Damian Hughes

So my dad was a boxing coach.

So I grew up surrounded by sort of these incredible physical specimens, guys that were going on to Olympic Games and, you know, boxing for world titles eventually.

So...

The message I took out of that environment, though, was it was about the power of education and being able to be a sponge, whether that was you were choosing to go after elite performance physically or, in my dad's case, he pushed me down the route of academia.

He realised that I wasn't particularly good at boxing, but he said that you can always go and learn

And it was very much that idea about being a sponge, not a rock.

This is one of the things that we've heard from so many of our guests, that there's almost two ways you can go and experience anything.

You can either go and be curious and sponge and seek to soak up as much information as you can, or you can be impervious to that information and just let it wash over you.

I sometimes think of...

There's a great book by a guy called Andrew Lou Goldham.

He was the Rolling Stones' first manager and he tells a story in the 60s.

He took Jimi Hendrix into a club in New York and there was a guitarist he went to see on there.

Andrew Lou Goldham said, this guy was dreadful.

It was obvious in the first couple of chords that this guy didn't know what he was doing.

And he said, come on, let's leave.

And Jimi Hendrix said, no, I'm staying.

And when he said, what on earth are you staying for?

He said, this guy is that bad.

He might do something by accident that is a spark of genius.

And I sometimes think of that example that even somebody as elite as Jimi Hendrix was open to learning from anybody that was putting themselves in the arena to do something with it.