longest serving manager in the Premier League, is that of a time gone by.  In a football world where the cheque book seems to be king we find a man in Arsene Wenger who stands resolute in his belief to blood young talent without spending 50 million quid on quick fix solutions.  And I am a major supporter of this.

It’s not a new way of thinking as Sir Alex Ferguson has run Manchester United this way for the last 20 years.  Yes, he has spent big to help his young lads along on certain occasions but because he breeds a culture that is built on love, trust and success you find players who give back to the club an awful amount of passion and loyalty.  When you have this from your playing staff you inevitably receive success.  Manchester United and Arsenal are the most successful teams in Premier League history.  Man U have never finished lower than third since the Premier League began in 1992 and since Wenger took over at Highbury in 1996 and now the Emirates, Arsenal have never finished outside the top four.  For a team that hasn’t won a trophy since 2005, to still be the second most successful side in the league’s history is a major achievement.

As they recover from their shock Carling Cup final defeat to Birmingham, the importance of their next three games becomes ever more real.  Next up, an FA Cup replay with Leyton Orient.  The team from Brisbane Road will now smell an even greater chance of a Cup shock.  If Arsenal arrive feeling sorry for themselves, as they have done in the past, then they will be out of that competition too.  Saturday, they host Sunderland at home who have already gone to Chelsea this season and made them look ridiculously average.  Then, as if any of us need reminding the following Wednesday they travel to the Nou Camp for the second leg of their encounter with the greatest side on the planet, FC Barcelona.

Arsenal’s ability is without question.  They have proven that they can beat Barcelona at their own game.  In Jack Wilshere they have a 19 year old lad that showed Xavi and Iniesta how to play the game they recently revitalised.  However, if they go to Catalonia on the back of 3 defeats to heavily inferior opposition I guarantee they will not be in the right place mentally for the task in hand and their season will be over and trophy-less once again.

When we suffer defeat in what ever we do, football games, job interviews, relationships, we automatically go to a bad place in our mind set.  We begin to doubt our own ability which in turn affects future opportunities we may face.  The difference between the really successful people in any walk of life and the ones that never realise their true capabilities, is that they ‘snap out’ of their bad mind set when something negative happens to them quicker than the ones who suffer defeat regularly, and they quickly refocus on the next task in hand.  For Arsenal to achieve this season, re focusing started on the bus out of Wembley.

I thought I’d finish this piece with one of my favourite quotes on the topic.  Some of you may never have heard of Wilma Rudolph.  She was the first American female track athlete to win three gold medals in the same Olympic games.  Check this out for a quote, “winning is great, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose.  If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday”.

The Carling Cup Final was a crushing defeat for the Arsenal.  If they beat Leyton Orient by four or five goals and then do the same to Sunderland, watch out Barcelona!

I spend 75% of my working life in London (soon to be 100%) surrounded by people who come from the south.  Let me tell you it’s different and they think I’m a god damn alien.

First of all what is ‘Dinner’?  Where I come from this is something you eat, between 12pm-1pm.  Not down here.  ‘Dinner’ is your evening meal which is eaten at anytime after 6pm.  I’m sorry but first of all your evening meal traditionally should be at 5pm, on the dot, and it should be referred to as Tea!

Staying with food, why do T-Cakes down here have currents in them?  Imagine my surprise when I rock up at my local breakfast establishment for a bacon T-cake only to be greeted by half the contents of Kellog’s fruit and fibre sprinkled on it!  Upon complaining the ‘guv’nor’ behind the counter exhales in astonishment stating I should have ordered a ‘Bacon roll’.

Their ale is shit as well.  I’m a drinker of the real stuff, where my local pub will pull me a pint of Cumberland or Wainwright.  In my local London boozer they don’t have any real cask ales and when they do its awful.  Their lager is like fizzy pop which the locals can’t take.  Four pints and this lot are on their ass.  Four pints and I’m just getting warm!

To prove the average southerner is softer than his northern counterpart the other day I was working with a 32 year old bloke who was wearing a VEST under his shirt!  A F*&%##g VEST!  I haven’t worn a vest since I was three years old but because there was a ‘nip’ in the air my colleague from the east end of the city thought it apt to don an undergarment that the traveller community wear as their best togs to keep him warm.  Does he have an electric blanket at night?

You would think that my ranting would have a simple solution.  Move back up north then?  For all its weird habits, it’s bloody brilliant.  I know the beer tastes like gnats piss but at least the boozers are open all day every day of the week and they’re always full.  So every cloud!

PS.  Note to Southern Chip shop owners.  For God sake, start serving GRAVY!!

I asked a group of 16 year olds recently about this and the discussion for me was depressing.  The teachers in the school that taught them where ‘out of touch’, they ‘don’t get us’, and they ‘have no idea’.  The truth is the kids are right.  Through their eyes they are right anyway.  Behind the scenes there lies a reason as to why the people challenged with inspiring these young minds are so out of touch.

The problem has been caused by the government.  The government put teachers under immense pressure to ‘hit targets’ when surely the only target a teacher should have is to make the student they teach, truly awesome.  How can someone give time to a student when they have a list of government legislation they must get through in the 60 minutes they have with their class?  Also, inspiring students becomes increasingly hard for the individual responsible for a class when its size exceeds 25 students at any one time.  The maximum class size in my opinion shouldn’t exceed 15 students as each child needs to feel a connection with the person teaching, they need to build a relationship.  Larger class sizes make them feel that they are just a number, another face in the crowd. 

I also believethe person teaching the class needs to be someone the student admires, someone with a story to tell and someone who the student aspires to be like. 

Now government and teachers will argue with me that such responsibility lies at the feet of the parent.  I totally agree with this but sadly the parents that are responsible for the kids that are disaffected in school are too wrapped up in their own lives to care.  What their child will become once they are ready to leave education isn’t of great concern as long as they do something and get out of their parents hair as soon as possible so they can ‘crack on’ with their own lives.

So, the next port of call is the teaching society, the first point where this circle of non inspirational life, created by parents that can’t be bothered, can be broken.  If at this point the student is failed then the circle will continue and the teen in question will pass on their attitude to their kids and so on and so forth.

We need to change the way we think within school.  The government need to come down from the clouds and spend some time at schools in areas with low aspiration just to see how it works because trust me it’s a whole lot different to those private schools they send their kids to.  They need to get their head out of the sand and give these teachers a chance.  These people came into the profession to inspire not to hit a random target that Whitehall thinks is the way forward, these targets don’t work for every child.  Love, care and inspiration, that’s the way forward!

I met a girl at a school in the North West of England recently who was a straight A student.  Extremely bright, had views on things that I didn’t even know existed when I was 16.  When I spoke to her about what she wanted to do when she left school she was undecided but had an idea that she wanted to become a nurse.  Now nurses who are reading this please don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way as I strongly believe you do an invaluable job.  There will be nurses who are far brighter than many people and capable of so much more than what they are doing in their profession so I don’t want to sound derogatory in any way.  However, in front of me was a girl who could be a brain surgeon.  A future Nobel Peace Prize winner!  The only reason she didn’t say that she wanted to do these things is because no one had told her should could.  No one had said ‘what about … this?’

Her face was of pure astonishment when I said you could comfortably do these things if you wanted to.  Some might say ‘well she might be happy being a nurse’ and of course you are right.  My question is ‘she might be ecstatic at being a surgeon, but how will she know if no one opened that door to her’.

Government ministers, stop telling our teachers to train our children to pass exams.  Help them inspire the great minds of the future and then see if ‘The Big Society’ starts to take shape!

A young lady contacted me this week via my twitter and she was questioning her ability to do her job.  She was getting bogged down with tiny issues that shouldn’t have been in her head and after a few tweets back and forth I sent her on her way to tackle the next day with a different attitude.  I’m led to believe it worked for her. However not everyone will speak about a problem they have with the belief in their own abilities.  Not everyone will tackle areas of self doubt.  They would rather give up on a task than bite down and face it head on. 

Now, a lot of people don’t have someone they can trust with their deepest feelings and not only that, someone they believe will be able to help them with the answers they crave.  I am lucky, I have several.  My Parents, My Wife and a man I work with on a day to day basis called Michael Finnigan.  He isn’t only my partner in crime when it comes to our business Young i2i, but he is also my mentor.

He often refers to teachings from great successful people of the past.  One work of art he refers to is a poem by Rudyard Kipling called ‘IF’.  I have posted it below in its entirety to help you keep going on your own personal daily battles.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

When you look back at your life in years to come, the saddest words you could utter would be ‘If only …’  If you do not experience serious pain and strife how will you know what real success feels like?  Hope the poem helps!

In 1943, Maslow wrote an article that appeared in Psychological Review.  It was called ‘A theory of Human Motivation’.  In this article, Maslow attempted to formulate a needs-based framework of human motivation based upon his clinical experiences with people.  From this theory of motivation, modern leaders and executive managers find means of motivation for the purposes of employee and workforce management. 

The basis of Maslow’s theory is that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower factors need to be satisfied before higher needs can be attended to. According to Maslow, you have to take care of the basics before a person can act unselfishly. He calls these “deficiency needs.” As long as we are motivated to satisfy these cravings, we are moving towards growth, toward self-actualisation. Satisfying needs is healthy, while preventing gratification makes us sick or act evilly.  Maslow broke his findings down into the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’.

The first level takes care of Physiological needs.  These are needs required to sustain life.  Things like air, water, food and sleep.  If these fundamental needs are not satisfied then nothing else can take place as the person will eventually die.  If you don’t eat for a long period of time you will die.  If you don’t breathe or drink water or rest you will eventually die. 

The second level refers to safety.  Once physiological needs are met, one’s attention turns to safety and security in order to be free from the threat of physical and emotional harm.  Things like living in a safe area, health care, job security and financial reserves become the main focus in someone’s life.  The first two levels of Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ are necessities.  To get by on a day to day basis and still be on the planet when you’re 80 these two levels must take place in your life.

Once a person has met the lower level physiological and safety needs, higher level motivators awaken. The first part of the higher level is social needs. Social needs are those related to interaction with others and may include friendships, belonging to a group and giving and receiving love.  Socialising with friends or acquiring a boyfriend or girlfriend is an irrelevant motivator to a person who hasn’t eaten for a week. 

After a person feels that they ”belong”, the urge to attain a degree of importance emerges.  The fourth level, esteem needs, can be categorised as external and internal motivators.  Internally motivating esteem needs are those such as self-esteem, accomplishment, and self respect.  External esteem needs are those such as reputation and recognition. 

Then we hit the peak, self actualisation.  It is about the quest of reaching one’s full potential as a person. Unlike lower level needs, this need is never fully satisfied; as one grows psychologically there are always new opportunities to continue to grow.  Self-actualised people have frequent occurrences of peak experiences, which are energised moments of profound happiness and harmony.  According to Maslow, only a small percentage of the population reaches the level of self-actualisation.  A person who is at the peak uses motivators such as truth, wisdom, justice and meaning.  A person at this level is not out for themselves.  They are content with who they are.  They don’t get jealous of others success.  They don’t use blame as an excuse.  They are the ultimate team player.  They would never ‘stab someone in the back’ to get a promotion unlike a person who only exists at level four, the esteem level.

I explained to my friend, the perfect business would consist of a work force who exist at level five, the self actualisation level of the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’.  However I live in the real world and appreciate that we are all different.  We all operate on different levels of Maslow’s findings, and therefore need motivating differently.

My advice to my friend was this.  Everyone has physiological and safety needs to take care of just to exist from day to day.  With this in mind, he must provide ample breaks for lunch and recuperation and pay salaries that allow workers to buy life’s essentials.  He must also make sure that his working environment is safe, his workers have relative job security, and freedom from threats.  Once these are in place the bare essentials of what a human being requires out of life are taken care of.  They have the capabilities to ‘keep a roof over their head and food on their tables’.  If you’ve heard someone refer to their working life in this way before then they only ‘exist’ through life, they’re not having any fun.

After the essentials are taken care of he must motivate his staff in other ways.  For those operating on level three, the social level, he must generate a feeling of acceptance, belonging, and community by reinforcing team dynamics.  For those on level four, the esteem level, he must recognise achievements, assign important projects, and provide status to make employees feel valued and appreciated.  And then for the few he has on the fifth level, self actualisation, he needs to offer challenging and meaningful work assignments which enable innovation, creativity, and progress according to long-term goals.

Sounds simple?  You will be surprised how many directors don’t address this and then wonder why their staff don’t ‘graft’ for them.  Show this to your boss.  Let me know what they think!

When you are a football fan you will stay forever loyal.  My in-laws are die hard Blackburn Rovers fans and spend their hard earned money following their beloved blue and whites up and down the country.  Through thick and thin, from winning the Premier League to being relegated from the division.  Their story isn’t isolated.  This will be replicated at every single club.  Why is it so different then, when they then ask for loyalty in return, from the heroes they follow on a weekly basis?

Now, we’ve all been there and moved jobs for better prospects or a bit of extra cash.  Footballers that do this I have no qualms with.  The perfect example would be Charlie Adam at Blackpool.  A top player who deserves the chance to win trophies and be paid the big bucks, something that he will never achieve at Blackpool.  I also have no qualms with footballers who move for love.  Alan Shearer went to Newcastle because they were his club as a boy and his dream was to play for them as a man.  Once he got there, he never left, and became a legend.  I also appreciate that football is a business run by businessmen and women who want to see returns on their investment.  Selling off their prized assets is part and parcel of the game.  It no longer belongs to the working man, so the days of Gary Mabbutt, Tony Adams and even Ryan Giggs seems to be well and truly behind us. 

The thing I can’t understand though is when you declare your ‘love’ for the team you play for only to then go and hand in a transfer request.  Staying at the club you ‘love’ no longer happens and to me the antics of Fernando Torres this week only strengthens my argument.

On August 3^rd 2010, Torres publicly committed himself to Liverpool Football Club.  A club he supported as a boy.  A club, whose shirt he used to wear underneath his Athletico Madrid shirt when playing in La Liga.  He said:

“My commitment to the club and to the fans is the same as it was on my first day when I signed.  I am looking forward to the challenge ahead”.

Now Liverpool’s season hasn’t been the greatest and it’s to be expected that their top striker would attract interest from other Premier League clubs when the January transfer window opened at the turn of the year.  However, on January 10^th 2011, Torres said:

“My head is in Liverpool and on helping save our season.  I am professional and always fulfil my deals”

Torres is a hero to Liverpool fans.  He is celebrated in the same way as past Anfield greats are, like Robbie Fowler and Kenny Dalglish.  Yet, if he has the idea that moving to Chelsea is ‘career improvement’ he is clearly misguided.  No longer will he have hero status.  No longer will he have the pride of playing for the most accomplished side in English football.  A ‘famous’ European night at Stamford Bridge just really isn’t on the same level as Anfield.  Trust me, I’ve been lucky enough to go to both.  Plastic flags, the cockney media and a fan base that will boo their own players in the light of personal life allegations.  Woo Hoo I’d love to play there!  Chelsea themselves have had a shocker of a season.  They are an ageing team that are only going one way, especially with the resurgence of Tottenham and Manchester City now seriously challenging for top four positions.

Torres isn’t an isolated incident.  Remember Wayne Rooney and ‘once a blue always a blue’?  Darren Bent who left a top six club for a club who were 17th? And then Rooney again when he handed in a request to leave the most successful Premier League club of all time only to get the famous Fergie hairdryer and about turn!

United, although it pains me to say, are successful because they have guys at Old Trafford that love the club and would never leave of their own accord.  Neville, Scholes, Giggs, Fletcher and if he wouldn’t have been messing about with Posh, you could add Beckham to that list.  Ferdinand and now probably Rooney won’t be going anywhere for a long time especially if Ferguson serves on. 

You become successful through loving what you do from the bottom of your heart, in any walk of life.  Take a look at old people that have been married for 50 years.  Thick and thin, bad times and good they make it work because, underneath the problems, they have love.  It seems to me that most footballers, with exception of the few at Man United, no longer play for love.

Finally, the 6^th of February will be the first chance Torres will get to play for his new club.  Yes that’s right, the opponents for his first Chelsea game are Kenny Dalglish and Liverpool.  And in the words of a man that loved his club, I would LOVE it if we beat them, LOVE it!

The argument between how much biology and environment affect us has been raging for years.  Debates have taken place between people with far more intelligence than me (Freund and Darwin) but from what I have seen in my short time working with young people I strongly believe no one is born bad.  You can not biologically be destined to be a thief or a murderer.  Something must happen along the way to show you that path.  Environment therefore plays a massive part in our lives.

Environment is everything around us from the places we live and more importantly the company that we keep.  The initial company that we keep is for most people our parents.

You would think that this would be a positive situation.  It certainly was for me.  My Dad worked every hour of the day to ensure we had a roof over our head and food in our bellies.  My Mum made sure we never went without, encouraging me and my sister to take on new challenges and try and be the best that we could possibly be, often sacrificing her own needs for ours.  From the outset I was taught on a constant basis that if I put the hours in and I gave it all of my effort then I stood a great chance of succeeding.  This message is still with me today and I pass it on not just to my son but to my friends and family as it’s truly what I believe.  I wasn’t born with these thought’s, I was nurtured into thinking them, and then they became my own.

Recently I was in front of a class of 30 young people from my home town of Blackburn.  All of them had been excluded from their high school for various reasons but we could categorise all the offences as anti social behaviour.  Their teacher’s had labelled them, just like Prospero had done with Caliban in ‘The Tempest’.  Not one of these young people had any self esteem.  Not one believed they were going to amount to anything and 27 of them had a criminal record. 

Physically and mentally they were exactly the same as I was at 16.  The majority were living within spitting distance of the house I grew up in.  So why did they perform so differently?

The reason is simple.  Naturally we were the same but we were natured differently.  Instead of being encouraged to be the best everyday, they were told that they were rubbish.  They were told that they were useless.  They were beaten because the very people that decided to bring them into the world didn’t want to sacrifice any part of their life to help their offspring become great people.  They witnessed their Dad beat their mother.  They witnessed their Mother take drugs.  Some had parents or siblings serving time for major crimes.  No one ever took them swimming, or sat down to do their homework with them.

Dr. Shad Helmstetter the author of ‘The Gift’ states that if you grew up in a fairly positive house, by the age of 16 you had heard the word ‘no’ or that you ‘can’t do’ something no less than 148,000 times.  On average that’s 25 times a day.  Imagine what it’s like for the young people who grow up in houses that are never positive.  That number must be astronomical.

In any walk of life we need encouragement.  A pat on the back, a thumbs up or to be singled out in front of colleagues as the person who is doing great work.  Imagine doing something fantastic and no one gave a shit.  Not one person said, ‘wow that was amazing’.  Instead they said ‘so what’ or ‘big deal’.  Imagine what that does to a persons mentality.  It damages their soul.  It damages their desire to do it again.  It stops them from trying new things because in their world that has been nurtured by their environment, it just doesn’t matter.

Ben Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan.  His parents divorced when he was young, his Dad did a runner and his Mum worked 3 jobs to keep a roof over Ben and his brothers head.  With all these things going on in his head because of the environment he lived in Ben found it hard to concentrate at school, fell behind in class and began to be bullied as the school dummy.  He rebelled and became violent and this behaviour continued until he had been expelled from 11 different schools.  His mother decided enough was enough so she forced him to go to the library every single night after school to research different words she would gave him.  For each word she demanded 10 facts and when Ben returned she would mark his work scoring him constantly 10 out of 10 accompanied by a big smiley face or gold star.  Through this his grades started to improve dramatically and he stopped his violence towards others in his class.  One night when doing some homework Ben got frustrated and asked his Mum to read it to see if she could make sense of it.  She explained that she couldn’t read or write and all this time when marking his home work.  In essence what Mrs Carson was doing was telling her son everyday that he was brilliant.  That he was cleaver and that he can do the homework and score top grades.  By the time Ben found out his Mums secret it didn’t matter as he was already believing he could do the work.  Ben Carson is now Dr Ben Carson and he’s THE leading nuero surgeon in the world.  In fact he’s the bloke that invented the operation to separate conjoined twins!  All because his Mum started to give a shit!

Support and encourage the people around you.  You never know what might happen!

I created a rap alter ego named AC Slate-ya, who’s debut record was called ‘Bang Tidy Body but a Rubbish Face’.  He also went on to ‘collaberate’ with JLS.  Below is the link for ‘Bang Tidy Body’.  Enjoy!

bang_tidy_body_demo

PS.  I wrote this in 2008, way before Celeb Juice was on the Tele before you start!

In their defence neither men made a sexist comment during a live broadcast to paying Sky Sports subscribers.  The pair was recorded off-air saying women “probably don’t know the offside rule”, when they were discussing the appointment of Sian Massey to Saturday’s Premier League match between Wolves and Liverpool.  Keys said: “Somebody better get down there and explain the offside rule to her.”  To which Gray replied: “Yeah, I know, can you believe that?  A female linesman”

Are these chaps totally stupid?

I appreciate that these comments would have been reiterated around every single public house in the country as grown men discuss the goings on of the nation’s favourite sport over a pint or two.  The appointment of a female official is a talking point which will stir up stereotypical jovial banter.  The topic of the offside rule is the thing that most wives and girlfriends are tested on when they say that they are ‘into football’.  There is no malice involved, it’s just banter and Miss Massey will have to put up with far more of this banter as her career progresses in this field.

Keys and Gray though, were not in a pub.  They weren’t sinking a couple of pints with their mates.  They are very highly paid professionals who hold an awful amount of responsibility.  They are the faces of football on the largest sports broadcasting operator in the country, and in this instance they have been incredibly naïve.

Sky’s position now is untenable.  If they don’t sack both men they are condoning their comments.

You may think this is a drastic response.  Let me remind you that we are not dealing with a tin pot organisation.  Just like ITV weren’t tin pot when they sacked Ron Atkinson for his racist ‘off mic’ slur towards French world cup star Marcel Desailly.  This sexist comment didn’t happen on a little commercial radio station on the Isle of Skye.  Somewhere a warning and maybe a suspension are suffice to deal with the problem.  The people in question at the centre of all this are the main men when it comes to presenting football television programmes in the UK.  Their views, even off air are archaic. There is only one way Sky can deal with it.

For the record I think the appointment of female officials is a first class idea.  I think far too many of our Male referee’s officiate with massive egos.  That they are more important than the game they are caretaking.  Women, in most cases, don’t have these egos.  Especially not in a male dominated world like professional football.  I think because of this you are more likely to get correct decisions more often and I’m sure as a lover of the game that’s what you want the most?

I also think that respect is none existent in the game and the appointment of these ladies might make certain petulant pricks think twice when they are effing and jeffing when a decision goes against them.

There!  I bet that surprised you didn’t it!!?

Answering the question is easy, however the application of the answer is somewhat difficult.

Cast your mind back to school (if you’re still at school when reading this, then perfect.  Cast YOUR mind back a couple of hours instead!)  Did you give it everything you had on a consistent basis?  I’m going to generalise by saying you didn’t.

Lets say you enjoyed English (this is for the sake of my point, don’t take enjoying English as literal.  Your subject might be PE for example).  In English, because you enjoyed it, you most definitely put more effort into it and therefore most probably attained a high pass rate.

In the classes you didn’t like as much (French) I’m guessing you didn’t try as hard and therefore didn’t get the greatest of marks.  Then, when you received the lower pass grades in the subjects you didn’t like as much, the belief you had in yourself toward that particular subject dwindled.  You believed you are ‘no good’ at it.  This is not true at all.  You are capable of being good at it.  In fact, you are capable of being good at anything you want to be good at.  Your performance at something is directly linked to the way you feel and what you believe.

If you get an A in a subject then you’re more likely to ‘like’ the subject because getting an A makes you feel good.  Getting one A makes you want another one and because you’ve sampled getting it in one particular subject you know that it is possible for you to do it again and again in that same subject.  On the flip side if you get an E in a subject then it makes you feel bad.  It makes you believe you are ‘no good’ at that particular subject.  This makes you put less effort into that subject and therefore you will never see an increase in your grade, because you’re always feeling bad towards it.  Your attitude towards it has to change.

Imagine if you gave up after your first attempt in learning to walk.  You must try to walk at least 500 times before you can put 5 steps together.  If it takes this long to learn to do ‘an everyday thing’ then how long does it take to ‘get what you want out of life?’

My ‘getting what I want out of life’ is big stuff.  When I was 16 years of age I told a group of friends on my GCSE prize giving evening that I was ‘going to be the greatest radio presenter on the planet’.  I had never even been in a radio studio let alone done a radio programme.  Instantly people took the piss out of my dream.  In fact many people have referred to me down the years as a ‘dreamer’.  How many people have done this to you?  In fact I bet the thought of them belittling your dreams has put you off even dreaming about it any further, no matter how great or small the dream may be.  This is called conditioning, and it plays a major part in our psychological makeup, if you let it of course!

You see, you are in control of your thoughts.  Your brain is the most powerful tool in the world, much greater than any computer system.  You can remember things that have happened to you twenty years ago in great detail, to the extent were you can recall sounds and smells as if it were happening to you all over again right now.  A computer normally packs in after 5 years as it’s out of date and needs upgrading.

You are in control of the most powerful ‘computer’ in the world and you can make it see what ever you want it to.  With that in mind why make it see negative conclusions?  Is it because other people tell you to see negative conclusions?  Is it because others have put doubts in your mind that your dream won’t come true?  Why let them and their thoughts towards you effect what you see about yourself?  No one, not even your parents or your best friend, knows you better than you know yourself.  You are in control of everything that is going on inside your head.  Thinking is a choice.  I’m sure you don’t want a negative outcome in your life so why think about it?  We have all heard the saying ‘what you see is what you get’.  In this case it couldn’t be more true.  Dream positive thoughts!  Visualise achieving your dream!

I have lost count of the amount of people who have told me I wouldn’t make it.  I have heard it all.  ‘People from Blackburn don’t become the best radio presenters on the planet!’  Even people within the industry of radio, people who hold high positions in large commercial radio groups have said to my face that I wouldn’t make it on a national platform because of my accent.  What about that?  A person responsible for employing on air talent for major radio stations said to one of his most prized assets (I know I’m bigging myself up there.  Self praise is no praise) that I would never work outside of Lancashire!  That could have destroyed my confidence.  That could have shattered the dream.  If I would have started believing what this ‘big wig’ thought then it would have all been over before I’d have even started.  How many times does this happen to other people?  How many times has someone stamped all over your dream and it HAS effected the way you think, and you took no for an answer and GAVE UP!  If all of my twitter family are reading this right now I would say over 95% of you are nodding.

People like this ‘big wig’ are small minded.  We all have these small minded people in our lives who can affect the way we think but only if you let them.  Remember, and to quote a favourite song of mine, ‘they all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round’ but he still set off on his journey!

The biography I have put up on this website will give you a more detailed look into my journey and the difficult moments that I endured along the way but in 2008 my statement of ‘being the greatest radio presenter on the planet’ that I made 9 years earlier, came true.  At the New York Radio Awards (a ceremony that judges the radio broadcasting talent across the globe) I won Best Music Radio Personality, a moment that I had seen so many times in my head.  Now it was real.

What happens when you taste the success of achieving a dream?  Well, the same thing that happens when you get an A in one of those subjects I spoke about earlier.  You want to taste that success again and again.  Only this time you dream even greater for a greater reward.

You’d think that when you prove people wrong with the achievement of your first dream their negative energy would stop.  It doesn’t because people don’t like being wrong especially when it sees someone else reaping the rewards.  So, when you move on to your next dream the negative vibes get even more intense.

In May 2010 I decided to leave my position of Breakfast Radio Presenter at 97.4 Rock FM.  I had done the programme for three and a half years, won several awards and with the help of some brilliant people, we had over taken Chris Moyles, our biggest competitor in the area, for the amount of listeners we had (again self praise is no praise but these are facts).  The number was cushy.  If I’m honest I could have probably stayed at Rock for another 10 years as I love the station, its listeners and the people I was working with.  However that wasn’t my dream.  My dream is to be on National Radio.  The type of radio that the ‘big wig’ I mentioned earlier told me I would never be on.

The radio industry as a whole is shrinking.  There are fewer presenting roles available with plenty of talent ready and willing to fill those slots.  With this in mind, walking away from a ‘cushy number’ would seem ludicrous.  ‘Who leaves a job in this day and age without another job to go to?’

The Answer, a Dreamer!

Eleanor Roosavelt was the first lady of America between 1933 and 1945.  Among many fantastic sound bites she gave the world she gave us one in particular that still reins true to this day.  ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams’.

You ‘get what you want out of life’ by believing in the beauty of your dream.  We all have them and the difference between them being pie in the sky and actually living them is how much you believe in your own capabilities to making them a reality.

It is irrelevant to me whether you don’t rate me as a radio broadcaster.  It is irrelevant to me what that ‘big wig’ in commercial radio believes about my ability.  It is irrelevant that colleagues in the radio industry think I’m mental.  It’s even more irrelevant that I have been out of work since May last year.  I have seen the future and I’m going to make you see it to!!