John McAvoy: From Life Sentence to Life of Purpose

If you’re someone who actually believes that people don’t change, prepare for a major mindset shift. Meet John McAvoy. Returning for his 2nd appearance on the podcast, John is positive transformation rendered in human form—and his story is one of the most compelling, improbable, inspirational, and cinematic tales you will ever be privileged to hear. The McAvoy name might ring a bell for longtime listeners. He first appeared on the show a little over four years ago on episode #379—a conversation that ranks among the most memorable and impactful in the ten-year history of the show. For those unfamiliar, John is a former high-profile armed robber, one of Britain’s most successful career criminals and most wanted men. His reckoning was delivered in the form of a double life sentence (the 2nd of 2 prison stints) on the notorious Belmarsh high-security wing—a space he shared with extremist cleric Abu Hamza and the 7/7 bombers. To the rational outsider, John’s future was bleak. But a chance encounter with prison gym indoor rowing machine would ultimately change his life forever. In short shrift, John ended up breaking a cluster of British and World indoor rowing records while incarcerated, and upon parole, began forging a new life as a professional endurance athlete. Today, John is a Nike-sponsored Ironman athlete living in the Alps, a vegan (not my doing—I promise), and a stalwart mouthpiece for prison reform who has testified at 10 Downing Street. But above all, he’s a staunch advocate for the inherent power we all possess to course correct the trajectory of our lives, no matter how dire the circumstances. I was in London recently and couldn’t resist the opportunity to reconvene with this legend. This episode is old school—no video, just two guys vibing across a kitchen table. We pick right up where we last left off four years prior and dive even deeper into John’s remarkable story to further mine the extraordinary, latent potential we all hold to better ourselves. Watch: YouTube. Read: Show notes. As you’ll soon discover, John’s greatest heist isn’t a bank—it’s his life. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  Legacy to me is about helping people realize their own potential. And when I'm dead, because that person's had an interaction with me, or something I've been part of that's positive, their life is better. Like, you can achieve things with your life. You can turn your life around. You can be positive and a beacon of hope. And it isn't the end. Just because you make one bad decision in your life, you can always come back from it and achieve something with your life. You've got to look at other people's lives and look at them and go, if they've been able to do that, I'm able to also do it. It's not jealousy. It's not looking at other people and thinking, oh, why have they got that? There's people that achieve things and things that I don't really find interesting, but it motivates me because I think they're living what they want to do. They've achieved what they want to achieve. And it makes me realize that I'm also able to do what I want to do with my life.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  But just being open to experiences and opportunities and knowing that you're not going to be here forever and just make the most of the short time that you've got and act on stuff. Don't put stuff off to tomorrow, to next week, to the week after that, because those weeks might not ever come. And don't be that person at the end where the doctor might say, "You've only got a couple of months left to live," and you think, "I've not done anything in my life."

• 2:23Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:26Rich Roll?

  People don't change. Look, if you're somebody who actually believes that nonsense, I think you need to prepare for a little bit of a major mindset shift because today's guest, returning for his second appearance on the podcast, is just positive transformation rendered in human form. His name is John McAvoy, and his story of total metamorphosis is one of the most compelling, improbable, inspirational, and cinematic tales that you will ever be privileged to hear. The McAvoy name might ring a bell for longtime listeners.

• 3:06Rich Roll?

  He first appeared on the show a little over four years ago. That was RRP 379. That episode ranks among the most memorable and impactful in the 10-year history of this show. So if you missed it, correct that immediately, please. But for those unfamiliar, John is a former high-profile armed robber, one of Britain's most successful career criminals and most wanted men. And his reckoning was delivered in the form of a double life sentence, the second of two prison stints, on the Belmarsh High Security Wing, which is a space that he shared with extremist cleric Abu Hamza and the 77 bombers. But it was a chance encounter

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  with the indoor rowing machine in that prison gym that would ultimately change his life forever. In short shrift, John ends up breaking a cluster of British and world indoor rowing records while in prison. And upon parole, he begins forging this new life as a professional endurance athlete. Today, John is a Nike-sponsored Ironman athlete living in the Alps. He's a vegan. Not my doing, I promise. That's new since the first time we sat down together. He's a stalwart mouthpiece for prison reform who has testified at many places, including 10 Downing Street. As well as a staunch advocate for the inherent power that I think we all possess

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  to course correct the trajectory of our lives, no matter how dire the circumstances. I was in London recently. I just couldn't resist the opportunity to reconvene with John. And so this one, which is an old school, no video, just two guys sitting at a kitchen table vibe podcast, basically picks up where we last left off. We go deeper into John's remarkable story. It's about mindset. It's about advocacy. It's about service, giving back. And again, the extraordinary latent potential we all hold to better ourselves. As you'll soon discover, John's greatest heist isn't a bank, it's his life. So let's take

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  care of a little business and thereafter, enjoy me in conversation with the great John McAvoy.

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  Okay, let's do the show.

• 5:34Rich Roll?

  So mate, it's been, I looked, exactly four years since we first met, which is crazy. A lot has happened in your life since the first podcast that we did. And I just kind of want to open this by saying that, first of all, I'm continued to be inspired by the example that you set. I think it's really an extraordinary thing. And it's been cool to see you take the responsibility that you shoulder seriously in the way that you give back. And as you might suspect, people often ask me, like, what's your favorite podcast episode? Like, who's the coolest person that you ever interviewed? And that puts me in

• 6:17Rich Roll?

  a weird position. Like, I don't want to choose from my babies. I've been doing this for 10 years. There's like 700 of these things. And I often say, well, it depends on what you're interested in. But I do find myself referring new people to your episode or referencing you in the discussion of some of the most powerful and impactful shows that I've done. And so that's just one of many reasons why I'm excited to pick things up where we first left off four years ago.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been a journey since we last met each other, all those years ago back in London. And even the reaction that I've always received from people that have listened to a lot of podcasts, because I've done a lot of podcasts since your podcast. But people, a lot of people always reference yours in particular as a, as one that's impacted their lives the most.

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  It's cool, man. In the discussion around kind of what you've been doing since we, since we last met, I mean, you don't, we're, we're right now, we're in an apartment that's like right in the middle of Portobello Road. So if you hear background noise, that's because like there's a lot of life happening outside of here. But in any event, you don't live here anymore.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:26Rich Roll?

  You up and uprooted yourself.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did uproot myself. And if you remember last time when we did the podcast and I was meant to do the Ironman race.

• 7:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  I had to put out of because the, my probation officer messed up all the paperwork. And I wasn't allowed to leave the United Kingdom unless it was approved by my probation officer. And they made a mistake with the dates and I didn't end up racing that Ironman that I was meant to do in Hamburg. But since then, the Secretary of State for Justice in the United Kingdom, he removed all of my life sentence conditions. And one of those conditions was I wasn't allowed to leave the United Kingdom unless it was approved by my probation officer.

• 8:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Which, if I'm honest, I never really thought would happen, but it was such, it's such a rarity in the UK that that ever happens to someone serving a life sentence. So when I got out of prison, I'm on licence for the rest of my life. And when my probation officer phoned me up, she said, I've got some good news. And at the beginning, when I saw her number on my phone, normally it's bad news.

• 8:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  And I was dreading answering the call. And she said, look, I've got something to tell you. This, this is really going to impact your life positively. And I asked her, okay, what is it? And she said, what I'm about to tell you, I don't even know what it really means because we've never done this before. And she said that we've been contacted by the Ministry of Justice and they're going to take away your life sentence conditions.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  Which means you can travel freely wherever.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yes, and I could live wherever I wanted without prior approval because before, even when I lived in the UK, I had to live within a 10-mile radius of my probation office. So all of that went, and then I was allowed to travel. So I was like a kid in a street shop. The first thing I did was literally go abroad because I didn't have to ask anymore. And it was, yeah, it was such an amazing feeling. I didn't realize subconsciously the effect it had over me because I kind of always accepted I couldn't travel. So when people that I knew, my friends, used to go abroad and they used to invite me, I just used to just say no. It was just an instant reaction. It wasn't even something I could contemplate doing because it wasn't sort of an option to me. But yeah, they removed all the conditions and I went abroad properly for the first time in 2019.

• 9:33Rich Roll?

  So just another example in a long string of miraculous, we've never done this before, kind of incidents, right? Like, what do you make of that? Like, so much of how you've been able to do what you do is the result of, you know, the sort of universe conspiring to support you in ways that you didn't suspect. Like, it's just you're putting out a certain energy and at some point you are rewarded for that, I think, right? Like, obviously a decision was made that had never been made before and your behavior and your actions behind the scenes informed that decision.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, all the work that I was doing, I never did it for that reason. And I do think it is energy and I think when you put good energy out into the world and you apply yourself to positive things, I think these things reflect and they come back to you. That energy comes back to you. And like with all the work that I was doing, when I used to have my quarterly probation meeting, like, there was a point where I was having meetings at 10 Downing Street with, at the time she was Prime Minister, Theresa May's policy advising team, about opening up school facilities during the holiday periods for disadvantaged kids. So kids could go to these school sites and then local community groups could run like sports initiatives and give kids healthy food. So then when I'm having my quarterly meeting with my probation officer and I'm telling her about this stuff, she even said, "This is ridiculous." Like...

• 10:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, typically she's probably used to people coming in and telling them about their bricklayer job or something like that. Like, "Are you showing up on time?" That kind of thing.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was doing what I was doing and I was doing it for the right reasons. I wasn't trying to manipulate people. I just wanted to contribute and give back. And I said this during the last podcast, but sport... Profoundly changed the trajectory of my life. Like without it, I'd have ended up spending my whole adult life in prison, or I would have died by default. So I I believe in myself, I have a duty and a moral obligation to reach back and help other people. And by that, the byproduct of it was that people in positions of authority and power saw this, and and they gave me another chance. Right. And and they they removed all those conditions, which obviously changed again the course of my life and where I've ended up going to to live.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Right. So now you live, I I'm not sure exactly where you live, but it's somewhere in the Alps. Yes, yeah. And why did you make that choice? And talk a little bit about the lifestyle there. So I was a I was I was allowed to start traveling and I entered a race in a place called Abdurez, which is very, very famous in cycling. And they have a triathlon there. And I entered this race and I went out there and I had I had an injury, I had a foot injury, and I couldn't end up taking part in it. And it would it had been the first time I'd ever been to the high mountains. So I'd never experienced what the high mountains was like before. Because when I was traveling, I was going to cities, I was going to like lower parts of France, when I was going out on the training camp. And I have never in my

• 12:26Speaker 01

  life been anywhere where I felt at home. Like I've been, obviously for obvious reasons, I spent ten years locked in a in a prison cell. So I didn't have control of my environment where I was getting moved. And then when I got out of prison, I was living in London, I was quite nomadic. I've never felt settled. And then I went to this place, and then I just fell in love with it. And I I say this quite often, the only thing I've ever loved more than those mountains is my mum. By by a country mile. Like I've never felt attached to things like that before in my life. Like my stepdad, when I was growing up as a kid, he always used to say to me, don't have anything in your life you cannot walk away from at the drop of a hat. And I kind of have always been like that. So I've never been attached

• 13:08Speaker 01

  to material products or things, people, like that I couldn't just go. And then I went to this place, and I genuinely fell in love. And I've never felt that emotional connection. And I honestly, Rich, it profoundly changed me. So I because I'd never experienced that emotion before to something or a place. And and I'll come back because I didn't live there. And then when I was back in London, I was constantly thinking, how can I go back? What can I go back for? And then I was going back to where I lived in inter-season. So it's when everything shut. And I got a little apartment. It was cheaper because there was no tourists there. And and then I'll come back and I was going back and I was coming back and I was doing it as much as I could in a calendar year. And then in two thousand and twenty Covid hit and I was in London.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  And June of twenty twenty. I was again going to go out to race this triathlon. It it got cancelled because of Covid, but I had my apartment booked for a month. And I was in this apartment on my own for a month. And I was going out hiking in the mountains. There was no racing. And I just started looking at my life and I've become quite reflective. And I thought like, I have to practise what I preach. I think we get one life. I feel the way I perceive life. Some people say it's quite morbid, but I think I probably at best got forty summers left in me. And I want to be in an environment that I love being in and wake up every morning and feel a passion for the environment and place I am in. And I thought I'm gonna I'm gonna practise what I preach.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And I literally gave everything up that I had in London. I gave my I I contacted the landlord, handed him my notice on the lease. And I thought I'll make this work. I will make this work and I'll take advantage of the fact that everything shifted online. So I could work remotely. I didn't have to attend meetings. And then I thought, and because people then that I do work with will get so used to that, that even when things open back up, everyone will just go, well, John doesn't live here anymore. He lives in the Alps. So and I could kind of just carry on doing.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  What I wanted to do.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  So you're somewhere in some village.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:02Rich Roll?

  Riding all these epic climbs that you see in the Tour de France. And living kind of a a really grounded existence that allows you to get out and do the things you love every single day.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Simplicity.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Simplicity, like even financially, like. Living there, I probably earn half what I did when I lived in London. But I I value the way I want to feel every day and I want to be or feel content. It's not happiness. It's being content. It's waking up in the morning and looking out at the mountains and feeling content in myself that I'm I'm at peace. And my life's been quite sort of turbulent. There's been a lot of noise in my life throughout it. And again, where I am now.

• 15:43Rich Roll?

  That's an understatement.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's been very, very turbulent. It's been very turbulent, but it's where I am now, I feel at peace. And even to the degree where my whole diet, everything changed. I've become a vegan living there.

• 15:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into that. That's a big shift from the last time that we spoke. But obviously, we're here in London right now. There's a reason why you're here in London. You were you were sharing before we started the podcast, like it's strange for you to come back and, you know, process all the overstimulation. But the reason I imagine has to do with all the advocacy that you do and and the outreach and the prison reform activities and working with kids and stuff like that. And I saw just on Instagram that you were doing that while you've been here. So yeah, talk a little bit about those organizations and your involvement.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had a an idea in 2019 on a long run about opening up school facilities, school sites in inner cities, to allow children within those communities to access those schools during the the the school holidays in Britain, which is a six weeks holiday over the summer period. So to give you some background, children from a lower social economic environment lose their cardiovascular system, sorry, regress eighty percent during the six weeks holiday. Because they're sedentary, they're not doing any physical activity, they're sitting in front of screens, then their middle class peers, their educational learning regresses by three full calendar months. So when they go back to school after six weeks holiday, they're eighty percent less fitter and they're three months behind.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  So I knew these stats because of conferences and stuff I've been to. And to me, it was a non-brainer that you've got these massive facilities in the UK, school sites that the taxpayers paying for. And seventy percent of all leisure space in the UK, like football fields, are locked behind school gates. So to me, it was a non-brainer to open up the schools because most children live within a two mile perimeter of the school. So you don't need to get buses. They can walk to school like they would in a in a normal school year. And we would allow local community groups to access those schools and deliver programming to children. So I went to Nike and I pitched the idea to them. It was just before Covid and I remember it was semi-green lighted and then I thought it's just gonna die and they completely backed it.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  When Covid started to shift the needle a little bit and we started to unlock, they pledged um a three-year investment into opening up these school sites across the UK and um and and we are where we are now with Open Doors and it's my greatest achievement, my greatest achievement by by none. Like, anything I've ever done in sport or life, nothing even comes close to yesterday and the day before, going to schools across the country and seeing kids that if if they wasn't in that school and I asked the teacher, I said, what would they be doing? And he said they'd be sitting in blocks of flats all day doing absolutely nothing. And they're running around with their friends, they're cycling for the first time, they're running, they were playing blind football, they're just being children and they're having a childhood and it and it's making them feel happy and content and they're being active

• 18:41Speaker 01

  and they're with their friends and it's giving them a safe space with positive role modeling. And I've got no doubt, again, if if I was one of them little kids and those teachers around me, maybe my life might have gone down a different road. If one of those coaches or mentors would have seen me and said, you've got a lot of talent, and then they sort of they could have channeled me into something positive and I wouldn't have spent ten years in prison.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, sure. I mean, there's so many sliding door sort of scenarios in which your life could have been very different. I mean, you're so smart and intelligent and articulate, you have a facility for communicating your story and what's important to you in a really compelling way. And I think that is, you you know, on a talent level, like, equal to whatever your, you know, athletic achievements are and, you know, setting aside mindset and all of that, which we're gonna talk about. So that's really cool, man.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 19:30Rich Roll?

  Like, it's super inspiring. What is the name of the organization?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  It's called Open Doors.

• 19:33Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  So we we basically open up school sites, open doors.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. But you're back, you're getting out, you're going back to the Alps tonight, right?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Tomorrow morning.

• 19:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, because the show is, it has been four years since you've been on and the show's a lot larger and I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this who have not had the chance to listen to that first episode or taken the opportunity to go back, I think it would be worthwhile to recap the, you know, some of your backstory for context. Um, I don't know how to begin that conversation because once I tee you up, it just goes forever.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:08Rich Roll?

  So we don't wanna monopolize the whole thing, but I think, yeah, like, what is the thumbnail version of, you know, how you ended up where you ended up and how you clawed out?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  So. We have to go all the way back to before I was even born. We have to. It's already started. It's the. I got time, bro. It's cool. Like, alright, go for it. You said six hours, right? Yeah, right. But I have to go back before I was born because my biological father, he passed away when my mum was eight months pregnant with me. They'd only been married 12 months. He's 38 years old, went to bed one night, never woke up, had a massive heart attack. So I was born into the world, didn't have a dad, really loved as a child. Like, my mum's got six sisters, I had an uncle, my sister. Like, I had all these women doting on me as a little boy. I couldn't have had a better childhood. I was so loved and looked after.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  I can remember like Christmases and birthdays. My mum used to do, like, she was a florist, but she used to do everything to make sure me and my sister had everything we needed and we had a happy childhood. And when I started going to primary school, children used to tease me because I didn't have a dad. No, my dad never picked me up. But I didn't realise it wasn't normal not to have a dad because I just was brought up by all these women. And I sort of go home, I ask my mum where my dad is. I'm a young kid still, I'm five, six years old. My mum simplifies it, says your dad died before he's born, he's gone to heaven. But this profoundly did something to me as a child because I had this like relationship with death from being very young and I knew I wasn't going to live forever. Now that woke something up inside me where I didn't want to be normal

• 21:43Speaker 01

  and I didn't want to be average and it made me incredibly ambitious as a young man, as a young child. And then as you grow up, you're learning. I loved learning at school, it was very inquisitive. History was my subject when I was at school and my mum used to take me to museums. There was the London Dungeons and HMS Belfast and I used to watch documentaries on World War Two. I was fascinated with all these things. And every month, my mum used to get me magazines at the newsagents. They were called discovery booklets and used to put puzzles together, different parts of history. And I remember putting these together as a little kid every month. And then one day, it just hit me that, like, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, these people lived thousands of years, hundreds of years before I was even born.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  But I was reading about them in our flat in Crystal Palace in South London and they had achieved something, like, they were remembered after they were dead. And again, I was so young, I didn't understand what that was, but that's what I wanted and it was a legacy. It was accomplishing something. My life had meaning. And that sort of carried on, sort of festering inside me. And then I was looking around, it was like, what do I wanna do? And then I become intoxicated with British Telecom, which they were like the monopoly in the UK of like telephone communications. Everyone in the nineteen eighties in the UK had a BT landline in their house. Every street corner had a BT phone box. And I can remember being in my mum's car seeing these BT phone boxes when we were driving to my aunties.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  And one day I asked my uncle and I said, how much money does British Telecom make? And I grew up in the area of like Margaret Thatcher, so it was all about greed is good, go after it. And he said they make billions. And then that seed was planted. And when any adult said to me, what are you gonna do when you get older? It was to own British Telecom. And in what I had done in my mind, I equated then legacy success to the acquisition of wealth.

• 23:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  And then the perfect storm was then created that when I turned eight. My mum's ex-husband that she married when she was sixteen years old, come out of prison after serving sixteen years for armed robbery. He was like one of the most prolific armed robbers in the UK. He had five acquittals at the Old Bailey. He was a multimillionaire when he was twenty one years old. And he come to our home and I didn't realise he'd just got out of prison. It was the first time I, a male had come in that wasn't related to me, like an uncle. And I remember he'd come in and I was just, I was mesmerised by him, like he, he, he was very charismatic. I remember I said it in the last podcast, black hair, really white teeth, big gold watch and really shiny leather shoes. And he went into the living room and he asked me to make him a hot drink, a cup of tea. And I went and made it. And then when he was leaving our flat, he gave me a twenty pound note.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  It was the first time an adult had ever given me paper money. So I had coins before, like pocket money. And, and I was just intoxicated with him and he patted me on the head and said, you're a good boy. And he left. And then when he left, obviously the questions started coming out, said to my mum, who is he? My mum tried to again simplify it and said, before I was with your dad, when I was really young, I was married to that man. And your sister, that's his daughter. And then being, I was, I couldn't, you know, saying, cause my sister's my sister, she's not my half sister. And then that was it. And then what he started doing, he he wasn't in a relationship with my mum, but he'd come round on the weekends and pick my sister up and take my sister out. And my mum didn't want me to miss out on on on opportunities because my sister was going to restaurants with him and stuff. And he said, can Jonathan come?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  And mum said, yeah, my mum let me go. And as the weeks and months progressed, he started taking my sister out less, me out more. And I developed this incredible bond with him, like a father-son relationship. Like, he didn't have a son, I didn't have a dad, and we we were just magnetized each other. And it was only when I got to about ten, eleven, my grandad passed away. Now, I knew he was incredibly wealthy, and I I used to sort of pick up on the conversations he was having with with people round him. And I knew when we went out to restaurants and stuff, people treated him a lot differently to everyone else. Like, if there is a packed restaurant, they would always find a table for him. Um. He was in clothes shops, spending thousands, and I could see this. So again, you get magnetized by the money. But when my grandad died, we went to clear my grandad's flat out, my mum and and and my aunties.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  And my grandad, in a in a drawer, had an envelope, and I opened up the envelope. My grandad kept all these newspaper clippings. And it was from like all the national newspapers when Billy got arrested. So then suddenly I'm reading all these headlines about Gotcha and one of the most prolific armed robbers in in in the United Kingdom. And and then I'm sort of then connecting up all the dots. And then I realise this is what he's about, like this. And then twelve years.

• 26:07Rich Roll?

  Prior to that, though, you had no sense that he was procuring this lifestyle illegally?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  No. All he used to say to me when I was growing up, like, so he'd never overtly told me he was involved in criminal activity. But I could tell by the way my mum was and the way my mum used to talk about life, and the way he spoke about life, and the way people that he sort of took me to and and I interacted with, like, older men, like friends of his, they didn't see life through the same prism as what everyone else that I was exposed to did. Like, my mum and my mum's auntie, like sisters, like my aunties and my sister. They would see life through a different lens. And and there was a very anti-establishment, very, like, the system's corrupt. And I'd pick up on these things as a kid. The way when they'd see police drive past, calling them pieces of shit, like, and and and but I didn't twig what they were doing. I knew they was all incredibly wealthy.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  But I didn't know what they were doing. And being involved in in sort of in that sort of circle of people. It had an impact. It wasn't the pivotal moment. It did have an impact. It was only when I was twelve and I saw a film made about my dad's brother, Michael, who committed the biggest armed robbery in the world. That was the trigger. Cause I watched this Hollywood film as a twelve year old in our flat in Crystal Palace. And I wasn't really aware of my uncle. Like my mum shielded me from this as much as she could. But obviously you're indoors, you're watching the TV and this film comes on Channel Three. And then suddenly your surname is being spoken about in this film. And then all of these characters that are in this film.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  My stepdad, Billy, is taking me out. So like their names are the people that I could relate to. And it was obviously a very surreal experience. And my uncle stole twenty six million pounds worth of gold bullion. So that was in nineteen eighty three. So probably it'd be worth a hundred million now. But I didn't see that my uncle was in prison for twenty five years for that offence. I saw Sean Bean, a Hollywood actor, sitting on twenty six million pounds worth of gold bars in Heathrow Airport. And and that was the real trigger. And at that moment, and I feel, it does make me feel embarrassed now to say it, but that at that moment inspired me to become an armed robber. Cause it was obtainable.

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  Right. And that inspiration grows out of this like background hum of the system is corrupt. Following rules is for suckers or for losers. You gotta take what you can take. And then you have this very charismatic mentor, father figure, who's showing you how to do it. And slowly these puzzle pieces are getting assembled to create this psyche where when you reach a certain age of maturity, you're all in, like you're bought in. Do you feel like he was purposefully doing that? Like I'm gonna mold this kid into, you know, a successor. I'm gonna teach him everything that I know.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  But I have to, I have to mold his mind first so that he can kind of, you know, be receptive to this type of lifestyle.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Do you know what? I actually don't think he did. I don't think he deliberately, he didn't.

• 29:10Rich Roll?

  He just felt like this kid doesn't have a dad. I can fill that role, but I am just who I am.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's who he was. So you have to understand, Rich, the the way that they live their lives. Everyone else is abnormal, they're normal. So to them, it's a way of life, it's an existence. So how many times you've ever watched a film and like you see someone that's made millions of pounds out of crime? And you think, why don't you just give up? Why don't you just stop? Why is there always that one last thing? Right. Because it becomes, it's their ego, it's their identity, it's who they are. So everyone else is abnormal. They can't understand how people function in society the way that they do. They go to work, they pay forty percent in tax to a system that's corrupt. So that, so that is the normal for them. Now, obviously, no, he never wanted me to go to prison. So as I get older, when I got to fourteen, started truant in heavily from school.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Because he didn't realise the impact of me being with him. And I was with him more and more and more as I got older. And I was around all these organised criminals more and more and more. So the more I'm with them and the more I'm hearing, and you're hearing about people corrupting the system, corrupting juries. Like, you're hearing about corrupt councillors that hand out planning permission and, and my stepdad, as you say to me, everyone's got a price, you can buy anyone. When anything goes wrong. So then you start looking at the system, you hear about corrupt police officers and this is all planned in my psyche. I go to school and my English or maths teacher's standing up in front of me. And they're saying, well, if you don't get a B in English, John, you're never gonna get a job. And I'm looking at this group of people over here, that are multimillionaires out of crime. And none of them are academically clever, but they're all very streetwise.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  So I started just, I just completely disregarded my education. It didn't mean anything. So fourteen years old, I was truant in, I did everything I could not to go to school. Um, my mum even got fined because I didn't go to school and she used to get really upset. But at this point, it, she just basically had no influence over me whatsoever. Because I would in my mind made that decision. And then, um, when I got to sixteen, my mum got really upset and she sat me down and she said, you need to leave school with some qualifications. You cannot leave with nothing. So she got me upset, I remember she was really emotional. And I, I thought, do you know what? I'm just gonna go, I'll sit the exams, I didn't do any coursework leading into them.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  And I turned up in the, like, when you're in the assembly of all the other pupils and you've got your pencil and you're sitting on your table away from everyone so you can't cheat. And I uh and did it and then left and then a couple of weeks later, you get your, you get your grades. And I was the last student to turn up um to pick my grades up and my head of year was called a man called Mister Vickers and I really hope he's listening to this. And he did everything he could at that school, not to one exclude me because I was truanting so much and two, he really wanted the best for me. This is something now I can, I can process and I, I understand at the time, I just thought he was a busybody. They used to try to keep getting me in trouble all the time because he used to write letters to my mum informing her that I'd sort of been truanting forty percent of the year and I hadn't come to school, I was late, I was disrespectful.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  And I remember he, I was the last people to turn up and he dad like these uh this box with all the envelopes of all the students and he, and he. He pulled out my envelope, he said, do you wanna look at your grades? And I was completely disinterested and he said, well, I'll tell it and he opened up the envelope. And he, I remember he pulled a piece of paper out and he looked at me and he, and he said, if only you would have applied yourself, what you could have done. And I still managed to get relatively decent grades considering I didn't turn up to do any of the coursework or like none of the lessons. And he said, what are you gonna do now? And I lied and I said, I'm gonna go to college. But the backdrop to this, and again, it's only something I've been able to sort of understand later on, because of my uncle got released from prison at this point. So my surname's in the National Redtop tabloid newspapers all the time.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  My teachers quite clearly knew my, what my life was like and they could see the journey that I was probably gonna travel down. And he said to me, are you definitely going to college? I said, yes. And he was deeply concerned. I remember even when I left, like, that's it, I'm done with school, I'm out. I'm finished, I've done it. Sixteen years old, they can't do anything to me anymore. He was still phoning up my mum to check that I was okay. And he was an amazing man, he really, really was a great teacher. He just couldn't save me at that point. And he gave me these pieces of paper with all my qualifications and I walked down my school drive in Beckenham, Kel, near Kelsey Park, it's in South London. And I remember ripping them up and chucking them in the dustbin because they meant nothing to me whatsoever. And I went and bought a gun.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  I literally went and bought a gun. So that was it. I was in. I thought I'm gonna be an armed robber. And my stepdad found out. And this is now the part where I do think he did think that he was gonna scold me because he found out I did this. So I went and bought this gun of this forty year old man. In South London, it was a shotgun, sawn off, and he found out I did this. And he was then so worried that I was gonna be running around with firearms. He felt that then he would protect me by bringing me in more to basically be with him and all the people. He did stuff because he knew.

• 34:06Rich Roll?

  He's gonna do this, I better guide him, otherwise he's gonna get killed.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yes, but he didn't realize the impact that he had before this by being around him. But now at this point, now he knows I'm in and he knows how I am and what I want. He thinks now I'll be protected. So this is sort of where the next part of the journey ends up beginning, where I started. They used to send me out on tasks, so I used to go to security depots out in the suburbs. Where like the lorries used to fill the depots up in the early hours of the morning and they would like literally, and again, it sounds like saying cut the film, but we'd go to like army surplus shops. And I'd get like netting, khaki netting, there was woods at the back with a camcorder. And I'd film the lorries coming in in early hours of the morning, at four in the morning and film it and give these video cassette tapes to all the criminals and. And I had a really good memory, like, security vans used to make deliveries to banks.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  So I used to follow the van out the depot, follow it to all these banks, so then you could calculate how much money the van had on. And I'd relay all this information across. And my stepdad gets arrested when I was eighteen years old. So again, the arrogance, he gets arrested. Um, I should have known what was probably gonna happen to me, but I didn't. And I, I, I've, and I basically thought like, fuck you, I'm still gonna keep doing it.

• 35:17Rich Roll?

  Right, and this is my opportunity to now step up, right? Does that mean like suddenly with him out of the picture, now you have kind of a green light to, you know, hit the, hit the gas pedal on this?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  It was already, it was already sort of in my mind because I realized quite quick by doing what I was doing. Like, I was never gonna become a multimillionaire, like by helping other people get rich. So he, he used to say to me, and I said it a moment ago, I referenced it. He was a multimillionaire when he was twenty one years old at committing organised crime. He used to say to me all the time, he had a Rolls Royce when he was twenty one, multimillionaire, everyone, he was renowned within the criminal underworld in the UK as that man. That was a multimillionaire at a young kid and he always used to bait me with it. So when I was eighteen, he'd say, do you think you're gonna have more money than what I had when I was your age? And he used to bait me and bait me and bait me and then he gets arrested and then like you said, it was like, well, I'm just gonna keep going. Like even though all the alarm bells should have rung at this point and I should have said.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  He's just been caught, the highly probability is the police now watching me, I didn't, I just carried on. And the inevitable end of happening and two months later, I ended up getting arrested for conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Um hum. So that's your first incarceration and what was the sentence with that one? So I got five years, I was looking at sixteen years. They made me a maximum security prisoner, so I was, I was not eighteen years old when I got arrested. And in the UK, if you're under the age of twenty one, you cannot be kept with adults over twenty one. Um but because the Metropolitan Police believed that I was a high escape risk, because at this point my stepdad's a double category A prisoner, armed police. Um because my uncle tried to break out of prison in a helicopter, they thought I had the, the means and capability to be able to escape from custody.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  So they basically did something called starred me up, which then put me in a maximum security prison, prison, yeah, prison as a, as a category A prisoner. And there was only like five young offenders in the country that were at that level of security. That made me worse, I, I've ended up going onto this wing with all these organised criminals, like men in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. They're all putting this admiration on to me, they're, they're lavishing me and, and obviously you're, you're a young kid, like the ego. I wasn't scared of the prison officers because like my stepdad drilled it into me about showing weakness, like don't let ever, ever get broken by the system. So you, I go into this environment, suddenly all these older criminals and even the prison officers used to lavish respect on you, which is crazy now when I look back. Um. They say I was like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remember like being in segregation

• 37:43Speaker 01

  unit and uh and I was looking at sixteen years and I got offered a plea bargain uh two days before my trial started at the Old Bailey and they gave me five years in prison.

• 37:51Rich Roll?

  Hmm. And that was the experience where you were in solitary, right? And I don't know what you did, but you ended up in solitary and you did your time in there and they were gonna let you out and you decided to stay.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:05Rich Roll?

  Right? Which is a really interesting inflection point that I think reveals the mindset aspect of this and also the more subtle idea of how important it is to feel like you have some agency in your life. Like that act of defiance was a way of you holding on to some level of control in a scenario in which you had very little control.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I got um so when I got moved to another prison, they wanted to strip me naked and take all my clothes off me and put me in a special suit, a yellow and blue suit. So they thought I was an escape risk because I come from an adult prison as a maximum security prison um as a prisoner. When I got downgraded and they took me off that because the sentence didn't justify it because they can't justify it with five years because it costs so much money to keep you at that level of security. When they then transferred me to another prison, the governor of that prison thought, well, if you've just come from there as a category A prisoner, you're probably an escape risk of this prison. But he couldn't make me category A. So what he did, he put me on something called the escape list. So they want all my clothes. I refused to give him my clothes. So you're not having them. Obviously, you're in their world. They do take your clothes, but they put me in a segregation cell for seven days for refusing a lawful order. So they got their own rules and regulations

• 39:11Speaker 01

  in prison. And after the seven days was up, they come to me and they was gonna let me go on the wing and they said, you're gonna be a wing cleaner. And it's hard for me sometimes to really express this to people because I I realize how poisonous and toxic this behavior is. I absolutely hated these people with every ounce of my soul. Like I I hated them so profoundly. And when they asked me, ordering me to do something, I just did the complete opposite. And I said, there is no way I'm cleaning up your shit every day on that wing. And they said, are you refusing another lawful order? And I said, yes, I am. And then they put me back in front of the governor again. It gave me the first seven days. And then when I went in there, he said to me, you must remember one thing, McAvoy.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  He went, you're in my, you're in my world, I'm not in yours. I tell you what to do. And he smiled at me and he said, I'm gonna give you another seven days confined to cell. And then when I went back to that segregation cell, and it was like a Victorian prison I was in. So it was really old fashioned. One thing they can't stop you from doing when you're in there is reading. So librarian used to come around with a little trolley and you'd be able to take books off. And there was a book, I don't know why I picked it off the trolley with Nelson Mandela. And I started reading it and when he was in prison in Robben Island, he used to smoke cigarettes. And he realised one day that the prison officers was using the tobacco as a punishment to take away from him. So my head, my brain as a nineteen year old in this situation, I thought, well, actually, if you think by putting me in this room is a punishment, I'll take that away from you.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  And when they come and they said, you're going on the wing, I said, no, I'm not. And I sat in that room for three hundred and sixty five days. And when I didn't intentionally realise, when I made that decision to do that, I didn't realise it was gonna be for as long as it was. It'd become like a bit more of a Mexican standoff, like I didn't wanna submit to them and look like they had broken me. But I needed to feel alive, Rich, like I needed to feel alive, like I was a human. And you get put in that situation, and this is where my journey of exercise begun. Like, I was, I was, I wasn't good at sport as a kid. I had no interest in fitness whatsoever, like, I had no role models as a kid whatsoever that was athletic. Um, in, in the UK, we have a big sort of football culture, like soccer.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  You have a football team, but I would watch it, maybe go in goal, but that was it. I wasn't interested in sport whatsoever. But when I was in that cell, something one day just made me start doing press ups and burpees. And, and I didn't even know the names of the exercises when I was doing them at the beginning. But as I went through this journey every day, I got a routine. I used to get up in the morning and I'll start exercising. And when they used to come around and do the checks, looking through your cell window, I'd never wanted to be lying in bed. Because there's prisoners that would like to sleep their prison sentence away. They would just lay in bed all day and sleep. And I used, I didn't want them to see me doing that. So I'd be out of bed at morning at six o'clock. I'd be exercising, I'd finish exercising and then I'd start reading.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And as the weeks, months progressed, I ended up building up and I'll do a thousand of each exercise. Burpees, press ups, step ups. And I used to get a notepad and pen and I'd do it in reps of a hundred. So I'd do a hundred squats, a hundred press ups, a hundred, and just go through it and then start again, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred.

• 42:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  And my whole body just completely morphed. I ended up being sort of a chubby overweight young man to suddenly rip, shredder. I didn't have any body fat to the degree that when I got released, my mum, my mum looked at me and she said she just looked really sick. She said, look what they've done to you. And I had like a gaunt face. I probably lost about three stone, I would say.

• 42:45Rich Roll?

  Okay, back to the show.

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  Well, this is typically the point in the story where the epiphany of self betterment, you know, kind of comes in. You're struck with the inspiration to, you know, form a new life for yourself. The push ups, the press ups, all of these sort of things are changing your body. And you, you have this realization that you could actually change your life. But that is not what happened. This was really still a rudimentary kind of act of rebellion and that, that derives from this anti authoritarian kind of streak that was instilled in you in a very young age. It was really a fuck you to everybody else and a way of feeling human through exercising that small amount of control that you had in that confined space.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was defiance. It was a fuck you. Like when I used to look through that flap, it was like I was a, I felt like I was a machine. Like you, you, you will not break me. And I, I, I used to process it and then the hate in me, that was the fuel. That was what fueled me to do it. It is, it's like, I look back now and I think sometimes that even now, like. If I didn't do that back then, I wouldn't have the life I've got today. And I never intentionally did that then to be where I am today.

• 44:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  So I was driven by something so different to what's in me now. But if that defiance and hatred didn't fuel me back then, I wouldn't have the life I've got today. And when they opened up that door and they let me walk out into the street, genuinely, like I was a hundred times worse than the man they locked up.

• 44:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  So I've got out of prison now, I'm early twenties.

• 44:19Rich Roll?

  When you weren't doing pushups, you were plotting your return to becoming a better bank robber.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I had a man, I had a mantra when I was in prison, I would never be conditioned by them. So and and every day I used to repeat, this is not my life, I've been kidnapped. And and what fueled me was I used to think every single year you've taken of my life, I want a million pounds when I get out. That was the fuel that fueled me during that whole process. And it was, it didn't even enter my mind like to to change. Like to me, in the world that I grew up in, when I was a younger man, like late teenagers years was anyone that changed. This is what I was brought up to believe was weak and they'd been broken. They changed, they had broken, the system had broken them. So when I was in that situation, I wasn't going to be cleaning up their crap.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Like I, they was not going to break me, no matter what they tried to do to me, they could take everything away from me and I'd let them have it. Take it, it doesn't bother me.

• 45:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  So to me, in my mind as a young man, rehabilitation, being rehabilitated was meant that the system had broken you down. And like, I can remember clearly like being in situations where I'd be with older people, like men, and they would be talking about someone else that did change. And they would all call them weak, right? The system had broken them. And I thought, I'm never going to be like that. And my step that I said that always you say to me, the only thing you've got in this world is your name. And if someone thinks you're a piece of shit and you're weak, that's it. And that stuck with me during that process and it really, really profoundly stuck with me. And then when I got released, as I said, I was so much worse than the person that originally been locked up. And I remember going through reception when they would let me out. So I had no visits.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  I had nothing. So I literally got released in the suit I wore at court.

• 46:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  And it was all massive because I lost so much weight. And when I was in the reception area, they give you a discharge grant and you have to sign the paper. And I had some money in my account where like family had sent me money. And I remember he said, you need to sign this for your discharge grant. And I was like, fuck your discharge grant. I don't want anything off you people. And I'll never forget it. As I was walking out, he said, McAvoy, because they will not call you John. He said, you'll be back. I said, no, I won't. And they literally walked me to the gate and they let me out into the street.

• 46:30Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Well, a couple of things. First of all, on top of all of this, getting pinched is a rite of passage, right? So that's the kind of context in which you're processing what had happened to you. Like, this is just part of the deal. Like, this kind of happens. And, you know, your community of people, they're not gonna, they're not gonna break ranks with you because this happened. Like, this happens a lot, right? So there's no reason to change course or change. This is just part of the life of being a bank robber. And now I just have to learn how to be better so it doesn't happen again.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does the complete opposite.

• 47:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Because you've been tested.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You get. Well, the, and the testing part, which is where the mental rigor comes in. What's interesting about the way that you communicate around that or process it is that it's all about non-attachment. Like, even earlier on, you were talking about being a nomad. Like, I wanted to have this life where I could just, you know, have my go-bag in any moment and split. Like, these things don't mean anything to me. Like, whether I'm confined to this room or whether or not I get my, you know, roll of bills back when I leave the prison. Like, that's all stuff that I don't, that doesn't define me and is not going to drive how I make decisions.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, most definitely. And like, like I said, like, when I got released, I was worse. But within that world, you've been tested. Like, you've physically, you've been tested by people. People now know, you go in there, I didn't inform on anyone. People outside in that world knew how I did my prison sentence, that I was defiant, that I fought back. So you basically, your stock goes up in that world. Right, your name is even better. You get more respect and more, and people then, people know you can be trusted, because you've been tested. It's all very good, people saying, well, you can trust me, but when you are actually in that situation and people see, actually, when he was in there as a young kid, and he acted the way he acted, that they can, they can trust you with their own freedom.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  So when I got released, that was another thing, it was like, you, prison becomes like a bit of a university of crime. And it's, it's, it's an amazing place to connect up with people. Like, I used to say, sometimes it was absurd, like, when I went back to prison the second time when I was older, but you would get like a Colombian drug trafficker, and you'd put him in prison, the cell next door was someone that was in prison for transporting drugs. Right. So you put these two people together, they've all got their networks outside. They're just gonna end up doing business together. But this is exactly what ends up happening. And we, and sometimes, you, you, we used to sit there laughing about it, because that's what it's like when you are in those environments. It's the London Rowing Club for organized crime. Yeah, yeah.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  So how long after you get out before you commit your next crime? So I was released, and then I would say, within four days, I found tracking devices on my car. So I was like, when, when I got released, I knew they were very unhappy with the length of sentence I got. And I was, I was paranoid, and I was paranoid for the right reasons, because they were genuinely following me around. I found these tracking devices on my car, they had a GPS and a radio transmitter. I used to have my car parked on a ramp, like in a mechanics workshop, and my friend took my car for the morning, phoned me up, said, can you come down? We need some work doing to your car. Didn't really twig, turned up at the garage, and he took me to the car under the bay, lifted it up, went up to the back bumper, pulled off this block,

• 49:50Speaker 01

  pulled off this other block, and I'm like, wow, like, they are on me. Like, so then, obviously, then I'm processing everything, who have I seen, what I've been doing? Because they think when you get out of prison, you're desperate, you need money, you're gonna be networking. You'll make a mistake. And I, I played a game with them for a month or so, I used to drive around, I, I had like a pretend job, my friend owned a company. And what hit me to the degree how much they were on me, I used to have, obviously, when they're following me around, you have a routine, go gym, stuff like that, and then one morning, I'd go to his house really early, because he says, come to mine, jump in the work van. So my routine's been changed, so even though they're following me around. Obviously, I'm still got a semi routine. I'm just not mixing with lots of criminals and put myself in situations where they could arrest me. Cause I was I was on licence when I first got out.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And I went to his house in the early morning, winter, dark, down country roads. Park my car up outside his, get into his car to drive to his office. And then suddenly, as we're driving, the way I've just come. All these unmarked police cars with little blue lights, no sirens, flying down the road. And I thought, wow, like, they are on me. Like, they're literally twenty four hours a day. They must have thought. Cause I had, like, gone out too early.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  In the winter, I was up to saying I was probably gonna commit a robbery. And then I, the alarm bells really rung. I thought, right, they're they're they really wanna put me back in here. And I took the tracking devices off my car and I had a solicitor at this point. And I went up in Hatton Garden and I remember I took them off the car. I went in. And he was like, good God, man, what are you doing? He went, they're probably listening to us right now. So he got his secretary to take these things outside. And he said, what do you want me to do? And I said, write a letter to the Metropolitan Police and say they're harassing me. And he said, John, I'm telling you now, if we do it, they're just gonna come back and say we neither confirm nor deny that we've put them there. He went, so it's pointless. And he went, but I'm gonna give you one piece of advice. He went, whatever you're doing, stop doing it. He went, because they will put you back in prison.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought, they they they don't know. And anyway, I then made the decision, Rich. My uncle, family lived in Spain. Um, I'd met people that were in the Netherlands. The minute my licence had ended, I literally left the UK straight away. And I remember this sense, this relief, when I was on the ferry. And I felt, that's it, I've won. Like, they're never gonna be able to put me back in prison again. Cause in my head now, I'm thinking I'm gonna live in Europe. I'm just faceless. No one knows who I am. The police don't know who I am. And I can just carry on committing crime in Europe. And I'm just gonna blend in. Like, I'll just vanish off the face of the earth in regards to the UK. And I did, for like eighteen months. I I was doing all sorts of stuff. I was selling drugs. I was down in Spain. And then you get caught into this whole, like.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Young man, fast living, high octane, being around people with lots of money. Living in the south of Spain, that typical lifestyle you'd imagine a young man in that world would live, like, living in the fast lane. Don't give a shit about anything, but you you feel like you're on, you're meeting all these people that are all very, very rich. And I felt like with my mate, I remember we we believe we were on the precipice, like we were just on the edge now of like making it and like moving up that next level. And then obviously I'll come back to the UK and um yeah, that was where the next chapter of the story began, me going back to prison.

• 52:56Rich Roll?

  Right, so so walk us through how you got pinched that second time and because this is really where the story truly begins.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  So I was living in Spain, I was living in between Spain and.

• 53:07Rich Roll?

  You're like doing the Ibiza nightclubs, fast boats and big watches kind of thing.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  It was very similar to that, yeah, it just wasn't Ibiza, it was another very bad place called Marbella and all around Spain, so it's that that that lifestyle.

• 53:21Rich Roll?

  Same notion, yeah.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  And my friend at the time was having a birthday party in the UK. And he asked me to come and I felt this loyalty to him, right, I liked him a lot, he'd done a lot for me in my life. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna make the effort. And when I was coming back, a girl dropped me off at the airport and she said, why are you going back? And I was like, I'm only gonna go back for like a few days, six days and I'll be gone, in and out. That was it, dropped off at the airport, made the decision, I wasn't doing anything illegal here, so when I come back, I didn't, I hadn't done anything where they could arrest me. So I'm good, like I'm all good, I'm living here, no one knows who I am, I'm sort of mellowing like or mixing with people and I was committing crime. But I was just not sort of overtly doing it um to the degree where I was in the UK. And I come back, my friend picked me up at the airport.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  And I went into a phone shop and I bought a pay as you go mobile phone. I did not even take the phone out of the box, the the phone number was on the side of the box. My friend that picked me up, I gave him that number because I didn't want anyone to know I was back in the UK. I didn't want to give anyone my Spanish phone number because I used to change my phones all the time, just so people couldn't listen to me or they couldn't track me and stuff like that, so I used to get pay as you goes. But because I was in the UK, I thought I have an English phone for the six days and I'll just throw it away afterwards. And he said, where do you want to go? I said, can you drop me to my mum's? He dropped me to my mum's because I hadn't seen her for a little bit. And I was so tired because I'd been at party and stuff, went round my mum's, he goes off, didn't want to go out that night. Put the phone on charge, next morning the phone's ringing.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  So I'm assuming it's my friend that picked me up because he's the only person in the world and it wasn't, it was one of my stepdad's friends, associates, was on the other end of the phone. I'm like, have you got this number? And he said, oh, last night, your friend picked me up. He's he went to the pub. He was in there. Said, oh, I just picked John up. Oh, have you got a number for him? He's gave him the number. So he's phoned me up. He said, what you up to today? And I said, well, not really much. I'm going to a party. And he was like, oh, do you wanna have breakfast? So, yeah, of course. Like, when I was growing up as a kid, I idolized this man. I did. Like, I remember he got released from prison, serving eight, sixteen or eighteen years. He got released, but by this point, I was in it. Like, I was fourteen, fifteen years old. I knew what he was doing.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Within that world, he's very well respected. Tried to break out of prison two times. Um, he he hijacked a J C B pris- um, in in in Wandsworth Prison, tried to ram the wall and get out. He like, he he's he was renowned within the criminal underworld, right? No respect for law and order whatsoever. Like, he was even more extreme than my stepdad. And he asked me to go and meet him. And never forget, the cafe where I met him was called The Chestnut. We were sitting by the window, and I walked in, I didn't see him, I embraced him, I felt, I just, I had this connection to him. I I liked him so much as a kid. I I admired him so much. And we sat down and we were just chatting about stuff. And he said to me, do you wanna go work? Meaning, do you wanna commit a robbery? I was like, nah, I'm all right, thanks.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  And he was like, nah, like, and I said, look, mate, I'm out. Like, I'm good. I'm going back there. I don't, I'm not interested. Then he told me the sum of money, and he said, it's easy. And then you're obviously you're processing it. And I'm thinking, do you know what? Like, I could just do it and then go back there. No one's even gonna know. And then I agreed to doing it. And and.

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  It's just like every movie.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Well, it it it is. It is. It's just sad. Well, I say it's sad. I say it's sad. It was the best decision I ever made in my life, because I just agreed to committing this robbery with him. What I didn't know at that point was outside of that window was a hundred man surveillance operation watching him. And I'd been watching him for months, waiting for him to commit this robbery, or commit a robbery. And I just walked into it.

• 56:59Rich Roll?

  Were they listening in on on your meal, you think?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  No, they they wasn't listening in, um, because obviously when we got arrested, you see all the surveillance logs. So what they did do. When me and him meet, I agree to doing it. And I said, when when is it? He said, the day after tomorrow. I leave, he leaves. By this point, obviously, he's got my number. I go back to my mum's, but I was walking through the park and stuff and I was thinking, well, they're not gonna be like. I didn't even think I was gonna be followed, but like I would still go through the park. I wouldn't drive directly to my mum's or anything like that.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  They obviously followed me on foot, saw that I went back to my mum's address and they did like a check on my mum's address. So then obviously my name's come up. The operation just literally blew up. Like we saw this in the surveillance logs, literally blew up. Cause now they know you've got two convicted robbers together, both high profile. They know he's been looking at things, so it's on, right?

• 57:53Rich Roll?

  And you've been underground.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  I've been underground, so I just popped up.

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  You just resurfaced. So that's like a gift.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  So you've just walked straight into this thing. And then the next day, we went to do it. And then nothing happened. We didn't do it. We decided not to, but I'm in now. I'm in like I've I've made in my mind, I've already made the choice to go now and start doing this. So the one we spoke about didn't happen, but I'm in. So I'm thinking, well, what's the next one? So he goes, well, there's another one tomorrow. So now I should have just said I'm out, but I didn't. And the next morning we go, we had walkie talkies, so we didn't have mobile phones, so they couldn't sell site us or put us anywhere. And he's in one car, I'm in another car, waiting for this van to turn up to make a delivery. I'm on the other side of the road, the van comes in, I'm on the walkie talkie, nothing comes back.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  And I looked in the rear view mirror and I was parked down like a cul-de-sac a couple of minutes before that. So it was a dead end road. And I looked and I saw these three cars shoot down this this cul-de-sac. And my heart sunk. I knew it was the police. Instantly, I knew it was the police. The way that the cars, like the suspensions dropped and it was so aggressive. And I thought, oh, wow, like, and I'm I'm radioing him, nothing's coming back. I drive off from where I'm parked. Now, I had a friend at the point, at this point, that did not live too far from where we were. And I remember thinking. I'm just gonna get out of this car and run and jump over garden fences. They're not even gonna know I've seen them. And I wanna get to my mates and just get out of this country as quick as I can.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  And Rich, I had this overwhelming sense of guilt. I remember it so clearly. I pulled in on the side of the road. And I was radioing, nothing was coming back. I kept saying they're on us, they're on us, they're on us, the police are here. Nothing come back and this overwhelming sense of guilt and I thought I can't leave him. And I did a U-turn in the road, but I didn't see the police had moved now. They are marked police from where they, where that cul-de-sac where they drove down. And then suddenly, I'm driving towards them.

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And I saw, I saw them coming and then they, and obviously they're, they now know I'm gonna see them. They had the caps on, bulletproof vests. And then one of them's just tore in front of me and like smashed the front of the car. One's come from behind, one's come to the side. And it's kind of stopped me. They've jumped out and I've just seen like this firearm. And I just thought, fuck this. And I threw the car into first gear, drove up on the pavement. And I kind of got down a little bit because I thought they were gonna shoot in the car. And I ended up getting away. Like I got on the pavement, got round them and drove off. And, and honestly, mate, like, as I'm talking to you now, I had this voice in my head. And I kept saying, I'm not going back to prison. I'm not going back to prison. I'm not going back to, and I may, I remember and.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  And in that brief moment, I was fully prepared to die to try to get away from them. Honestly, like. Uh, cause I knew what was coming. The first time I went there, I didn't know what prison was like. And I knew that segregation unit, I knew the isolation. And I thought I'm not going back to that place. But it was this voice in my head going, I'm not going back, I'm not going back, I'm not going back. And I, I was driving along and I was trying to get rid of them because they were fucking chasing me. And I went down this back street, drove into this like, it was like an old person's home. And as I've gone to get out the car, they ran me from behind. The car's gone up onto three wheels. I've smashed my arm in the window, got out and run. And then I've run around like it's like, it was like a rabbit's warren. It's the only way you can explain it. And then I run into this garage area and it had all this trellis fencing and I run in, there was nowhere to go.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  And then suddenly, I looked round and you could see this tsunami of officers running towards me. It it kind of startled them. It startled them because they didn't expect, they didn't expect it. Suddenly they've just run round the corner and I'm there.

• 1:01:32Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  And and there was an Asian police officer, all like, honestly, my peripheral vision, I could see them all running towards me. There was one Asian police officer and I was looking at him, lighting his eyes, and he was screaming for me to get down. And I froze. Like, I remember thinking they're gonna shoot me and I, and it was like I tensed up. Even though I can't deflect a bullet, but you you you tense up and I I was like, and my brain's processing what's happening and I thought he's gonna shoot me. And he's going, he's screaming, get down, get down, and I wouldn't get down. And then they just like bundled me to the floor. And then they've all just like, basically they were doing what they're doing. Like, they they were kicking me and punching me and stuff. And then they they put me in handcuffs and I remember one of them said, stop doing it, there's a window cleaner. So thank you to that window cleaner, whoever it was at the time.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  And then they uh, they they lifted me off the ground and then they put me in the car and straight around thinking on my feet. I'm thinking, how am I gonna get out of this? And I thought, I'm gonna pretend I've got concussion, because they like sort of manhandled me. So I'm in the car and I'm shutting my eyes and the cop policeman's going, you alright? And I went, I don't know, I don't know where I am. And I remember someone got in to the passenger, sorry, the driver's side of the car. And he kept calling my name. He said, John, John, John. And I looked up in the corner of my eye and I recognised him and it was the police officer. D C I Curry that arrested me when I was a kid.

• 1:02:48Rich Roll?

  Ooh.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  And he and he looked at me and he went, you haven't learnt your lesson about, and he's smiling. And he went, you're gonna go back for a long time. And then I li- they was all outside, all the police officers, and they didn't arrest the guy I got arrested with at that point. And I could, I was listening and I was thinking, please say you saw them, please say you've not got guns on you. Because I thought if there's no guns, they can't prove they've done anything. And they're, and I could hear the police officers talking amongst themselves. And they gone, have you arrested him yet? And then whoever's on his surveillance team said, we've not arrested him, he's in a high street. And then the call went in to arrest him wherever he was. And I was thinking, please say you've seen them, please say you've seen them. And the, and the copper said to the other police officers, he's screaming fit up and we found two firearms.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  And I just thought, oh.

• 1:03:34Rich Roll?

  Wow. So how come he didn't respond on the walkie talkie? I was assuming he already got pinched.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were blocked. They weren't, they were blocked. It was just a bad area. They just didn't work. And so there was no communication. There would never have been communication. So then when.

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  I thought, yeah, I thought they had already picked him up. And what's interesting is that you weren't really caught in the act, like you were still in the, in the kind of, you know, lead up to the act. So was the charge conspiracy? Like what, what were you actually?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the charge, the charge was conspiracy, but the charge is worse as conspiracy. Because like the barrister, because again, this was all new to me at the time. I didn't really understand it, but conspiracy, the conspiracy goes for as long as someone engages in a criminal act. So say for instance, someone engaged in a criminal act in two thousand and you joined a criminal act in two thousand twenty one. Yeah. You've got nothing to do with it twenty one years before that. It doesn't matter. You, you get arrested, the whole thing. So that when the police were watching him, I kind of got sucked into this whole conspiracy that I wasn't even part of. Like I didn't even know what they were doing.

• 1:04:35Rich Roll?

  Because you were running your own conspiracy in Marbella.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  So I was, I was committing crime.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  And, and I always say this about reception responsibility for your actions and stuff like no one ever made me do any of this stuff. It was all through poor life choices. And when I got sucked into it at the beginning, obviously you do get quite resentful because I was looking at all the evidence and there wasn't really much evidence on me to a degree. Um, and obviously you're, you're figuring out how can I get around this? How can you beat the system and stuff? And obviously the more and more evidence that comes, you get the charge sheet going up and up and up and more and more inflated. So when we got arrested or when I got arrested in the car, when they transported me to the police station, DCI Curry, um, that arrested me the first time. I remember him telling me, look out the window, John, he went, because you won't be seeing this for a long time. And I remember it was, it was a September morning and there were people like

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  coming, walking around in high street with suits, like shopping bags. And I thought, wow, I'd do anything to swap places with them now because I knew what was coming. And they took me to the police station. And I was I was in something called incommunicado. I wasn't allowed to talk to my lawyer. Cause they were raiding people's houses, trying to find out where I was living. They dug up my mum's garden. They destroyed her garden, like they went around and ripped her house to pieces. And then um after that period of incommunicado, I was allowed to talk to my solicitor and he come up. And I said, like, how bad do you think this is before I had the first police interview? And he said, it's bad. He meant it's bad, considering you've been to prison already. And you're kind of, I'm still on um like a a licence. Even I was allowed to travel at this point, I was still, I'd still do some of that prison sentence from the time before.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  And then I didn't realise to the degree now of what was about to happen. But after I got interviewed and I was there for three days before we went to the magistrate's court, I knew I was gonna get remanded. But when we was getting ready to go, I thought it was unusual that the police that arrested me were taking me to court. And then I remember listening to this big fan, it was like a, it was like a big air conditioning unit, so anyway, I can explain it. And all the radios were cracking. And then they took me out into the yards of the back of the police station and there was this like massive, like uh bomb-proof prison police van. There was a helicopter flying over the police station, there was armed police, dogs, but police officers with like Alsatian dogs, all in bulletproof vests. And I said, this is a little bit overkill. And he said, we're not taking any chances of any of your little mates trying to get you out.

• 1:06:55Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  And then um, do you know what's quite interesting as well? Like, I know I'm sort of going off on a, to a tangent. Last year, I put a post up on Instagram and I remember, I remember I walked out to the police. Um like uh compound car park part, the police station, there was a window. And I remember looking up, there was loads of police officers all staring out, like normal police officers. A woman that was one of those police officers commented on one of my pictures and said, she she she she praised me for telling my life round. And she said, I remember you years ago. She said, like, like when that circus come to that police station with you there and how young you looked. And she said, how arrogant you was. Cause again, it was that defiance, like we, like I I showed no fear whatsoever during it.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  And it was the defiance of being strong. So like when they took me out and they put me in that van and I said what I said and he and he was like. We're not, we're we're not taking any chances of any of your little mates breaking you out. Obviously, I realised how much trouble I was in and I thought, wow, I'm I'm gonna be in this for the long run. But when she said it to me, it really took me back to how I was and how other people perceived me. Back then.

• 1:08:03Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Right. Like you still feel like you're the same person, but that ability of her to reflect back the difference.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And how she, how she perceived me in that moment, like this young kid, because I did look a lot younger. I was like twenty one years old. But like you've got this whole circus around you, like all of this resource put on you to stop you from breaking out of prison. And you're defiant with them. Like even then, you don't show any fear. It was arrogance, complete disrespect. Like even when they was put processing me through the police station. I wouldn't tell them my name, my address, my date of birth. I would just, I wouldn't comply with them.

• 1:08:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  And when it's in the interview, like it wasn't, it wasn't even like no comment. It was literally just staring off into space. And just sitting there and being completely defiant with them. And then kind of got took out, got in that like that van, went to um the magistrate's court. First time I saw the guy I got arrested with, straight away, we're sort of talking. He thinks it's me. He thinks the police have been following me, but we didn't know the evidence at that point. And then we had this like circus going from the magistrate's court to the prison. And then I went to Belmarsh. And then when I was there again, go get in process through reception, name, address, nothing. Just be as difficult as possible. And they put me in a holding cell. And because I pretended I had concussion, even when I was at the police station, the doctor, they had to send the doctor to see me. And I was thinking, oh, if I pretend I've still got it, they're going to take me to hospital and I'm just going to try to get out somehow.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  So when I went to the, the, um, to prison and they put me, they were processing me for reception. They put me in this holding cell. They then come to me and said, you're going on H S U. And I thought it was like a hospital unit or something they were going to take me to because I pretended I had concussion. And I was like, yeah. And then they really then explained to me what the H S U was, which was.

• 1:09:40Rich Roll?

  High security unit? What is it? Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  In Belmarsh, which is a prison within a prison. Um, and they basically, the police made a, an application to the Ministry of Justice. And they believed that my escape risk was so high that escape must be made impossible. So they put me in this unit that was built in like the late nineteen nineties to house the I R A. Um, and it was basically, we used to call it the Bat Cave. It was like a, it was like you was underground. You wasn't, but like there was no natural light. It was like those banks of like lights you get in hospitals, that fluorescent light stuff, always humming. I always remember the little hums they made. And they um they put me in a little van and they drove me through the prison handcuffed up. And then they took me on this unit and like none none of the doors have got keys. They're all it's all intercom so you can't take hostages.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  And then they yeah they put me on that this tiny little unit and I thought I'm in a lot of trouble here like I'm I'm I'm like I really.

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  And this was even before sentencing?

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  This was.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  Like on remand, right?

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  This was on remand and and the prison officer said to me like you've got you've basically had a choice when I got on the unit. It there was it was so small it was like it's very hard to explain unless you've seen it with your own eyes. It's like a little submarine it's the only way you can explain it. And the prison officer said to me, look, John, like they call you first name on there. There's a lot more respect on there. It's more adult, I found, in regards of how they treat you. And he said, look, you've been in the police station three days. He went, your your like spur is on exercise. If I was you, I'd take your exercise. You won't get it until tomorrow. So I said, all right. And then he said, look, put the little kit I did have into my cell. You get a bar of soap and stuff. And then they they walked me downstairs through prison officers and all these intercom doors, airlocks, one shuts, one opens. And then they walk you outside, but you get this feeling that you're still inside, but you're outside like.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  There's so much anti helicopter wire. It's like a hamster cage.

• 1:11:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  So we were walking through this little tunnel and I looked up and like you can see the sky, but it's so meshed up. That you feel like you're still inside, but you're not. And then we got to this like quite a big exercise yard considering how small the environment was like the unit. And then they press a button and there's a prison officer in a little cage box thing because he can't go in the exercise yard of anyone. So no one can take him hostage. And then he lets you on the yard and then I walked into this quite big yard. Considering there was only like six other seven other prisoners walking around in a circle. And then really the the reality of the situation really dawned on me when I went out there and. Shagabul Hamza was fighting extradition to America for terrorism. And then you had the twenty one seven suicide bombers that were on trial trying to block the Tube network in London.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  And I thought I am I am fucked.

• 1:12:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, people on the world's most wanted list, basically.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it it was but again, it was a very surreal experience because before I bear in mind I I was outside so. Even when I was in Spain, like, it was everywhere, like, the news, you would see these attempted suicide

• 1:12:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's global, global news.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  So then suddenly, you're then in a situation where, two weeks before, you're reading these stories or watching Sky News or something, and you're seeing these people, and then suddenly, you're there with them. And it was, it, obviously, at one point, it's very surreal, um, and even that rich, like, when, when I went there, Ab, like Hamza, he, uh, come up to me, he said, like, brother, do you need anything, do you want some wheat a bit, do you need food, milk, and all that stuff, and I was like, no, I'm absolutely fine. And, and the guys that were in there trying to blow up the tube, I remember I wouldn't speak to them. I, I never spoke to them for three months when I was in there. You can imagine how awkward it is, like.

• 1:12:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, how many people total are in this unit?

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  So there was me, there was one guy in there, he was a contract killer, he'd just been convicted and got life with a minimum of thirty five years. There was Sheikh Abdul Hamza and the four guys that tried to blow up the Tube network in London. And I used to speak to the guy that was in there for the contract, and he'd just been convicted. I mean, he was wanting to get moved, they called it being shipped out to another prison. But we're all maximum security, high-risk prisoners. I was level two, so that meant when I got moved out of prison, I'd have to be given an armed escort and a helicopter. Um, I, so I wasn't a threat to national security. The guys in there for terrorism, they were a threat to national security. So their level of security was mine, but we were on it for different reasons. So with me, it was because they believed I had the money, means and capability to be able to escape from lawful custody.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  With them, because they're a threat to national security, it's like, if they do escape, they're gonna kill people.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  Right, and it'll be an international scandal as well.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  So like, they, they, even though they might not have the capability to do it, it's the, even the remote risk that they could do it. So we were all in there together, but we were in there for different kind of reasons. And I just remember one day, being on this, because when we had the association for the hour a day, we had to come out of ourselves, we weren't allowed to sit in ourselves, so the cameras could see us. And I remember, um, Ramsay Mohammed was talking to Omar, and they were talking about Arsenal football. I remember listening like, you think, they're talking about things that you're familiar with. And then something, I don't know, in my head, I thought, I'm never gonna be in a situation like this ever again in my life. Where I'm gonna be exposed to these sorts of people. And again, being a kid, I was very inquisitive. And then I thought, I'm gonna start talking to them, and I did.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  And I started speaking to them, and I wanted to understand the psychology behind what they did and why they did it. And we would have conversations about politics and about life. And I found, I found the process very sort of fascinating.

• 1:14:42Rich Roll?

  Right, what did you learn?

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  That they weren't too dissimilar for me as a kid. Um, hated the system, chose to attack it in a different way to what I did. Um, I went down the road of organized crime and money. Most of them didn't have dads as kids. They become radicalized when they got a little bit older. Went to like a mosque or where they were, where, where, where it was like a radical preacher like Abu Hamza. And that indoctrination of them. I could never understand why they denied what they did. That was, that was a thing we used to speak about quite a lot. Like, I, I've been in prison with people that were in there for other forms of terrorism. The IRA, and the way they perceived what they did. It was a war, and then when they got caught, they wouldn't admit, they wouldn't deny what they did. They would just waste millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to go on trial. They would deny why they did, well, not all of them, not all of them, but that group did.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  So I found interesting, like, we used to have a conversation about, they said they were innocent. That was their argument. They said, we haven't done it. And I said, right, if you haven't done it, you haven't done it. It's not for me to judge you, I'm, I'm not your juror or judge. If you say you haven't done it, it's your trial. And then they, they went on trial and they, they all got found guilty. And they got, I think they got life, some of them got whole life tariffs, never to worry about this.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  But the common theme being a broken system that let them down. People who fell through the cracks. And in, you know, kind of a point in time in their lives where they were very impressionable. Found themselves, you know, under the influence of a very charismatic person who could mold and radicalize them.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  Which, you know, yeah, there's a lot of similarities between your story and.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  And that was something I identified. When, when I, when I, when I used, when I used to talk to them. Like, I strongly disagree with what they've done and then what, what they went on to do. But talking to them on a human level, again, they never admitted their guilt. But when you listen to their stories and you listen to how they got to the position or, or point of thinking, how they've reached that point.

• 1:16:29Rich Roll?

  You understand how those decisions got made in the way that they did.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Probably if they would have my stepdad as a role model as a kid, they would have probably ended up going down the road that I ended up going down.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  Do you feel like they seized an opportunity to try to radicalize you? I mean, didn't Sheikh Abu Hamza give you a Quran?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did. He did. He did. It was the biggest book I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  Did you read it?

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  I went and had a shower. No, I didn't. Well, I did. So when I come back in off exercise, I went and had a shower because we had like a tiny little moment of association. And obviously, I've been in the police station for all those days. And I went and showered. And when I come out, the shower, and I went to my cell, there was a Quran on the bed, the biggest book I've ever seen, like genuinely, it was massive. And he put some wheat, a bit of some milk, and I took the book and I went back to him. I said, I'm fine, thank you. And he was fine. He said, yeah, okay. I thought it might be something nice for you to read. I said, no, absolutely fine. Don't believe in God. So he took it back.

• 1:17:22Rich Roll?

  And he didn't vibe you?

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. Do you know what? It was very interesting, like being with him in regards of like, obviously, the way the media portrayed him, that was what I was seeing on the outside. But then when I was with him, he was probably one of the quietest people I've ever met. Well, obviously, everything I ever saw in the media was outside doing sermons and he was very aggressive. But when I was with him, he was very placid, very quiet. Um, yeah, it was just interesting seeing the two characters of him.

• 1:17:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he ended up getting extradited to the US. I don't know what's going on with him now.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  He's in a supermax unit in Colorado.

• 1:17:57Rich Roll?

  Is he?

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what, again?

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  Didn't he get gravely ill or there was some kind of medical thing?

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  He had, again, this is again being inquisitive, like, obviously, he's glaring. Obviously, he's got no arms and he's got one eye.

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  So you would assume, and I did, I said, did you blow your hands off building a bomb? And he said he was sort of getting rid of landmines in Afghanistan, I think it was. And that's where he said that he basically, he lost his arms and eyesight. But we was having this conversation about heaven and hell. I don't believe in God. I used to as a kid, I grew up in a Catholic family, but I don't believe in God at all. I think, once we die, we die, that's the end of it. I wasn't alive in World War II. I know it happened because I know people that were alive when it happened. So I know it was a thing, but where was I? I didn't exist. So I think the same thing happens when I die. It'd be like going into a long sleep and never wake up.

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  And this is how you believe now?

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah.

• 1:18:50Rich Roll?

  Even? Even upon reflecting upon your insane arc and everything that's occurred, like you can't find some strain of spirituality in that?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  Notion that like you endured all of these things that you endured to be able to do what you do today. And, you know, in that, like, I'm able to see some kind of non-denominational divinity. Like, there seems to be a greater purpose beyond our perceptive abilities to calculate that is operating here. Like, otherwise, it's too insane.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  But where do you think all the animals go to die?

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I don't, I don't purport to have an answer to that, only to say that I do believe that there's more going on than maybe our small minds are able to truly comprehend.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe at the end, I might have to have that conversation with someone at the end, at the end of my life. But the way I see life is that, like, I'm in a, I'm, at the moment, I'm in a very content, happy place. I, I, and I've, I've got to see how beautiful the world is. I don't really want for anything to a degree. Like, I live a nice, simple life, and I'm happy like that. But I think everyone has the right to live how I live. So I think that whilst I am breathing, and I am alive, and I am on this earth, I should help other people have the same standard of existence as me, and they shouldn't have to go through shit and, and not be able to live their fullest life whilst they've got it.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  But I do think when the lights go out, the lights go out, and I think that's the end of that. And Christmas, my mom's partner, that she'd been with for like 30 years, he was dying of cancer, and it spread all around his body. And he, he was in palliative care, and he was at my mom's, and he was in, he was in the living room, and the, and the, and the, they bought, the NHS bought a bed round to stop him from getting sores and stuff. And he deteriorated massively, like, he was on a concoction of drugs. And he didn't know he was dying, which, which, again, it was crazy. Like, my mom knew it spread from his lungs to his brain, and he was dying. And I remember, my mom promised him, she said, Like, I will always be here, or Jonathan will always be here. And my mum would not leave his side unless I went round her every morning.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  And stayed next to him whilst my mum would go to the park or the shops. And honestly, Rich, I did think at one point, I wonder when we're sitting there, like me and him sharing experiences. Because sometimes it was just me and him and I was watching him struggling to breathe. Like, maybe I might think there has to be something else. And I didn't. But what it did, when he died, it really sharpened up to me. How short and fragile and precious life is. And for me to live the life that I feel is the right life for me to, for me to lead. Because we've gotten, we're all on the timer, like on the timer. And, and, and that's gonna happen to me one day, if I even get to seventy two or seventy three years old. Like, people's lives are so fragile and so short. And, and it, and I took the positives out of seeing what I saw. Um, obviously, I didn't want him to die.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  But when I, when I watched him die, it was like, it really heightened in me how fragile my life is. And what, what a precious gift life is. And being able to physically able to use my body to sort of experience the world. Experience the mountains, because one day I won't be able to do it. So whilst I am able to do it, I wanna really maximize that time. And, and have as many life experiences I possibly can whilst I'm still alive.

• 1:22:25Rich Roll?

  I feel like, my sense is that that experience affirmed the sense that you had when your father passed away, like this notion of finality. Like, when your dad died, is that when the idea of legacy becomes super important? Like, it, it falls on the heels of that, right? Like, and legacy is related to the finality of death, right? So in your subconscious mind, when you're dead, that's it, there's nothing more. I need to do everything I can while I'm here in this finite period of time to ensure that, you know, my name lives on, or that I'm doing, doing the works to make the world a better place. Like, that seems to rent a lot of space in your head.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, massive. Death has profoundly shaped my existence, like.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Going back to being in prison, like when the catalyst for me changing was the death of my friend. Without my friend Aaron dying, there's no change. Right, we're only halfway through the story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told you to give me the thumbnail, but like. Yeah. We haven't even gotten to that part, but yeah, no, go ahead. Yeah, but when I found out my friend died, like, I'm not an emotional person. I never, I never have been like. I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I've cried since I was 20 years old. Like when I was a kid, maybe a lot, but when I'm an adult, ha- handful of times. And the night when I found out my friend died was the most emotional I've ever been as an adult.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Like genuinely, I couldn't stop crying because the, the, the relationship I had with him and this bond died with him. And then I realized I'm never gonna see him again. And that profoundly changed my existence because I was then reflective on where I was, what I was doing. I'm in prison, like, I thought I was at war, this admiring war against his system. The things I placed importance on, money, wealth, wasn't important. The people that I idolized as a kid were all old men, rotting in prison, or they were dead. But him dying awoke me to the nonsense of the stuff that I thought was important in life and it wasn't. But obviously I was trapped in an environment where like, I couldn't just get up and walk away and go, I wanna turn my life around and change.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  I wanna stop taking drugs, I wanna stop drinking, I'm just gonna go and do something else. I was physically trapped in this environment round, which is a very negative environment to be trapped in. And I, and I, and I've said this countless times, but it is like being a drud addict, trying to get off drugs, but being locked in a crack den, trying to get off drugs. So I'm in prison, trying to, or wanting not to be around these sort of negative, toxic people, but I'm trapped with them. I can't just get up and walk away and I, and I. What really hit me was the following morning after my friend died, we was in a communal eating area. And there was prisoners next to me and no one obviously knew what what had happened that night and the fact that I'd been told that my best friend had died in a car crash committing a robbery in the Netherlands.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  But I just remember them talking about when they get out of prison, they're gonna do this, that, that, they wanna stab this person, this person's done this. And I just thought, do you know what, I can't be around these people anymore. I just do not want to even be near these people. And I was lost, like I genuinely was lost. I didn't know what I could do to get me out of this horrible, toxic environment. I I was going through this process of wanting something else, but I didn't know what that was. I'm still driven, still focused. But my whole identity is wrapped up in this crime world, like my ego, people respecting me, my name, that my, as you say, was so important, your name. If you if you don't have a name, you're a piece of shit. Everything's wrapped up in this this world.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  And I'm in this prison and I'm like, I don't want this anymore. I wanna let go of it. I don't want to be living this existence. I was so lucky that I went down to prison gym and there was a prisoner on an indoor rowing machine called Mickey Steele from North London in Tottenham. And he was, he had gym every day and I never, cause in prison you don't get gym every day. Because they they try to keep all the wings apart from each other because of gang activity. But he was on that rowing machine every time I went to the gym and he wasn't on my wing. And I said to him, what are you doing? And he said, I'm rowing a million meters for a charity. So I I have a special note. They allow me to come down the wing and and sort of come down to the gym and row five a day, ten a day, five a day, two a day.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  And he was just chipping it off to row the million meters. He said, you should do it. And he put that little seed in my head and I thought, do you know what? I've never been on a rowing machine in my life. I'm twenty six years old. And I went to ask the gym manager called Craig. And I remember it, I had bald heads and I went in there and I said to Craig, can I do what Mickey's doing? He said, John, you're on the wing, you get sponsorship, you can come down there, you can do it. So I did it.

• 1:27:02Rich Roll?

  Right. We should say that when you, when we were talking about the story earlier, you hadn't even been sentenced yet. So ultimately, you end up with a double life sentence.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  Right? So two life terms. I don't know how the British system differs from the United States. So I'd be interested in hearing how you even got out to begin with, because that doesn't seem like a predicament that anybody comes out of, no matter how good your behavior is. But ultimately, you find this, you know, opportunity to get into the gym with, you know, quite a bit of bandwidth to use this rowing machine. And this is really the inflection point for everything that follows.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So going back to the sentences, I was in that unit for two and a half years, waiting to go on trial. I realized that the cards were completely stacked against me. My, my legal team said, you've, you've got to make a decision. You either fight it. And if you fight it and you get found guilty, you're probably not going to get out of prison until you're in your mid-fifties. I was okay. I'm 22 years old. And you have to then start assessing all this stuff. Night 35, being 22 feels a long way away. And then they then come back to me, my, my legal team. I was on the wing and the prison officer, the SO, the senior officer come to myself and said, Mr. McAvoy,

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  you need to phone up. It's important. So I said, okay. Got on the phone, rang him up. And he said, John, I'm going to ask you something. I know what you're going to say to me, but I have to ask you. I'm legally bound to ask you. I said, okay. He said, the police have contacted us and if you give evidence against your co-defendant, you'll get a substantial reduction in your sentence. And then I said, you know what I'm going to say to you, don't you? And he said, yeah. And I said, but can you pass this message on to them? And he said, yeah. I said, go tell them to fuck themselves. And he said, okay. And he laughed. He said, I'll tell them what you've said. And he went back, told them that. So I could have had a massively reduced sentence. I probably wouldn't have got life.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  And then we go to court, um, I end up going guilty. Cause I, I really didn't have any, I had to weigh out all the scenarios. I'm in this high security unit. I'm surrounded by terrorists. Looking at not getting out of prison till I'm in my mid thirties. Um, all my twenties are gonna be gone no matter what. I knew that. I knew, like, I was twenty two, going on twenty three at this point, need, yeah, twenty three. So I knew all my twenties was gonna go. I knew that. So I had to start assessing that. It was damage limitation now. And then went to court to get sentenced. And before we went to get sentenced, the prosecution stood up. And said, my honour, there, there was something like a public community interest request.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  So I didn't know what that even meant. They cleared the whole court out. We go back down to the cells. A maximum security. So we're in a special little sort of part of the cells under the courthouse. Where no one can come near us. The only people that can interact with us are prison officers that are brought us from prison. My legal team rushed straight down. I said, what is this? And they said, basically, the whole courtroom gets cleared out. The prosecution, the police and the judge are left in that room, right? And I said, well, what does that mean? And it was like ongoing investigations that they don't want you to be aware of. Um, because it might be like they're putting other people on surveillance, things they think you've been involved with. So then obviously I know what's coming. We go back up to the court after about an hour or so of recess.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  And I stand in front of the judge. He calls me up first to stand up. All the police are in the gallery. My mum's in the public gallery. Prosecution, everyone that was involved in the case from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, Robbery Squad. And the judge asked me to stand up and he starts talking and, and then suddenly when he starts getting to the nuts and bolts of what he's doing, where he's summing up. He started saying about my age, the level of offending, my links to the criminal underworld. And I thought it's coming. And he said, Mister McAvoy, I believe you will always pose a risk to the public. The likelihood of you being rehabilitated is very remote. And if you do get released from prison, the likelihood of you re-offending to the higher end of the statutory book is very high. He went, and I believe the public will always need protecting from you. He said, I'm giving you a life sentence.

• 1:31:12Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  And he said, I'm also giving you a license for possession of firearms. And I'm like, okay, and then you then wait for the tariff. So people that don't understand how life sentences work. A life sentence is a hundred year, or ninety nine years. Now, if you commit murder in the UK with a firearm, the minimum starting point of a life sentence is thirty years. That means you have to serve a minimum of thirty years in prison before you can be considered for parole. Some people get whole life terms. It's very rare that people in the UK get whole life terms. There's only about forty prisoners. So when he gave me my life sentence, what that technically means is you sign your life over to the state.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  So when you get released from prison on that tariff, whatever he sets out, you can't travel, you can't live where you want. They don't have to prove you've been involved in crime. They just have to suspect you've been involved in crime. So that would mean. If I was under a surveillance operation and I was seen with a criminal that was a drug trafficker. And the police were watching that person saw me with him, that person gets arrested for drug trafficking. They go to my operation office and goes. John McAvoy's been involved or hanging around with organised criminals. I'm recalled back to prison. That's it. I'll go straight back to prison. They don't have to prove I've been involved in anything. So the judge gave me one life sentence, then he gave me another life sentence. And then when he gave me both life sentences, he set the tariff. Of a minimum of five years, because he said if I were to give you a fixed term, I would give you ten years.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  But the five year tariff doesn't really make any difference. No one gets out on their tariff. And I knew that when he gave it to me. So he gave me these life sentences and I sat back down and then my co-defendant stood up. He was older than me, he had more previous convictions, so he got life with a minimum tariff of ten years. So we go downstairs and I remember the the prison officers, like, like, how are you and stuff? I said, I'm actually fine. But because in my head, I was like, there's no way you're getting these life sentences out of me. Like, the minute I get an opportunity to run for that gate, I'm gone. Um, there's no way I'll get released from prison and then spend my life living in the UK and like. Be recalled back to prison every five minutes because these are the stories that you get fed by other prisoners and people that have experienced the system.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  So I'll go back to the um, back to the unit. They take us back there. And then someone comes to see you to make sure you're not suicidal because you've just, I said, I'm fine, I'm all good, I'm all good. Um, and again, it was put on that bravado on, um, but again, you do sit there because. You've got no release date, like you've got a tariff. Mm hmm. But no one gets out on the tariff. So now I'm in this, this, this, this sort of like, you're in this sort of world. Where you haven't got any control of your existence to a degree, like your environment, should I say. You've got no actual date of when you're ever gonna get out of this place. So a lot of people psychologically really struggle. Cause they're like, when's this ever gonna end? Cause you haven't got like, before I had a release date, I knew on that day I was out. That was it. Nine o'clock in the morning, you're walking me to reception, you let me back out into the street.

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  This situations, the whole game's changed. Cause I know technically they could keep me in there. If they don't think I've been rehabilitated, I'm not getting out of prison. They will keep me in there for the rest of my life. Cause they can, they don't have to let you out. So I go back to the unit. They then transfer me to a maximum security prison up north in the UK. And obviously Rich, you, you're processing your environment, right? What cards have I got to play here? And I didn't have many. I wasn't gonna be able to escape. They made that impossible. Like I had access to mobile phones when I was in prison and I was talking to friends outside on a mobile phone. And they were saying, we get you, if you, there's an opportunity, we come and get you. And I said, they've boxed everything off. There's no way I'm getting out doing that. There, there, there's no chance.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  So that was off the table. So then the other way, the other, the other way you would play the game. Is that you can fight them every day, like I did the first time and never get out of prison. And I didn't want that to be my existence on earth. So the third way was you play the game. Good behaviour. Yeah, you play the game. So I knew if I did what they wanted me to do and did X, Y and Z. When I go on my sentence plan boards every year, so you sit there in front of like probation. The, the senior officer, the principal officer, officer on the wing. Everyone basically writes your sentence plan out for that year. And they say, this year. We want you to do like enhanced thinking skills, victim awareness. We want you to get a B in English. We want you to do a B tech, we want you to do whatever it is. And you do all that, it's a tick the box exercise.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  And you go back up the following year and then the following year and it was working. After year one, I dropped from being a double category A prisoner to a category A prisoner. And then they made me take, took me to a category, then they dropped me to category B, which is less security. So now they can't justify holding me in a maximum security prison anymore. So I get my, I get a legal lawyer, like a prison specialist, specializing in prison law, bombarding them with legal letters. Mister McFoy should not be kept in your establishment. He's done everything you've asked him to do. He's now like four, three and a half, four years into his tariff. He's only got a five year tariff, you need to progress him through the system. And they did.

• 1:36:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Well, they have to because if they don't advance you in that way, then it becomes a referendum on the legitimacy of these policies that they claim are, you know, the, the path to rehabilitation. So if you're not rehabilitated and you've done all of that stuff, it means their system doesn't work.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Exactly, but you know that.

• 1:36:22Rich Roll?

  Which it doesn't, but.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  But you, but everyone knows that. So you're in this, you're in this crazy environment, like, well, I can remember like when you would do like, there's a, there's a course called, um, enhanced thinking skills. So like, I would go on the course for four or five weeks, right? And then you get your prison, like you, you, the guy next door in the cell next door, he has to go on the course after you, right? The next enhanced thinking skills. So he goes, what do they give you? So you give him all of your stuff.

• 1:36:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  And then what he does, he copies it all out basically and changes the index offence to something else. But it was absurd.

• 1:36:51Rich Roll?

  What do they think people are gonna do?

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  But this is, this is it. And when you're in there, you're in this, sometimes you're in this situation, like, we was on a victim awareness course. And I remember we was in the chaplaincy, it, the, the chaplain was called Gareth. And again, I hope he's listening to this because he actually messaged me on Instagram. It was really lovely what he said because he remembered me. And we was all sitting in this church in prison, or the chaplaincy. He was running it, they brought this old lady to come in. And I remember it, Christmas, someone burgled a house, stole all of her husband's eye insulin, right? Their Christmas was destroyed, they stole all the Christmas presents under the tree. You've got a group of inmates, all of us have been involved in organised crime. You had drug traffickers, armed robbers, people in there for like multi-million pound fraud,

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  tax evasion and stuff in this maximum security prison. So we're all saying, what a piece of shit the person was that stole that, like the old lady's stuff, because that's not what we did, like we didn't do stuff like that. So we're all sitting there and like you're, you're thinking, well, if you would ever caught a burglar that did that to that little old lady, and you're in this like mad, crazy world where you've got your own moral compass of what's right and wrong, that's terrible, like that's the worst of the worst, that's like scumbags do stuff like that. And you're, you're all engaged, it is, is such a bizarre situation that you're in, but you know, if you do all these, you do all these tick the box exercises and do everything they want you to do, they have to let you progress, because if they don't, like what you've just said, they're then acknowledging the whole thing's farcical and like there's no point to it.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  So they have to let you progress and obviously when you're in there, you know that. So you all, the people that do, some people don't, the first time I didn't, I didn't engage with it whatsoever, and there's a lot of people that won't, like they will point blank refuse to do anything that they're asked to do in regards to that stuff. But because they've got a determined sentence, so they're gonna get released, they don't need to do it, they don't, they're gonna get released no matter what. Don't get me wrong, Rich, there are some people that it might work for, but the vast majority that I come across in the, in the situation I was in, in that maximum security prison, it, it, it was, it was a complete waste of money, it was a complete waste of money.

• 1:38:55Rich Roll?

  So how long were you in before your friend passed away? Like that was, you saw that on the news or something like that, right?

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  So I, I spoke to my cousin on the phone, um, and he was the one that informed me. I was watching a game of football on the telly in prison and Republic of Ireland playing France, and at half time, I couldn't believe that France was still in the game, because I thought France would, I'm sorry, Ireland was still in the game, I thought France were gonna walk all over them, and they didn't. And I spoke, I sprung my cousin up at half time and said, are you watching this game? And he said, are you on your own? And I said, yeah, of course I am. And then he told me about Aaron dying in the car crash and I was in disbelief.

• 1:39:31Rich Roll?

  How long had you been incarcerated though at that point?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Four years.

• 1:39:34Rich Roll?

  You've been in four years.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Four years.

• 1:39:36Rich Roll?

  So during that four years, you're checking the boxes, but you're still harboring this mentality of defiance. Your friend passes away, this lands on you like a ton of bricks. And that's really, you know, the beginning of you, you know, rethinking your whole approach to life.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like I said, it profoundly, it profoundly changed me and how, what I thought was important and what wasn't important. And obviously I won't repeat myself, but that story with the prisoners talking about what they were gonna do when they got out. And me going down that gym and seeing Mickey and then me looking at what he was doing and seeing that form of escapism on that rowing machine. Like there, there was a portal outside that wall. And I got on it and it got green lighted for me to do it. And I got the note and I was able to go down the gym every day. The first session I did was 20 miles. Didn't know what I was doing.

• 1:40:25Rich Roll?

  Never been on a rowing machine, but you, you had been doing like these CrossFit competitions and stuff like that.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  I've been doing stuff like that. I was fit and, and again, like when I went back to prison the second time, the exercise, the feeling alive. Someone said that when you're in prison, you don't live, you just exist. So when I went back the second time, that started again, like when I was in that cell, it was, it was the circuits. It was the exercise, it was training, it made me feel like I was a human being. So I, I, I had awoken an ability in my body. I knew I was very fit for being in prison, but when you're in prison, you're in a bubble. It's not reality, like you're not in the real world. So I had nothing to test myself against. Suddenly you go on this, this machine and you can actually, which I didn't know at the point, at that point.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  But you, you can test yourself against other people, like, cause there's people that do specific distances over a certain time, like over a certain time and how quick you are. And this all become new to me. Like I, I had this awareness of it when the prison officer brought in all these pieces of paper and he showed me all these records. But the first time I got on it. Like, and I suppose to a degree, what you've said about the spiritual component, like to me, exercise then made me feel alive. It wasn't about performance, it wasn't performance driven whatsoever. It made me feel alive, like I was a human being. And when I got on that round machine for the first time, I remember it transcended me out of that place. Like genuinely, I didn't know really understand about endorphins and feeling like in flow state.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  These words I didn't know, I didn't know, I never heard them before. Um, but when I look back now reflectively in that process, like being visualization on that round machine, imagining I was running on an ocean. And it was like a portal out of that prison. It took me out, it removed me and took me out of that place. So the first month, I thought, this is amazing. And I rode a million meters in a month. Like Mickey, he was into four months during the first. And then the next month I asked to do it again, and in three months, I'd rode three million meters. And it was only one day a prisoner went to me, you do realize if you rode five million meters, it's equivalent to running across the Atlantic. And I, and I didn't, I didn't know that. And then I thought that's quite a cool thing. So I've done rode five million meters, rode across the Atlantic on an indoor rail machine.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  So I asked if I could continue and the prison officer Craig said, John, keep raising money, keep doing it, keep coming down here every day. At this point, I had a gym all day job as well. They gave me a job because I was down there so much. And like Rich, my hands were like claws, like literally, because I was holding the handle for so many hours a day. I used to have to like snap my fingers out. And I'm genuinely like, they were like, it was like they seized up, you need, I needed oil in the joints. And my body completely transformed more than even doing the circuits. I'd lapped, my shoulders blew up. Like I, my body went through this process, like I morphed to the machine, basically. And again, one day, you call it luck, destiny. Darren Davis, the prison officer walks behind me and I rode ten thousand meters and I pre-programmed it in.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Cause normally I used to just row a distance, so the clock would go up. But this day I put ten thousand meters in to program it so it rode down. And then when I stopped on the ten K, Darren walked behind me, the prison officer. And he just stopped and he looked at the monitor and he went, that is really, really, really fast. And I didn't really think anything of it. And then he was the one that went away and printed all those world and British records on the indoor ram machine. And he come back to me in the gym and he gave them to me. And I, and I remember like reading them. And I was like, they can't be real. Cause I, I could nearly break some of them at that point. I knew I could. And he planted the seed in my head and he, he went away and I, I went back to myself and I was like,

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  I wonder if it's even possible to try to even do them here. And I asked him, he said, let me look into it. And he, he, he contacted the people that officiate the records, explained the situation. Cause normally you'd have to do it in a public setting, there have to be independent verifying witnesses. I needed to be weighed because I was doing it as a lightweight man, under seventy five kilo. Um, I needed to put a card in the ram machine to pull the data off to make sure no one cheated. Someone had to take pictures of me on a scale to make sure that I was seventy, I was at seventy two kilo at that point. But the biggest point was, and the hardest point of all this was the governor of the prison. And, and Gareth Sands, his name was, very religious Christian man. Darren went to him. And Darren asked him if I could attempt to do his records. Bear in mind, this had never been done ever. Like,

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  this doesn't exist in prison. This does not exist. Yeah. No one's ever even asked. There's never been a prisoner in the UK prison system or in a world that I'm aware of that's done something like what I've done.

• 1:45:00Rich Roll?

  It's amazing they even had an erg.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Well, that's it. But it was, it was even like, obviously as I, as I started loving running more and more and more. I started, I used to take care of the machine as best as I could. I used to wipe all the slides. It was shiny. So there was no friction and stuff. And Darren went to him and, and, and there was always neglected. The cardio suite in the prison was always neglected. Everyone's in the weights room. So I always had the ram machine and stuff. So it was mine basically. I used to look after it and stuff as best as I could. And Darren went to him and Darren said, I think this could change John's life. And the governor said, yeah, if you think it can change his life, you can do it.

• 1:45:31Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  And the first record I broke, I attempted to break and broke was the marathon. And I broke it by seven minutes. And it was such a profound moment though, Rich. It really was like, I remember. I didn't understand about sports nutrition or anything. I can remember eating like um sugar. Do you know like there's sugar sachets?

• 1:45:49Rich Roll?

  Sache packs.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Cause I had no nutrition and I started to blow up like the last five K. Obviously, I didn't understand about carbohydrates, glycogen. I'm on this rambling, no heart.

• 1:45:57Rich Roll?

  You have no electrolytes supplements or anything.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  Nothing whatsoever.

• 1:46:01Rich Roll?

  Or any coach or any heart rate monitor or any sense of like how to train for something like this or how to execute on that goal.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Nothing. It was literally sheer force of will and power. Like I I remember in my head, I knew that's the record. I need to hold that split to beat that record. And all I did was just pound and I just used brute power and strength and and mental strength to get me through it. And I kept remembering like the police officers and then this was a very big motivator for me, like when the prison officers. Or sorry, the police officers, when they said like, you never look out the window, you're never gonna see us again. People thinking I was a piece of shit. So when I was on that rivet and like you you get to a point where you're in so much pain. I just kept memory, like these memories kept coming back to the fore. And I was like, I'm not a piece of shit. I'm not a loser. I can achieve something in my life. And it drove me and I remember getting to that last five K.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  And I didn't really understand because I was doing all these circus stuff for myself. I never really understood what it was like to blow up. Like when you run out of energy, I'd never had this sensation for. And I remember Darren said to one of the prisoners, go and get him some sugar. And I was literally eating sugar out of these sachets. And it got me to the end. And when I finished that record and I broke it by seven minutes, I was on that mat in that gym. And honestly, it really became clear to me then that it was never about money. I made the attachment as a kid to success and money. It was never about that. I just wanted to be successful at something and I attach that to money. When I realized at that moment on that gym, in that on that gym mat after just finishing that record.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  How it made me feel like no one had ever done what I had just done in that moment. And I was the best in the United Kingdom at that. And I just set a British record that stood for like six years before I even tried to break it. And I felt incredible. And then from that moment, I knew I would use my body as a vehicle, and that would be the thing to get me out of this place. I started going down the library. I started getting books about sports nutrition training. Darren, and I know you've had him on your podcast when we spoke about him before we started this podcast, but Lance Armstrong had a profound impact over me, like really did. I didn't even know what Tour de, like, I heard the Tour de France, I didn't know what it was. And Darren bought me in his autobiography, it's not about the bike. Darren printed me off quotes, and he was sticking them in front

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  of the rowing machine about quitting last forever, pains temporary. And mate, I used to train and I'd read them, and they would literally, you can imagine I'm moving up and down the slide, and I'm just reading these quotes. And then I started watching the Tour de France whilst I was in prison. I started having this awareness of cycling and tour and Lance was still riding. And I went on this journey, and Darren started bringing me more and more books of all these athletes. And I remember like reading these autobiographies. And all of the characteristics that I had, like from a kid, these group of people had as well. But the only people I saw like me were criminals. I never saw people that did other things, other than people that did crime.

• 1:48:55Rich Roll?

  But you're identifying, you're finding your sensibility in the stories of all of these athletes. You're like, that's how I think. That's how I approach the problems that I've had. That's, you know, my mindset is like that mindset. Like, you're able to see, like, you're finding like kinship in all of these people.

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it opened up my eyes. Every time I broke a record on that rowing machine, and within like 18 months, I set three world records and eight British records. I basically had the full house, nearly.

• 1:49:29Rich Roll?

  All right, marathon by seven minutes. So what, what, like 2:30 or something like that? What are we talking about?

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  It was 2:37.

• 1:49:37Rich Roll?

  2:37.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  And then I broke the world and British record for 100,000 meters, which was six and a half hours. And then I set the British record for half marathon, which was 115, or 114, it might have been, 10K. I set that. I set the kilometer record. I set the world record for the most distance road in 24 hours, which was 163 miles.

• 1:49:59Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  And then the longest continuous row, which was just shy of 48 hours, nonstop.

• 1:50:04Rich Roll?

  And this is, what year is this?

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  In 2011, 2010, 2011 it was.

• 1:50:11Rich Roll?

  Wasn't that long ago?

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  It really wasn't.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  Do any of those records still stand?

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  Well, it was quite funny because when I, when I broke the most amount of distance road in 24 hours, by coincidence, someone else was training for it. He was, uh, he was at Southampton University. And Darren come and said, like, I literally set the record and Darren said, someone's trying to break this next week. And I was like, wow, really? And he's like, yeah. And he printed, because I had no access to the internet. So Darren printed all this stuff off and showed me it and brought it to my cell. And I was like, imagine he beats it. I've only just set it. And I, I smashed it. I broke, I broke the last one by 13 miles. So when I was aware of it, obviously you're talking to other prisoners and they're saying, oh, this guy's doing it. And then he was doing it. I remember he started on a Friday. So Saturday morning, doors unlock,

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  prison doors, like you're allowed to come out for association, get straight on the phone. And I phoned up my cousin. So he had like a live link, guy that was doing it, cameras and stuff, watching him do it. So my cousin's feeding me what he's, where he's at. So he, he was on, he was on pace with me up until like 20 hours, 90 and a half hours. And mushroom clouded and blew up. And my cousin said, he's cracked, he's cracked, he's cracked. And I was so relieved. And I thought, oh, wow. Like, at least I'll keep the record for a bit. And then I found out a couple of years after that, a guy at Harvard University, he broke it. And do you know, he broke it 12 meters.

• 1:51:37Rich Roll?

  This is the most, most meters in 24 hours.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  I broke, I, I, it was something like, I rode 100, 100, um, it was, it was 163 miles. He broke, he broke, it was 12 meters. It was literally a stroke on a round machine. It was one stroke after 24 hours.

• 1:51:54Rich Roll?

  Does he know that you, like the circumstances under which you set the record?

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  I doubt, I doubt, no, because do you know, when we put the records on, when we, when we said where I was, we never said prison. It was just always Nottingham.

• 1:52:07Rich Roll?

  Right. I think we talked about this last time. Yeah. Like I, I wanted to know, like, how does it show up on the printout?

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. It just comes up as Nottingham Circle because I did it in a privately run prison. So they didn't put down, I did it in prison. It was just that, that.

• 1:52:18Rich Roll?

  But your story is out.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's out now. And I obviously, when I got released from prison, I Googled the kid and I saw all the pictures of when he was doing it. He had massive Gatorade and he had fans everywhere. And I was like in this tiny little prison gym with a tiny little fan with nothing. There was no stimulation around me whatsoever, other than this ram machine and the white wall behind it.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  But yeah, he broke it by like 12 meters, but the world records have all gone. But most of the British records still stand. Yeah.

• 1:52:45Rich Roll?

  That's unbelievable, man. Um, I want to talk about Darren a little bit. I mean, this, this guy, you know, changed your life in, in ways you can't even comprehend. I mean, it's unbelievable and he's super impressive in so many ways. Like this guy rode his bike from Norway to Malta, right? Like he's done some epic shit himself. And I'm trying to remember, like, I've got a bunch of friends in Malta. Is he Maltese?

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, he's, he's from the UK.

• 1:53:13Rich Roll?

  He is from the UK. Like, I think when there was a guy who swam from Sicily to Malta a couple of years ago, did Darren help crew for him? I, I've seemed to remember stories from my friends in Malta who were familiar with Darren, maybe because of the bike ride. But anyway, uh, I mean, he's, you know.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  He's a remarkable man.

• 1:53:31Rich Roll?

  This guy's unbelievable.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  He's a remarkable man. He's, he is one of the most thoughtful, compassionate human beings I've ever met. Like, this, it, it, but my story is like extreme. But like when he was a prison officer, he's not anymore. He's, he's gone now to work for a charity outside of prison that helps with prison reform and helps stop people from going into prison as well. But when he was in prison, the amount of people that interacted with him that changed their lives. He was a one man rehabilitation machine, genuinely, like it was remarkable. Even to the degree, one day there was a prisoner with mental health problems wanting to attack him. This doesn't happen in prison. Prisoners stopped that prisoner attacking him. That does not happen. Like that is a big no-no. If, if, if a prisoner wants to attack a prison officer.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  You know, everyone would step out, like no one stepping in and then fighting the prisoners to stop the prison officer getting beaten up. But that's the impact he had over so many people, like the respect, like within the prison he worked. Once I got released, I went back to the prison. I couldn't believe what he'd done. Like he, he, he created his own gym within the prison. And there was like pictures of me and him, every prisoner that he ever worked with that he, he helped with rehabilitation when they got out and got jobs, set up their own gym chains. It's incredible. Professional fighters. There's another guy in there called Kane Musa, that's an MMA, UFC fighter, or an MMA fighter. Um, can he turn his life around? Right. And, and Darren, Darren was, was, was the catalyst for a lot of this change.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  A lot of people come out and got jobs, never went back to prison, all because he interacted with them. He is an amazing man. And when, when we used to sit in the gym together, it, it went past, like me and his, me and his relationship went past the point. It wasn't just performance and writing records. Like I used to sit with him in the gym and he would talk about his family and his kids. And he'd open up to me and this was like, this does not happen. Right. Prison guards are never going to tell you about their personal life, right? And since I've been out, I've met his, I've met his daughter, I've met his, his wife. He's come on, he's come out to France with me. He's like, we, he's been to the all of my races. Like we, we forged this bond with each other, this connected bond. Like even my own charity, like he was a trustee on that.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  It, it, it's honestly like, he means so much to me and he was the first male positive role model I ever had in my life. And I was 26 years old. I never had anyone in my life, like a male, that wasn't in my life for, uh, like other than my mate that died. That there wasn't a vested interest. There wasn't something that he were getting out of it. They weren't just there because they thought a lot of you. They were there because there was something that might have been you helping to make money or whatever it was. But Darren was there purely because he wanted me to succeed. There was no money, there was no nothing. And even when I wrote my book, obviously you're sitting there, I sat there with a ghostwriter. And I remember like, I could tell sometimes, I'm telling him these stories and we're talking about things and he would look at me. And I go, yeah, and he's, he's writing down.

• 1:56:23Speaker 01

  And then he said, would it be possible to meet Darren? I said, I can ask him. Darren said, yeah, of course. He went up to Nottingham and he was with Darren. And obviously, like, I could tell you this story. I could tell all these stories and people go around and go, he's not telling the truth. But obviously Darren's then verifying it, because Darren's the other side of the fence. Like Darren was on the other side, perceiving it from his perspective. It's the same story. What he couldn't understand, the ghostwriter, was why Darren did it. Because there was no money involved, there's no accolades, like, he wasn't getting anything out of it. I'm a guy serving two life sentences in prison. Like, he's not getting anything out of that, like, coming on his day off, which he was, not being paid, to sit with me on an exercise bike for twenty four hours behind me with a bandana run,

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  coaching me through sitting on this ram machine. Because, Rich, I had never done like an ultra endurance event before up to this point, like, I had to keep my body awake for twenty four hours on a, on a ram machine, on a pace to set a record. Darren had like been to like, um, Greenland, he'd done expeditions, he'd done ultra endurance event, like walks, hikes, mountain climbs. He understood the process of what the body goes through. I didn't. So I remember being on that ram machine, four o'clock in the morning, my body wants to go to sleep, screaming for me to sleep. So now I'm having to fight an urge that's like wired into my brain. And I remember Darren said, I promise you, weather the storm, six o'clock, seven o'clock, your body will snap back out of it and you'll be fine. And you'll feel a million times better.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  And I said, please just don't talk to me then. And he, and he said, all right, I won't talk to you. But just, just keep remembering in a few hours, your body will come back out of that cycle of wanting to sleep and you'll feel fine. Like, someone pressed the light switch at seven o'clock, bang, I was up. I was wide awake on that ram machine. I weathered the storm. I went all the way through. And then when I got to like one o'clock, like half one, I set the world record. And Darren said, now you've just got to fucking drop the hammer and go as hard as you can and put as much time as you can into that, into that record. And that's why I broke it by the distance. I ended up breaking it by.

• 1:58:21Rich Roll?

  Sure. He had experience. He understood these things. Like, you can't, back to the spirituality thing, like, you know, the idea that this guy gets put in your path, right? And you have this innate facility for this type of endeavor. I mean, what are the chances of that?

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's energy as well. Like Darren, Darren saw that I was a man that like wanted to turn my life around and had another talent. He believed that talent could help me change my life and he supported it and he facilitated it. And like I said, like without him, there'd be no me.

• 1:58:54Rich Roll?

  Sure. He's the catalyst. You're like the pilot program. Then your picture ends up on the wall in the gym that then ends up with a lot more equipment and you become the lighthouse. Like the other people who are coming in, Darren can tell that story. They can look at you and then with that, that seed of belief can start to germinate. Like, oh, that guy did it. Like, there is a path forward here. If I, you know, listen to this guy and allow myself to be mentored and start contemplating a different way of being.

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I got to be honest with you, Rich. I never really realized the impact that my life would have over other people. I genuinely didn't. Like, I'm me. I don't, I'm not special. I'm just who I am. I do what I do. I've got character flaws. Everyone has. Like, no one's perfect. I know that. I've got a great awareness of my own life. And I think sometimes people get lost on that and they think, they put you up on a pedestal and they think you're perfect. And I'm really, really not. Like, I'd get the way I am, allowed me to do what I did years ago. Other people wouldn't want to live the life that I live. Like, some people might think, do you ever get lonely and stuff like that? And I never, ever do. I love being on my own. I love spending time on my own. I love doing things on my own. I do rides and runs and I just like being on my own. I know a lot of people can't deal with that and they struggle, but that helped me when

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  I was in that situation on that round machine, doing what I did, being in that segregation cell. That's what's got me through my life and that's what makes me who I am. But I never realized the, the, the sort of, the impact that mine and Darren's journey and the way it's sort of inspired people, not just even in similar, like similar situations as me. Like, I remember a few, it was quite, it was quite a few years ago, I received an email, right, from a woman. And mate, honestly, like even now, like I remember, like, I never thought for a minute, what the story I'm about to tell you, I, it wouldn't even compute that it would be possible. So this woman was raped. He never got caught

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  who did it. It was a stranger rape. And she read my book and she sent me this email and she said in the book, The person that did that to me was never caught. And she said, I really hope like you, he changed his life and he never did it again. And she said, that's what I took out of your story. That if you manage to do it, maybe he changed his life and he never did that again to anyone else. And I'm like, how, like, I never thought for a moment, like, maybe some kids that were involved in gangs or. But you read these, these, these stories sometimes from people and. And that, that one stood out, but the amount of mums that have messaged me where their sons are in prison. And it, and it's sort of changed their, their mindset on what's possible.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Like you can achieve things with your life, you can turn your life around, you can be positive and a beacon of hope and. It isn't the end, just because you make one bad decision in your life, you can always come back from it and, and achieve something with your life. Um, and if that means you're just not wasting your life and having belief in yourself a little bit more. But I never thought for a moment that, that, that my life or mine and Darren's journey and story together. We have that sort of positive impact in the world. But I do think that when I did have that realization, it becomes a duty then. To sort of, to, to help lift people up, like I've said to you before, that's my definition of what life's about. We're only on this planet for such a brief moment of time. I want other people to live a happy, healthy lifestyle. Where they believe in themselves and they've got confidence in themselves and they make the most of the short amount of time that they've got on this earth.

• 2:02:20Rich Roll?

  Yes, it's a duty, but it's also the thing that. Gives you the most joy, like we started this conversation with you sharing stories about being with these kids over the last two days and. And how much that lights you up, so. You know, it's, it's curious, like you, on some level. You know, are carrying on Darren's legacy in this living a man's way, like. You all took potshots at, at, you know, the criminal who, who stole the Christmas presents and all of that, but. In truth, like the crimes that you perpetrated had downstream negative implications on a lot of people's lives, right? So part of resurrecting yourself and creating a new path is to.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  Make peace with the past and try to the extent that you're capable of making, you know, making things right, right? And so mentoring these kids, your foundation, these initiatives, that's all part and parcel of that. And what's curious is, is how much, those are the things that actually make you the happiest and. And give your life meaning and, and kind of direct you in this purposeful way.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, like even, even yesterday, like being around those kids. And seeing the impact and like because of my actions and the way I cause again, I think in life, you learn from every every experience when sometimes I embrace when negative things happen because they do they happen to all of us like bad, bad situations and like things happen. You haven't got control over them and you can perceive them as a negative, but I've always used it as fuel like to me, it fuels me. I learn. I take a learning from everything. Bad people come into my life, I learn from it. I I I yeah, it's not been a great experience, but I'm going to turn this now into a positive and use it as fuel. I use the fact that all those years when I was put in prison by my own doing like bad life choices, but I accept responsibility for my own actions. I put myself in that situation

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  by doing what I did, breaking the law. But all of this, all of this energy that I've gathered over the years and for the experience and turning it into a positive, it's led to like now me being able to be part of an initiative that works with thousands of kids across the UK and then they look up to you as a role model. And when I was in that school yesterday, like they hang off every word that you say they're so malleable. And for me to be in a position in my life now where sort of you can get massive brands behind me that will facilitate and help me drive that agenda and message like it is incredible and it is amazing and it's the greatest achievement I've ever done in my life like the records, everything, don't get me wrong, the records have facilitated the movement because without the story, there wouldn't be no big brands coming in and helping me

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  do this stuff. But to me, that that is that is legacy and it it it took me so long to understand that legacy to me, like I said, is about helping people realize their own potential. And when I'm dead, because that person's had an interaction with me or something I've been part of that's positive, their life is better.

• 2:05:13Rich Roll?

  Sure, it's not your name on a building.

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:05:15Rich Roll?

  It's the manner in which the lives that you impacted are then living their lives and on a higher, on a higher plane and passing that on to future generations. And that's truly how you become immortal, right? Like the downstream impact of of positive lives altered because of your your choice to try to make an impact on young people. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's really a beautiful thing. There's gaps in the story that we've told. I mean, ultimately, you you get paroled, you get out, you end up going down to the London Rowing Club. And we kind of told a little bit of that story last time. You find your way into Ironman and, you know,

• 2:05:56Rich Roll?

  kind of are still continuing to participate. As far as the brands, you've been with Nike now for a long time, right?

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Five years.

• 2:06:03Rich Roll?

  Five years, yeah. And you've got, I think you're at your Servello is your bike sponsor. You have Volvo too?

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  But, do you know, with everyone that I've worked with, they've all like bought into what I'm doing and they've all facilitated me continuing that work. Like Nike put a huge investment into Open Doors and they've supported me a hundred percent.

• 2:06:25Rich Roll?

  It's not about you being on podiums. It's about you carrying on this message and living a certain lifestyle and, you know, kind of walking your talk. Yeah. But you still, like, we were texting earlier and you're like, I'm just finished my training. Like, what are you, are you training now for anything?

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So next summer, I want to take part in a race called the Race Across France, which is a bike race. I want to go to win it. I want to try to break the record, which is four days and 22 hours. So it's 2,600 kilometers, with 33,000 meters of climbing. But most, the most important thing, as of now, I'm a fellow vegan.

• 2:07:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  I want to demonstrate that you can do that event plant-based. So I've been vegan now for two years. And obviously, we're probably going to preach to the converted now, but performance-wise, I'm 39 years old. I'm in the best shape I've ever been in. I've had no major injuries. I don't get sick that much. I recover great. Power numbers on the bike are the best they've ever been. Did an ultra endurance bike race a couple of weeks ago to Tour de Mont Blanc. Like, I burnt 12,000 calories of energy in 13 hours. Absolutely fine. And I want to demonstrate that you are able to compete and perform to a high level on a on a plant-based diet. So that's my big goal for next June. They haven't fixed the date yet when the start of it, but you start from the south of France and you basically go like west up to like Calais.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  So you go like diagonally across the country and then actually go through Provence, Mont Ventoux, all the Alps, and then slingshot across the country to the ocean, to the coast, and you go up towards like Calais.

• 2:07:56Rich Roll?

  Wow. So you're taking the hard route. If you're going west, like, and then north.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  So you go like, you go like west, you go, yeah. So you start down in South France, go through Provence, and then you kind of like go around the hardest mountains there and then go into the high mountain Alps. And then like go diagonally across the country. So it's 33. So you're climbing Mount Everest four times.

• 2:08:16Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  In like, if it takes me five days, it takes me five days. But that's, that's the plan. I would like to, to beat the record of four days in 22 hours.

• 2:08:22Rich Roll?

  Nice. And walk me through the decision to begin this vegan journey.

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  Well, when I was on the last time, I was, I was, I was a meat eater. Never really even, I never even processed ever becoming a vegan.

• 2:08:35Rich Roll?

  By the way, we didn't even, I have nothing to do with this.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  No, you have nothing to do with it. You have absolutely nothing to do with it. But yeah, never, never in my mind, never, I was never really conscious of the world in that regards. Very performance driven, rowing, in Ironman. It was in that environment where like a lot of coaches would probably recommend that you don't. Like saying, there's not that many world-class vegan athletes. But again, it was never even in my mind. Like, I never even had the conversation about doing it. Moved to France, probably the worst country if you wanted to become vegan, in the mountains. And the journey and the story and the way it worked out was, I'm out there, like I said, in June 2020, after COVID, when the first lockdowns were hitting everyone, and there was a little gap where we could travel a bit.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  So I'm out there, I was on my own, and there's a little like, there's a little like place where I go and watch the sunset in the mountains. And it's beautiful. It just drops behind this lake.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  Anyway, go up there every night, and there was an equestrian centre. And next to your equestrian centre, there was like these stables. And I saw these, like, these horses walking around, four horses. And I went up one night, and the horses like come over. I went up the next night, took a little bag of carrots and apples, fed them, did it again the next night, next night, next night. Instinctively, the minute I started going up there, the horses would recognise me straight away. To the degree that when a couple of friends come out, I said, watch this. So they didn't believe me. So literally, the minute I got out the car and I walked up to like this like field, these horses obviously sensing, they come, they come over. My mate was like, that is unbelievable. And I come up and I was stroking the horse's nose and stuff. And I mate, like, I had never in my life ever grown up around animals.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Like, I'd, I'd, I never, like, having a dog or a cat, like, I'd never been in nature, never really been exposed to it. Whenever I went on holiday, it was always to cities, or when I lived in the south of Spain, or like, I'd never been in like, profound, strong, powerful nature in the outdoors. I never experienced that as a kid. I never experienced as an adult till, till I was like my late thirties. And then one night, I'm there, there's this horse. And I'm looking into the horse's eyes, and I had this connection with this horse. And I obviously at this point realised the horse was sensing me, or the horses were sensing me. And I felt like a hypocrite, and I didn't like seeing cows and sheep behind electric fences. When I watched like the cattle trucks going and their little noses poking out the holes in the cattle trucks. And it profoundly affected me and it, and it reminded me of being in prison.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  It's, it's the only way I can really explain it. And I just didn't like how it made me feel. And that night with that horse, when I was looking into the horse's eyes. I just made the decision that night, I would never eat or drink, consume any animal products ever again. And I didn't. The only thing I found tough. So it really was like a lightning bolt. Oh, hundred percent, hun- hundred percent, like. The only thing that was challenging afterwards, I didn't miss any food groups. It was the force of habit of like, when you go into a coffee shop. Deliberately saying, I don't want milk in my coffee. But like, I then took that on, I don't eat honey. Like, I went to the full extreme, I didn't even realise there was levels of veganism. It was only like, so like, I went horse riding once, never do it again.

• 2:11:41Speaker 01

  I would never ride a horse again, because I didn't like, I, I, I did it once before I went vegan, but then I didn't like the exploitation of sitting on a horse. And it, to me, like, the horses that I saw, they looked like they were sedated, and I just didn't like it, and I thought, I'm never doing that again. So I did it once, never again. But I went to the full extreme veganism. I don't preach to people, like, we go out for dinner sometimes and people like, look and go, oh, do you mind if I have ham and stuff? And I go, look, call it your body, you have to make your own choices and decisions. I make my decisions based on my reasoning. Um, this is why I did it. It's up to you whether you do it. I don't force it on other people, but for me, it was more of a moral issue and I didn't like how it made me feel being around those animals. And the fact that even when I go walking and stuff like when you're in the mountains and you're

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  in such powerful, profound, strong nature and like you're seeing butterflies flying around and like how like all these creatures have evolved to inhabit the same planet as we are right now. And I, I, I look at the fish in the water and stuff and it, it changes you so, so profoundly. I know I keep saying that word, but it really, really did.

• 2:12:48Rich Roll?

  McAvoy going vegan was not on my 2020 bingo card, you know, like it's, it's like, it's so funny. I could have never anticipated like hearing a monologue like that coming from you like not just vegan, like compassionate vegan, like doing it for the animals and, and being like pretty hardcore about it.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I didn't realize there was levels. I've learned this afterwards. Like when you meet vegans, like I've been in situations before where like I've had an Asa bowl and they bought, and I said, not eating it. Can you take it back? I don't have honey. And then I'm a vegan. We don't eat honey. I said, but you do. Oh yeah, but I do. I didn't realize there was levels to this stuff. Like how I just thought when you was a vegan, that's it. Like you don't have leather seats in your car. You don't. So I went like the whole extreme of a version. I even revolver. I said, I need all the leather seats taken out of my car.

• 2:13:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, there's more levels.

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:36Rich Roll?

  You have no idea.

• 2:13:36Speaker 01

  What's the highest?

• 2:13:37Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, there, there are some that would argue that, that it's your obligation to get a vasectomy.

• 2:13:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:13:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Like we're, we can go, how far do you want to go, John?

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  I didn't realize exactly. I didn't. I thought, I thought I was at the top level. I didn't realize there was another one past that.

• 2:13:52Rich Roll?

  Well, also like all the consumer choices that you make every single day.

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:56Rich Roll?

  Um, it's not just food, but you know, it's obvious clothing is an obvious example, but you know, what are the downstream, you know, consequences of a certain product like, like you buy a garment and it's not leather, but it was made in a factory overseas where toxic dyes end up in the waterways, the, you know, in the rivers and that poisons the fish. Right? So we all like, none of us walk the earth harm free or cruelty free. We all participate because we're living, breathing animals and we need to consume certain things. So it's a question of, you know, how, you know, how far you kind of telescope that out.

• 2:14:37Rich Roll?

  But it makes you more conscious, like, oh, the decisions that you make and how you exercise your purchasing power, do you have, you know, those implications may be subtle and they may be invisible to you, but still they're real.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's always a learning experience, learning about how things are processed, made, designed, where they're coming from, the implications it's having far greater, yeah, than what you're just physically putting into your body.

• 2:15:03Rich Roll?

  It's interesting, your experience with this is sort of the inverse of mine, because I got into it initially due to vanity and health concerns. Like, I didn't like being a fat slob, I didn't like how I looked, I didn't like how I felt. And then going vegan, plant-based resolved that for me. But now I've been doing it for, it's been 15 years at this point. And now, the animal welfare piece and the environmental piece are, you know, probably more important to me than the health piece. And that's just an evolution, you know? And I think when people make these healthy lifestyle changes, certain in-groups

• 2:15:44Rich Roll?

  are very quick to judge them. And I think that that's really wrong-headed. Like, everybody has to, you know, find their way to a new thing and be encouraged to continue their learning experience with it.

• 2:15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, most definitely.

• 2:15:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When you look back on all of this, do you have, like, what is the emotional resonance of it? Like, is it gratitude for everything that has happened? Are there regrets? Is there any lingering feelings of guilt or shame associated with it? Like, how do you think about that?

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a complex one. Like, regret, do I have regret? Yes, I have regret in regards of, like, the ramifications of my actions years ago affected other people's lives. But like, then the journey that I've been on for myself, I don't regret things I've done. It's a complex thing. I don't, I think you learn from everything. But I obviously understand my story, my life's been extreme, where it wasn't just about me. My actions had a negative impact on other people's lives. I've got a tremendous amount of gratitude for the people that sport bought into my life. Again, this is something that I didn't really consciously think about. I used to think it was everything was like performance, being fast, breaking records, being quick at running marathons and stuff like that.

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  But what I've realised over my life, that the power of sport is about the power of the people it's brought into my life. Because it was Darren that changed my life. And since I got out, who you met last time when it come on the podcast, was sitting with me, Terry. These people massively changed my life. And I've had incredible life experiences. I've met incredible people along the journey through sport. And it's not the sport itself. It's not because I've run really quick or anything. It's the people it's brought in. But gratitude is is is is up there as the biggest thing I've probably got out of the my life experience of being appreciative of the fact that I was very fortunate to come across individuals at certain points in my life that have led me to having the life I've got today.

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  But yeah, the regret thing, yeah, I I regret what I did because it wasn't just about me. It wasn't like I fucked my own life up and I it didn't have any real ramifications on other people's lives. So I regret the fact that by my negative behaviour, that impacted other people's lives. But I don't regret going to prison.

• 2:18:06Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  And if you, I I said this in the last podcast, if honestly, if you said to me now, you go back to being twenty two years old and I can let you out of here, I would want to go through that journey again. I would. I would want to spend the ten years in there. Because I learnt so much about myself, about life. It gave me an awareness of of life. And I got a lot of life lessons out of that. And and that's helped me be the person I am today. So I needed to go through that journey. I just regret that the fact that those that behaviour affected other people's lives.

• 2:18:34Rich Roll?

  But you've made peace with who that person was at that time.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:18:38Rich Roll?

  Because I think I've heard you say in other podcasts that you've done, maybe, you know, in the last year or two. You're telling a story and you're like, I'm so ashamed of, you know, this, like that I was this person or whatever. Like, there were hints of like, like you feeling like, like suddenly you're tightening up because you got to tell a story about something that you did that you still brings that up.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  Like what I said to you earlier on about when I was twelve years old, watching that film about my uncle. That I feel I do feel embarrassed. I feel embarrassed. I get I was a young kid. But like to say that I would watch an individual like that and watch a film like that and that would motivate and inspire me. As the person I am today, it feels so alien from who I am and what I stand for as a person today. That I do feel embarrassed by it. Like I look, how on earth would I even have that thought process? Again, I was 12 years old, but it still does make me feel like that because my life is so profoundly.

• 2:19:31Rich Roll?

  But you can give that 12 year old a break, right?

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  You can, you can give.

• 2:19:35Rich Roll?

  And and that was a an important moment in in the assembly of the person that you are today.

• 2:19:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:19:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is I did hear like, like some sense of still like, you know, whinging over like talking about who you were as that young person. And in that, like I see or I hear an opportunity for you for a little bit of self-love exploration, right? Can you feel compassion for that young John who, you know, came up in certain circumstances where the decisions that you made were almost foregone conclusions all along the way?

• 2:20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it also gives me a great self-awareness and also it's given me great skills where like I can put myself in the position of other people at that age. And I I understand.

• 2:20:23Rich Roll?

  Much more empathetic.

• 2:20:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. I I totally understand that I can sit there with them and I totally get even as extreme as it is, like going back to what we're speaking about with the guys that we commit to the terrorism. Like as extreme as it is and something you you do not agree with what they've done. You do understand how they've got to that point because you was once very similar to that. And you you understand how they've got to that position in their minds of thinking a certain way because you've also been that sort of person. And I I've been able to come out of that and have that awareness of that situation and and sort of better my life. So there is a way out, even if you could be the most hateful, resentful, bitter, twisted person in the world. But you can always find ways out of that. There is there is another path.

• 2:21:05Rich Roll?

  But you are somebody who has such a deep facility for mental toughness, like your mental game is so off the charts, right? So in terms of empowering somebody else who feels stuck, like your your message really is, look at my life. All these things happened and I still was able to change how I was living. And if I can do it, certainly anybody can do it. The retort to that would be, well, you're this unbelievably gifted athlete, or you have a mental strength that is superhuman. So what am I supposed to do?

• 2:21:42Speaker 01

  I don't think it is superhuman. I don't think it's superhuman. The way I process me as a person in this universe and in this world, it's just that I'm like everyone else. And I think a lot of it's been patience, time, being open, susceptible to different events. When I went through that journey of wanting something different for my life, being open to different things, interacting with different groups of people, not being so sort of like blinkered into one thing, and putting myself out there and opening up myself to new experiences, which brought these amazing people into my life that shaped me, that gave me advice, and being more open-minded. Because probably years ago, I say probably, I was. I was very closed-minded. It was one-track minded. That was it. There was nothing else. It was just that one thing.

• 2:22:23Rich Roll?

  But you had this willingness to challenge yourself, like, I'm gonna stay in solitary, or, you know, I'm gonna prove to myself that I'm stronger physically and mentally than anybody else.

• 2:22:34Speaker 01

  And that would stem back from childhood.

• 2:22:36Rich Roll?

  But that comes from anger.

• 2:22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was driven, and that was very negative emotions, which, again, retrospectively, when I look back on that situation, that could have quite easily broken me. Like, it could have done that. I could have gone in that situation and come out with an illiteracy of mental health problems by doing that to myself, like, isolating myself, having very limited human contact for that period of time. But, Rich, I wouldn't say I'm any different to anyone else. It was just that when I went through that journey of like, of processing everything that had gone on in my life, my friend dying, it was just the fact that I was more susceptible and I opened up my eyes more to stuff. And the moment I did that and changed that mindset and let people come into my life and trusted people, which is something that I really struggled with, because I was always brought up not to trust people,

• 2:23:20Speaker 01

  being very distrusting of why someone wanted to associate and be with you and be close to you. But when I went through that journey of like, having this realization that a short life is and being more open, that all of these incredible people come into my life, which shaped my life, that showed me a different way of living, and it opened up my eyes to a different way of living, and the advice that they give me and stuff changed my life profoundly.

• 2:23:42Rich Roll?

  When we look at, this is the last thing I want to talk about, which is prison reform. This is really close to your heart for obvious reasons. You've been to attend Downing Street. You talk about this all the time. When you look at incarceration, there's really three pillars to justify it. It's like, we need to punish people, punitive. It needs to prevent crime from happening, preventative. And then it's meant to be rehabilitative. And I feel like all of the energy is around punitive. And then, you know, the fact that crimes aren't committed while people are incarcerated is sort of just a side benefit of that. But when it comes to rehabilitation, that's at best given lip service, these checks, you

• 2:24:26Rich Roll?

  know, these boxes that are getting checked that we talked about before. Like, in your mind, what is the path towards truly rehabilitating people who are incarcerated? Or what changes would you make in the system to make it achieve that goal of turning people out who can become productive members of society?

• 2:24:47Speaker 01

  It's a very complex issue. Like, from my experience of what I've seen and stuff I've seen in the background, when I've gone and spoken to professors, and I've got MPs, members of parliament, Youth Justice Secretary, who was incredible in the UK, called Dr Philip Lee. So he was a doctor, general practitioner, really saw the emphasis on sport. So you must remember, a lot of people in prison have had really bad experiences of the education system before. Most of them have been excluded from school, gone into pupil referral units. This is in the UK, but it'd be quite similar in America, I would imagine. So they get chucked out of school, and there's a pipeline, a clear pipeline. So there was 86,000 men

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  in prison in the UK, 56,000 of them were excluded from school. So statistically, you're going to prison, nearly all of them. And we was having this conversation about the reform of the system. So he put a lot of emphasis on sport. Because of the life skills that sport could teach them. And he wanted to sort of re-change this this whole push now, they need to be educated, yes. But to thread education in through physical activity and through sport. Because a lot of young people, a lot of people in prison. If you said to them, what's the most important thing, they would pick. Food, gym, visits.

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  Now, if you can tie up an educational thread through the physical activity piece, that's not all of them becoming that personal trainers. It's but it's it's threading in the learnings that they can learn through sport. And tie in some educational learning, education where they can get jobs when they get released from prison. I think that would fundamentally change a lot of people's lives in prison, from my experience. And I feel like in the UK. And I'm not just saying this because I'm on your podcast, but I feel like my story has definitely had a positive impact over that narrative. Because MPs, people in positions of of authority and power within the MOJ. Like, they can look at my story and obviously because it's it's the bells and whistles.

• 2:26:50Speaker 01

  It's it's definitely encouraged this movement to take place and a prioritization to be put over people's physical well-being, mental well-being in prisons. And wrapping that up within an educational learning thread.

• 2:27:01Rich Roll?

  Um hum, but the challenge is to get people beyond the bells and whistles of your story. To learn that this is possible for anybody, not the facts of your experience, but. You know, some level of rehabilitation and, you know, the sports piece. Look, it's important to be physically fit and all of that, but it's really the self-esteem. It's a self-esteem building thing. It's a thing. Where you can give people that level of agency and get them invested in themselves, because when you start looking after yourself physically. That ends up spilling, obviously, into all these other areas of your life.

• 2:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, mo- most definitely. And if you spoke to most prison officers in the UK and correctional officers in America. Like, I have quite a lot of prison officers in America message me. And like, my book somehow found its way into the correctional system in America.

• 2:27:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, dude, that's cool.

• 2:27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a prison officer, um Bobby's name is, from Boston. And um he's retired now, so I'll tell you the story, but you can't, I didn't realise this, you can't take books, hardback books into prisons. So he used to take the front cover or the back cover of my book office, it was just pages. And take them in prisoners and he sent me some pictures a couple of weeks ago of prisoners that have been released from Boston in the prison correction facility. It's amazing, mate, absolutely amazing. And they read my book in prison in America.

• 2:28:13Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:28:13Speaker 01

  And they've and they've got out and he said it's really been a catalyst for one of the prisoners turning his life around and using sport and physical activity. But I do think it can be a fundamental pillar of rehabilitation. Because people are passionate about it. They're passionate about fitness in prisons. They really are. Like the gym is one of the most popular things you you could want to do in prison. And even prison officers never want to take gym away from prisoners because they understand the benefits it has over them. And the fact that when they do do it, violence goes up in the prison, you've got all this testosterone, anger, hatred. Where there's an outlet in the prison gym. Now again, if you can tie that into a learning piece. Which there are a lot of sports organisations now going in, definitely in the UK, definitely, the the tide has really turned like.

• 2:28:55Speaker 01

  When I was in prison ten years ago, I got released ten years in September ago. Like, it wasn't even a fraction of like now what's going on in the UK prison system. It's incredible like. Sebastian Vettel, the the F1 driver was in Feltum Young Offenders um a couple of months ago, car workshop. Um you've got professional football players going in, professional rugby players going in, professional football clubs. There's a massive initiative in the UK now where. Football clubs are twinning up with prisons and then the clubs are going into the local prison, giving them, providing educational learning. And then when the prisoners are getting out, they're giving them jobs at the football clubs, working as a groundsman, working in hospitality, stewardship. So there's massive shift that's gone on in the UK, which I'm really proud to have been part of.

• 2:29:38Rich Roll?

  That's unbelievable. I I I don't think that that's what's happening in the United States. I mean, if it is, I'm unaware of it. And I would be happily disabused of that notion, but I think we have a long way to go. I feel like. Your book would be well served to be, you know, just sort of, you know, a big part of every prison library.

• 2:29:57Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, like, when, when, when first lockdown happened, we sent two and a half thousand copies of my book to the Young Offenders Estate. So that meant every person under the age of twenty one in the UK got given a copy of my book as a, as a workshop. Like, it was all part of a work booklet. So they basically got given the book and then like some prisons did like stuff where like there was book reviews. It was quite interesting actually because the prison officers were emailing me the book reviews and I had to pick. It was quite fascinating. I mean, you read how other kids in there perceive your story. But every child in that prison under age twenty one got a copy of my book to read it whilst they were basically on lockdown because the whole prison system shut down. And again, it was about trying to teach them that even

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  though they're in that environment, that there was things that they could do. Like when I was in that segregation cell doing the cell workout, reading books, keeping myself active, act like my mind active. And I wanted that to be like sort of an inspiration to them in that really bad situation. And that was where a lot of the mums were messaging me saying, my son's read your book. And also, it's gone filtered through because there's two and a half thousand of them were donated to the prison. And that's gone through to prison officers. So then prison officers read the journal. And that's another really important thing as well. Like a prison officer going into work, realising they're not there just to lock someone up. They're there to help change their lives.

• 2:31:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that, that goes to this piece about rehabilitation. If you can start with just the mindset of the like, being a prison guard is a really hard job.

• 2:31:22Speaker 01

  Well, I think in the UK, it has one of the highest rates of mental health in all of the public, private sector.

• 2:31:28Rich Roll?

  I'm sure it's the same in the United States.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would be. The jobs, like, they're stressed all day. Like, you, you, you imagine going into an environment where you, you don't know if you're going to get attacked. Like, you, you, you're inside all day. You literally got cameras pointing at you. The stress and pressure of people screaming at you every day.

• 2:31:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's got to be really difficult. You must get insane emails, though, from, from people who are incarcerated or who have just gotten out and these young people through your website and stuff like that.

• 2:31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, yeah, a lot. And, and it is very humbling. Like, sometimes when I read them, like, again, I, I, I'm not, I don't see myself as being anything special. So when you read an email from someone who said, I read your book. When I was in a, when I was in a segregation cell, I read your book when I was in a police, wherever, wherever they were. And it's been a catalyst for them doing something with their lives, coming out, working in a gym. The amount of people that again, like started taking up rowing.

• 2:32:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:32:22Speaker 01

  That is actually now in the UK prison system, there's a national, a national indoor rowing league.

• 2:32:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, there is. Oh, that, I mean, that tracks directly back to you.

• 2:32:30Speaker 01

  It's crazy. Like, there's actually a national indoor rowing league. So then you prisoners, like the British Indoor Rowing Championships, there were prisoners in prison in the UK. Racing people outside of prison, like even.

• 2:32:41Rich Roll?

  But they know it, the people who are.

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  They're on the same monitor, so they all race each other, like, uh, uh, last year.

• 2:32:47Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 2:32:48Speaker 01

  Like in, in Melbourne, in prison, there was a prison in, in Australia. And they sent these pictures of these prisoners indoor rowing and the guys, and I'm like, what the fuck? Like, it's incredible. It's incredible though, like to think that, like, and I always send it to Darren. I say, look at this. And he was like, wow. And you think we just started off around in a prison gym.

• 2:33:07Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  And it's like, it's just spread everywhere. And like, there's, there's, there's initiative that I set out called Boats Not Bars. Where rowing clubs go into prisons and they, they teach young people to row and row, and she's all prisoners, not just kids under age twenty one. And then when they go through this, this, this sort of journey of learning to indoor row. They, they obviously using it to get fit and then some of them are getting to the end of their sentences and then they can join the local rowing club. And some of the stories there where I've seen where people got released, they've become rowing instructors and rowing coaches. It's very humbling, Rich.

• 2:33:35Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:33:36Speaker 01

  And it's something I would never, ever, ever take for granted and something I'm tremendously proud of, like again, to know that. My life has aided them to see the light and they're living the best life they can live. And they're not in prison and they're free and they're, they're content. They're, whatever it is they're doing now, they're content, but because they've interacted with my life story or me as a person. They are now doing something that they're at peace with and they, and they're in a good place and they're not just rotting in a cage. Not living to their potential.

• 2:34:07Rich Roll?

  And the legacy of that and what they will then pass down. I mean, that's a really profound thing.

• 2:34:13Speaker 01

  Oh mate, yeah. And it's something that like, again, I'm very appreciative of and I've got a tremendous amount of gratitude for.

• 2:34:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When your head hits the pillow at night. Just think about that if you've had a hard day.

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 2:34:27Rich Roll?

  All right, so 10 Downing Street, you get to talk to all these professional footballers and all kinds of cool stuff, but come on, man, Idris Elba, you gotta tell me what's going on there.

• 2:34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, I, yeah, they, they asked me to be part of a TV program. I got asked to do a lot of stuff, if I'm honest, and I say no to nearly 99% of it. So I will not do anything with what we've just spoke about that would do any detrimental damage to that. So anything that wants to undermine it in any way, like who I am as a person, will not do. Doesn't matter how much money people want to chuck at me to do it, it has to be to my core beliefs. And like I said, like stuff like TV programs, radio stuff, like magazines, newspaper articles, unless it fits in with what I'm doing and the message I want to spread, I say no. And sometimes you say no, and they think you're saying no because they think you want more money, and it isn't the money. But I don't care how much they offer, it's about the authenticity

• 2:35:23Speaker 01

  of who I am as a person. That come in, and they said, would you like to be part of this show? And I was like, what is it about? And then they explained about the kids that were on this journey of learning to become boxers and using the power of sport to help show them, or teach them about life skills and giving them opportunities. And did I want to be one of the mentors in it? And I said, yeah, I'll do it. And then, um, yeah, I decided to do it. And it was a, it was a very interesting TV show to be part of. It was, uh, I've never been on TV before, like I've never done anything like that. It's a completely different alien world to me. And actually, I think they was actually quite surprised because obviously, because I had no backlog of anything. They kind of thought that like, I'd imagine they must have thought, he might go on and he just might not be that good. And then when I did

• 2:36:08Speaker 01

  my day, they were actually like, the guy that was doing like word count and stuff and how much, because it was just me speaking all day. And he was like, you're really good at this stuff. And I went, have you ever, have you done a lot of it? And I was like, no, this is the first time. And he was like, you definitely need to do more. But then we were talking about it. And I said, actually, I get asked to do a lot of stuff. And I say no to everything. And he said, that is 100% the right decision. Don't ever sell yourself out and do things that will go against what your core beliefs are. And and so sometimes it's like the journey, sometimes of like, I have found it frustrating when you're trying to get a message out. And then you're getting given the like, an opportunity that you wouldn't take, but an opportunity to to sort of magnify your message. But then you know it will do damage to you as a person and the message you're trying to get out in the long run.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  So it's like short term gains over long term gains. And I've always just played the long game in regards to that stuff. And I won't undermine my credibility and what I stand for.

• 2:37:01Rich Roll?

  You can't. I mean, it's all about that. That's all you. It goes back to the beginning of like your name, right? Like, that's all you have, like that that speech that you got as a young person is actually true in that regard, like. Because of the resonance that you carry and the message that you're trying to put out in the world. You have to be true to your word. You've got to walk your talk and you've got to make sure that your actions are in total alignment with your values. Because then if that gets eroded, then there's no power behind the words that come out of your mouth.

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  Mate, most definitely, like, probably the last, since I've seen you. I've probably had five film contracts put in front of me.

• 2:37:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:40Speaker 01

  Five different film contracts.

• 2:37:41Rich Roll?

  I'm a little bit familiar with some of that.

• 2:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because we've talked about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:37:45Speaker 01

  And like, and every single one, like, they're not bad people, but it's just not the right, it's not been right. And it's like, no, I'm not, I'm not doing it. And I, there's some of them that have been really lucrative. And I remember one of them in particular I got and I was, I was looking at it. And the people that were helping me on my end was like, because I haven't got any sort of awareness. I don't understand that world whatsoever. It's completely alien to me. So I thought I better get some help, someone guiding me through it. And they were even surprised by how lucrative it was for the first round. And they said, I'm surmising, no one knew. But whoever they've pitches to must have been green lighted because they desperately want you to sign that contract. But it wasn't right. Like, I'm not going to erode all the work that I've done in my life. Like, I'm not going, I'm not willing to do that and destroy my credibility.

• 2:38:30Speaker 01

  Just because, because I'm not interested in fame. That doesn't interest me. It doesn't bother me whatsoever, like red carpets and stuff like that. Like, I just want to be happy living on the mountain with sheep and cows and stuff. Like, I'm, I'm good. Like, I don't, I'm not doing it for that reason. If I feel like by getting the right thing made, that it's gonna amplify what I stand for. And it's gonna, people are gonna watch it and come out and feel sort of inspired and feel like I can do anything with my life. Or, or not, maybe not prejudge people so much and watch a film and at the end of it come out and go. If I was in your situation as a kid, like not preaching, let them make their own decision. But if I if I was had that sort of environment as a kid, would I have done what he did? And make people maybe think a bit differently as well.

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  But yeah, like I say, I've said no to nearly everything that's been put in front of me. It's only now there's a there's a strong possibility I will say yes, because it's with the right people. And and I'm I'm part of the creative process of making it. And and I've always adamantly said, I will not glorify that life. Like, I don't want a film that's like Goodfellas or anything like a film like that that glorifies that that negative toxic. Well, now, don't get me wrong, it's obviously a big part of my life. But I don't want the glorification of it. I don't want it to be like a Hollywood sort of crime film. And and and the sort of the the really important part of the story, mine and Darren's relationship, gets watered down and it and it that doesn't become the essence of what the film's about.

• 2:39:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's that is the movie, that relationship, right? Everything else is like fluff around that. But, you know, look, these things happen when they're supposed to with the people they're supposed to happen with. And I think the best long term, you know, strategy is to continue to double down on your integrity. And you will know when it's right.

• 2:40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent.

• 2:40:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I'm here to help in any way, if I can be of service to you.

• 2:40:13Speaker 01

  You can play me.

• 2:40:16Rich Roll?

  Not no, behind the camera. All right, well, we got to get you back to the mountain, so let's end this. But maybe, you know, a good way to kind of take us out is with a little bit of inspiration for that person who who still feels stuck or is in a rut or feels like they're settling in their lot in life. Like, how do we get that person to step outside of their reality? Look at it from a different perspective and and perhaps start walking a different path?

• 2:40:46Speaker 01

  So again, I can only go from my own perspective of reality and the journey that I've been on. I would say, open yourself up to new experiences, break old habits. I set myself this challenge every week. I like to experience something different. That's not doing something massive, it's doing tiny little things, interacting with a different human, going to a different place, just experiencing different things and being open minded to stuff and not so sort of blinkered onto one thing. And and sometimes in life, Rich, like it is hard, it is, but you can't give up. You've got to have belief. You've got to look at other people's lives and and and look at them and go, if they've been able to do that, I'm I'm able to also do it. It's it's not jealousy, it's not looking at other people and and thinking, oh, why have they got that?

• 2:41:29Speaker 01

  I having an open, positive mindset to things and people like, there's people that achieve things and and things that I don't really find interesting, but it motivates me. Because I think they're living what they want to do, they've achieved what they want to achieve. And and it it makes me realize that I'm also able to do what I want to do with my life. But just being open to to to to experiences and opportunities and knowing that, again, some people say it's quite morbid, but we're all on a clock and we haven't got that much time. So, I want to maximize every single day I've got on this planet by being as content as I can be in my existence. And that's what motivates me now. So I'd say to everyone, just remember, recapture self, when when things get a little bit hard

• 2:42:11Speaker 01

  about life, just remember, you're not going to be here forever and just make the most of the short time that you've got and act on stuff. Don't put stuff off to tomorrow, to next week, to the week after that, because those weeks might not ever come. And don't be that person at the end where the doctor might say, you've only got a couple of months left to live and you think I'm not done anything in my life.

• 2:42:30Rich Roll?

  Memento mori.

• 2:42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, memento mori.

• 2:42:32Rich Roll?

  Here we are. Boom, powerful John McAvoy. Thanks, man.

• 2:42:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:42:36Rich Roll?

  Beautiful, I appreciate it. Everybody should pick up his book, Redemption. You can get it on amazon.com in the US, too.

• 2:42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:44Rich Roll?

  Um, and Amazon UK if you're over here. And anywhere else you want to direct people, your Instagram, your Twitter, all that kind of stuff?

• 2:42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've got all that, I can, yeah.

• 2:42:52Rich Roll?

  It's, uh, John McAvoy two.

• 2:42:54Speaker 01

  Yes, it, for Twitter, yeah, you know that more than I do. I was, uh, and then Instagram is, I think it's John McAvoy eighty-three, no, Johnny Mac eighty-three.

• 2:43:02Rich Roll?

  Is it? I think I wrote it down here, let's make sure.

• 2:43:05Speaker 01

  I forgot.

• 2:43:05Rich Roll?

  I mean, we'll link it up, but it's, uh, yeah, Johnny Johnny with no H, J O N N Y Mac eighty-three. Why Johnny Mac eighty-three? It was available.

• 2:43:15Speaker 01

  I'm giving away my date of birth now.

• 2:43:19Rich Roll?

  All right, man. I appreciate it. I'm your biggest fan and I'm here to support you in any way that I can. I think your journey, in addition to just, you know, being inspiring and inspiring millions of people, it's really your commitment to service, your advocacy, your alignment of your actions with your values that really is so impressive. And I think that the impact that you're leaving will be felt for generations to come. So I just wish you well and win in your sales, my friend.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  Means a lot. Thank you.

• 2:43:48Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  Peace, mate.

• 2:43:49Rich Roll?

  Platts.

• 2:43:53Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a

• 2:44:35Rich Roll?

  review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson

• 2:45:18Rich Roll?

  Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiate. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace.

• 2:45:42Rich Roll?

  P'ants. Namaste.