S2E1: Sexuality and Sports with Matt Morton

hello and welcome to another episode of the happy to health podcast with myself dan hancock the mental health pt danny williams and ben lewis i absolutely love this episode it's potentially one of my favorites and you may look at the time and see that it is almost two hours long and boy it is a very very good two hours i was hooked the whole time and this podcast is with matt morton he's a good friend of all of ours he is the commercial director for amplify he's a semi-professional footballer and he is also one of the only footballers in the world out of only eight people to openly come out as gay and he tells us his story he shares some of his life lessons why she's so why he's so driven and all the amazing things that he wants to accomplish with his movement in the future so guys really hope that you enjoy this incredible episode hi guys dan here i'm super excited to announce that today's episode of the podcast is sponsored by the online therapy app mindler mindless makes accessing therapy easy as appointments are all carried out online via video calls with psychologists look guys we know how much the last couple years has impacted people's mental health and i feel having professional support as readily available and easily accessible as possible is so so so important so please anyone listen if you're struggling with your mental health or just need someone to talk to why not give mindler a go you can choose which psychologist you'd like to speak to see their bio photo any specialities all this type of important stuff before you book because it's massively important again to build a solid relationship with this individual so that trust is there mindler is offering all happy to have listeners one free session so just use the code happy to health that's h a p p y the number two h e a l t h and please go to mindler dot co dot uk to find out more i'm a big fan of matt's and everything that he does and everything that he stands for so i think it's absolutely incredible to be joined by him today matt thank you how are you getting on very much yeah good thank you yourself yes yeah mate guys we're all good all good happy birthday happy to be here and thanks for joining us matt my pleasure so matt um probably best way to get started tell everyone who's listening a little bit about you your background your journey through football and into the career that you have now yeah so uh i am the son of a premier league referee or ex-premier league referee so that was kind of my introduction into football when i was young massive football family mum's irish so she's a bit crazy she's a crazy fan and my dad is the opposite kind of old-school middle class english uh calm much more easygoing chap and that's probably why he's a referee like most of them never really played the game properly to anybody so decided to referee instead but in that he managed to excel if you can excel in refereeing i still say you can't but he would say that you can but yeah made it to made it to professional and fifa uh premier league referee mad united which is why i ended up supporting them it was the first professional ground that i ever went to well it was the second the first was scan thought but i wasn't gonna you haven't got a mention together i knew i thought would come up in this podcast at some point it always does just alienated all the stunt thought fans already so um but yeah so man united i supported from that point and then really ironically considering i was the youngest of the three children i was the first to support man united and then the whole family ended up supporting many united off the back of it so it was uh that's my little claim to fame there man united mortons and then grew up in uh barrister edmonds in suffolk so kind of between essex and cambridge and went to school at colford played rugby most of my childhood instead of football because it was a private school so i had this kind of passion and love for football my dad used to get to referee professionals every week i'd go to the grounds but i barely played it so um i got very good at rugby and played for the east of england and that was kind of the dumb thing in private school it was rugby hockey cricket rugby hockey cricket every year and i hated all three so i ended up joining a football club under 10's level so i started much later than pretty much everyone that plays football who start as soon as they're kind of two or three are able to walk and you could tell so under tens i was atrocious everyone every time that the ball would come back to me they put me at the back for obvious reasons don't want me on the ball at all just stop other people doing what you can't do perfect ball comes to me and then literally it was that bad for the first few months that people would run behind me before i even kicked it probably missed the ball did you go and run and rugby tackle them after that that genuinely didn't happen as well there was a lot of red cards in the early years but not a lot of talent so i got a lot better at the defensive side of the game and um i went kind of within 12 months from being the worst player to player of the season and i did that every year throughout youth football i think i think every year i won are the managers of players player of the year which for me at the time being young and being a rugby player and being bloody awful at the beginning was was a hell of an achievement but i ended up then quitting rugby leaving the private school and asking to go to state school which was a great decision and then just carried on with football i look back now and i regret probably not taking it to the next level so i had clubs come in like ipswich town for example at youth level and some of my friends were there at the academy and it just seemed like so much pressure and not a lot of fun yeah and you see the release rate and i've always probably been a bit older in my head than i am physically so i would always analyze things and make decisions based upon what you know what are the chances and the release rate was really high and people would end up being in an academy until they're kind of 16 and then just before their 16th birth they released and then their life's over and the world's ending and do you know what i really enjoy it i've gone from three sports that i hate playing them regardless of how good i was or not by the way awful at hockey put me in goal there as well actually but then it's kind of like i don't want to i don't want to do that with football i don't want to ruin the love so i just always wanted to play with my friends and and stay at the kind of level that i was at so i never really took any of the opportunities that were in front of me and you think that you know with my dad and the connections that he had in professional football and the improvement that i made that i could have probably tried a bit harder or taken some of those opportunities but you know i was a kid and i was enjoying myself and i look back now and i don't really have any regrets but there's kind of what-ifs but but not regret so i ended up playing semi-pro football and a few of my friends played that level as well and i took it more seriously the older that i got and ended up running a sunday league side called jim united as well as playing semi-pro on a saturday and that ended up like with anything that i do becoming a bit of an obsession so we didn't just want to create a sunday side we wanted to break all of the records of that sunday league we wanted to have more than anyone had ever done and then we wanted to win the national fa cup on a sunday as well and it took us eight years to get to the final of that competition but we got all the way to the final oh wow at sheffield united and we played some incredible sides and ironically because people slag off sunday football but at a certain level it's actually a very very high standard and that competition we beat teams on a sunday that were better than teams that we were playing on a saturday right it was it was just amazing and but a lot of it was to do with team spirit and because that was like a group of brothers really that football club you would literally die on the football pitch to win a game because you didn't want to let anyone else down it was kind of everyone was brought into that journey and i guess that's a really important part of football that psychological element to it yep and if being a united fan i relate that to the current side i was just about to say as a fellow united fan it's almost the missing well the missing ingredient right now is that cohesion and you watch them and you think they don't even really you're not playing for each other they're not brothers they won't die on the pitch for each other yeah and it's amazing when you do have that you can have a very very average side you do very very well yeah not only using every side i'm sure he was a great side i'm talking that's what you get four choice of words if you look at other premier league teams for example you know that might over achieve and i'd say a huge part of that over achievement will come from the camaraderie the team bonding the wanting to down the pitch for each other it's a massive passport did you em on that note about sunday football did you hear in the news about roberto carlos no did you hear that oh about joining us roberto carlos has put himself up for sale on ebay on gumtree so and he's put it up to an offer for it's like a bid i think for sunday league teams to to go and potentially buy him for a game so that basically there'll be a sunday league team going off and playing and you know the pissing down reign being able to say that they've got the best left back ever i read about this online i thought that can't be true but i think it actually is true i love that is it for charity or is it just terrific it must be raising money for something that's amazing yes it's for charlie if it's not he's fallen on hard times never looked back after the free kick against france so you mentioned there matt about the kind of the pressure and this is something that we actually talk about quite a lot when it comes to performance pressure and sport and you know ah it's a fine balance isn't it because we need that don't we we obviously need that pressure to perform um when we talk about so for example like michael jordan and you know the chicago bulls it came out now that all his teammates basically hated him because he was so hard on them right but they they also came out and said they would never be the athletes no they would never be you know like the scottie pippens they would never be the second and third best basketballers ever if it wasn't for him my only concern is the age and the level that this then starts to creep into sport whether it's grassroots or you know from early doors so i guess the question would be how important is pressure for you in order to perform but also what's your opinion on sort of that level of pressure that comes into sport and the age that it does you know when it comes from like the parents and the clubs because that's going to be one of the reasons that you know actually increases performance anxiety as opposed to getting rid of it and a lot of people will drop off from our earlier age it's a good question i think the problem with the answer is that like with anything in life you can't put a blanket approach on this so everyone's different and one of the skills one of the major skills in business in football is understanding how to motivate and what's going to get a reaction out of your staff or your players or your team and one of the best of all time is alex ferguson right so with this side of the table we're definitely going to agree on that i'm not sure about that side but ben's an abbott didn't find it right a lot of people would have alex ferguson as the best manager coach of all time but tactically i would probably say having not been in the dressing rooms that if you look at mourinho pep they're above ferguson tactically because they're geniuses of what they do and the attention to detail is incredible but coaching and management is about a lot more than tactics it's about what you can get out of what's what you've got in your dressing room and leading is a massive part of that and there were a couple of people in that dressing room at for a long period of that time that could get the most out of every single player and alex ferguson i think would know who to put an arm around yeah and who to kick a boot at i was just and you might not always get it right but 99 of the time he did that and then his lieutenant was roy keane who going back to your michael jordan analogy yes he would have demanded the best out of every single person in that dressing room and not always probably in the right way or a way that is going to make people love him but it will always make people respect him and most of the time it will get the most out of that player or that team because the other thing that goes through your mind and those split second decisions is not just can i be asked to track that man it's what's going to happen if i don't and there's a consequence to that and it's either being called out or i can swear on this right yes or pinned up against the ward in addressing that i'm not saying that that's right but knowing what person to do that to and what person to put an arm around so darren fletcher's got a famous quote that came off the back of roy keane's exodus from man united which was he was absolutely amazing for me because you highlight he's lost it he's had a go at this person he's throttled that person he's threatened this person but if you add up all the moments in a day you consider how many how many hours they spent training playing in a group together he said 99 times out of a hundred he'd be having his arm around me telling me look you could do this better you could do that better this is brilliant you're amazing at this so 99 of it was positive but yeah of course every so often he's going to go in on you and that kept him on his toes and wanting to because you almost crave the compliments from keane or ferguson at that point so it wasn't all bollockings and attacks it was the right balance yeah i think you just the media want to have this reputation this snarling crazy irishman you can see even now that he's got a great personality he's got a great sense of humor there's more to him than just the psycho and i've been portrayed that way even our little level before because i'm short-tempered and i'm very animated on the football pitch and particularly with opponents and if people aren't pulling their way but that's 90 minutes on a football game in a competitive environment but i'm not like that in the dressing room or in the bar or none of you guys have ever seen that trying to think um so those skills that you've learned from sport those skills that you've like what i'm going to do is i'm obviously i'm going to treat it as sport but i'm also maybe going to treat this as exercise and physical activity in general would you say that um those skills that you've learned in that environment is why that you've got to where you are from a business standpoint as well from a career standpoint outside of sport yeah definitely i think that sport and how i've approached it and the influences on my life either consciously or subconsciously have definitely affected my business life as well without a shadow of a doubt so i don't think you can help but be influenced by people like that whether it's just from an observational perspective or people directly in your life so my dad's had a massive influence on my personality and so is my mum some nature and some nurture so i mentioned earlier that my mum is a very short-tempered lovely woman by the way but she has a moment and she was very very much stick growing up and if you did something wrong you know i've been chased around the house i was chased around the garden uh in front of a gardener with a ruler because i didn't eat my breakfast and like this type of stuff was my upbringing but at the same time she was very protective she was like a lioness and you knew she had your back but you want to be careful because if you don't toe the line or do the things that you're told to do there's a respect level there as well yeah whereas my dad was so easygoing and you know he's the type of guy that your mum said you can't have sweets and yes your mother's right you can't have sweets and then in the hall slippery some sweets until your mum behave yourself but he was a very very dedicated focused hard-working businessman and as well as being a referee i've never met anyone that works harder but with the right balance so he always had time for the family he always made sure that the family came first but he came from a very poor background so he was he was brought up in whis beach in the finlands but he moved there very early he was born in newcastle moved down and his dad was in the army his mum was a secretary and a journalist but on very low incomes so he what he decided that he wanted to make a life for his family that was different to the one that he had growing up if he could so he went to london he spent 26 27 years commuting from where we were every morning and coming home every evening but he didn't want to raise a family in london so we were embarrassing edmonds which was for him probably a 90-minute door-to-door journey every morning and a 90-minute journey back every evening because he wanted to make sure he was back for dinner time put the kids to bed he wanted us to grow up in a kind of rural-ish suburbi environment um and go to good school so he wanted to earn a certain amount of money he wanted to take us on nice holidays he wanted us to live in a nice house all those things that he didn't have but we were never spoiled so some things i never had as a child are quite important to me now they shouldn't be but you know honestly they are so nice clothes designer labels all of that type of stuff i just like that because being able to do that makes me feel good and i like to look good but growing up i never had any of that we could have afforded it he could have easily done that we also never got driven around in lamborghinis it was nice cars he could have afforded those but it was always mercedes and because he wanted to keep us grounded and he wanted to make sure that we had the same desire that he had to be successful in our own right yeah so um we've never had big sums of money given to us we've never had deposits for houses we've all had to do everything on our own and all three of us to be fair have actually gone and done that but i don't think we would have done had we not had that start in life and that grounding from him and also from my mum's perspective showing because her background was even worse than here she grew up in ira times in northern ireland and came over here at 18 but before that it was kind of check under your hood in the car you know before you turn the engine on and all that type of stuff in northern ireland and you hear these stories and her whole family ended up coming over and she's one of seven two brothers five sisters i think and it's a big family um irish short tempered working class but the third or fourth time mentioned it's because if i say it about her that i can feel better about my [ __ ] yeah yeah it's all her fault but i think the combination if he had to had two of my mum in the same house my dad was the same it wouldn't have worked so well if he hadn't had two my dad maybe not so well either but that combination i think gave us i'd like to think the best of both worlds in terms of the balance yeah so you know you know how to stick up for yourself and what's right and wrong but at the same time you've got compassion and empathy and you can understand why you would do things for other people so all three of us have always been um very compassionate very empathetic and always looking to see what good you can do regardless of how successful you are or are not so yeah that's fascinating um just bring it back to your parents again and kind of your childhood as well so obviously you've as you've spoken that your parents have massively influenced and shaped who you are um i was interested when you kind of spoke about your childhood and playing football and then the point where you decided i don't want to ruin the sport kind of thing i want to bring it back to that sex i think it's really really well i find it fascinating and i was interested to know kind of did your parents kind of influence that decision to step back from it or to keep pushing with football or was it anything did anything kind of make you think oh i need to keep playing because my dad's heavily into football or was it very much your own decision to kind of you know the course you took was that kind of your decision or was it more influenced by your parents is kind of where i'm getting it it's an interesting question because i look back at it now and i can't think of any time that there was any pressure from my parents in anything in sport it was always do what you want to do do what you enjoy even the decisions i don't want to play rugby anymore like a lot of parents would be like you pay for the east of england you're only 14. yeah why are you giving that up you're crazy you're going to keep doing it you're going to keep doing it never it was like okay if you don't play rugby don't play rugby but that school does rugby oh i want to leave the school then okay let's go to this school you can play football no problem and even with his background in football he was never on the sideline shouting like me if i had a chart i don't but if i had a child i would have to try my hardest to be on the sideline like this i think i'd be quite similar as well because you ate you're passionate and b you want your kid to be the best that they can be but sometimes you have to let them feel free to make those mistakes and not feel that you're doing or they're doing something because of you yeah and if i was hollering on the sideline at my kid they would probably think god he really wants me to be good i've got to be good i've got to be good but the more important thing is do they want to be good so he he had this great balance of my mom never came to games because the irony here this is the fourth time i've mentioned about her empire that she was actually a bit ashamed of when i was growing up my temper on the football pitch because it was a lot worse and it wouldn't take much like an opponent did something to one of my teammates and i'd lose it and she didn't want to see that because at the same time she's also a good christian lady so she doesn't want to see any of that no my children shouldn't be fighting and screaming that's for me [Laughter] whereas my dad he would rather come and watch it observe it and then lecture me about it afterwards and tell me why i shouldn't do it and why the ref was right because of course they always are right um we see a ref at the time he was as well all the time while she was playing football yeah yeah yeah so the good thing is he used to ref mainly mid-weeks and saturdays and at youth level our games were always on a sunday so he could do all of it so it's another day for him to get out the house which infuriated my mum but he loved it and oh it's the kid you know i've got to support the kid so he was secretly absolutely buzzing that i chose football because he doesn't really watch all the other sports too much anyway so football's his thing so when i decided to do that he was like whatever you want son and then come all the time but he there was never any pressure but i did hide something from him when i was young so when ipswich wrote from the academy they sent a letter and they said letters to the house address to me and i opened it i didn't really get much post at that age and it was it was from a guy called malcolm i can't remember his name malcolm something from ipswich town academy inviting me to go down they've watched a few of my games and they were interested in me signing for the academy and i hid it from him so i declined tore it up got rid of the letter and never told him until later in life and the reason the reason was because although he never pressured me i think he would have been disappointed had i not have pursued that if he knew about it so i thought he's better of just not knowing because i don't want to do it do you still do you still believe that would have been the case like today or if you think retrospectively no i think you'd have been fine yeah but at the time at the time he was a bit worried this might change he's interested actually so just wow yeah that's amazing just looking for that i said well suppose but that's what you do it that's what you do at that age isn't it how old would you when that happens sorry 15 15. it's quite a it's quite a bold decision though like not as in like to say it's not normal like it totally is i'm just saying like i think a lot of people might have not i mean it depends whether you look at his head strong or reckless but i don't think a lot of people maybe would have actually maybe had the awareness or the emotional intelligence to make such a big decision they probably would have just jumped at it yeah because like we even learned that in like business you know like sometimes i'm like right yeah let's go first thing ben's like right come on i think that's actually incredible like at that age to actually be really making your own decision and not just jumping out and having other people influence it for you i've always had this thing again i'm sure it's influenced by my parents again but i've always had this idea of what i wanted to do even if that's changed and it obviously hasn't a number of times but at that time i've always been clear in my mind and i've always stuck to that and very rarely have i been swayed even if i talk about it so i knew at the time i'm not going to do this regardless of what anyone says i'm not going to do it because i didn't want to do it i wanted to play with my friends i didn't want to be taken from an environment that i enjoyed around the people that i cared about to then go to ipswich and potentially get released in a year anyway with people that i didn't know and i also believe it or not i was quite different then to how i am now as a kid i probably wasn't i was very outgoing when i knew people i was exactly as i am now in a room full of people that i know but in environments where i didn't know people i wasn't the same person it would take me a bit of time so i'd be a bit more closed off and observe a little bit before i came out of my shell and you go from being the quietest in the the room to then after you know everyone the loudest in the room and that was always my thing one to the other whereas now i just go straight in and i've arrived yeah so i i think that that probably was part of it as well because i didn't want to almost start again i'll go make new friends and then be the quietest and then the loudest and then you know am i going to like it are they going to like me and there's probably an element of that looking back in it as well that wasn't my thought process at the time but now looking back i think it probably was influenced by that because i was comfortable there i was happy there yeah and if you also think i'm actually now thinking while we're talking about it going back to the point about i was really really [ __ ] at under tens and then within a year i got myself from being the worst player to the best player did i then want to go from being the best the big fish in the small pond now to the professional pond and be maybe the worst again yeah that's true and i think all the pressure that that brings with it as well yeah exactly and again that's me thinking now 20 years later was that the case it probably was something to do with it even though that wasn't a conscious thought process at the time [Music] when um getting onto you and personal life a little bit then matt so obviously um i touched on at the start there and me and you have chatted about this as well one to one as well um that the fact that um you know there's only eight or nine footballers in the world one recently actually had to add to that list um who have openly came out as gay um is it's almost it's astonishing in it yeah ridiculous that this conversation is having to take place but it's incredibly important that it's um that's going to take place and it's amazing that you've every single thing that you do to to a campaign for this equality and you know going back to the start i guess tell us a little bit about when you um first release this information some of the thoughts that were going through your head this internal battle that was going on the internal narrative tell us a little bit about that because i'd really love to get into that and just you really sort of talk about like the stereotypes and discrimination everything that goes hand in hand with it as well you know i can talk how far back you want me to go in this journey because there's a backstory to it let's have the back story i mean i know it pass it back a little bit then and get comfortable i think i think it's important to get some context here because i'd really like to delve into talking about identity and that type of stuff as well afterwards so let's just so i have a very very strange unique story when it comes to this because a lot of people not everybody but a lot of people either know from as long as they can remember that they're gay and then accept it embrace it and they're out forever almost the majority in men realize early hide it deny it suppress it and then eventually come out another group realize hide it forever and then you have people like me who and again i've not heard anyone else with this story so i'm sure i'm not completely unique don't realize until very very later in life so very very late i was 30. but i didn't realize now i always knew that kind of relationships weren't really for me but i didn't know why so i spent a lot of my youth um successful was the right word but being relatively successful at pulling [Music] but not particularly knowing why i was doing it because it wasn't something a lot of a lot of my friends now i understand by the way which i'll get on to but a lot of my friends were you go out on a thursday friday saturday back then um you know obviously the legal age um definitely not from 16. and they're they're just shocked you said thursday friday and saturday how did you manage that well i could not do that how old are you now 24. exactly so i'm 35 i can't even manage a saturday only three weeks off but back then it was kind of it was constant and all of my mate not all of them that's a bit harsh but most of my mates were kind of yeah lads and the number one goal was pulling someone yeah i'm gonna get hold of someone tonight and it's just like i mean i even look back on that language now and i think oh god but for me it was like yeah can't we just have a good time play a bit pull darts get a bit pissed have a bit banter like if it happens it happens that was that was my attitude and sober i was never really bothered and then as you get more and more drunk and then you're on a dance floor and something happens that's you know that would happen but then i would always panic like the next day i was like god someone's in my bed or i'm in there it's always like i've got to get out here or they've got to get out here and and that sounds awful and i didn't necessarily know why because i wasn't you know that stereotype of a player or someone that just wanted to have a shag and then move on and it was just something that happened every by the way it wasn't every thursday friday saturday that wasn't it wasn't a [ __ ] but every every ever successful every sunday too it was it was it was every so often it was more than it probably should have been knowing that i was gay now but um [Music] it was just not something that i was really that motivated for so it was take it or leave it now i wasn't like repulsed by or anything like that like you talk to some gay men now and it's like oh god how did you do it like well it it was just what i did but now i look back knowing what i know and i think that's that's the reason but at the time there was every other excuse it was just oh no it's just because i'm so busy with work and friends and football and family and i just can't fit a girlfriend in and that's why i'm not a commitment person but if you look at every other aspect of my life work friends family you couldn't be more committed like it was the the level of passion and affection and desire and aptitude all of that was just to the extreme as i've said before i i can become very focused on the things that i care about and dismiss anything else but in that area which for a lot of people was kind of the number one goal meet someone fall in love get married have kids etc for me it was just i've got that all of that she's like no not at all and i always put it down to being more committed to the other things than not having time but looking back that was an excuse now i don't know i'm kind of i'm now in the in the mindset that it was just subconsciously um buried within me because i'm a firm believer that you you don't become gay it's genetic it's it's chemical you either are you are so i was all of those years and i have been all my life but talking about those influences in your life my environment was never one that would have made you accept or be conscious that you were gay because i had an old school upbringing my dad is very old school in that way in that sense it's not something that he's ever been around my mom christian very religious and it's just it's always been wrong and against god's law and you know everything else so that combined with homophobia that happens on telly in the media or in football which was my big thing it was just something that i think i experienced all of that and didn't allow myself to then think about the real reason why i wasn't embracing women at that time why i didn't want to have a relationship why i didn't commit to anybody well i wasn't bothered about pulling why it would just happen when i was drunk and then i'd panic afterwards about becoming something more serious but now you look back at all of that and you think that's definitely why and that's one of the reasons why i'm doing what i'm doing now because there are so many people that either won't realize or won't allow themselves to realize like me because of all of their environment or worse and i've had thousands and thousands of messages and conversations with people in the last 18 months or so since i came out publicly because people struggle with this people that have no i've had people say i've known since i was a kid but i don't dare tell anyone and they're like 30 now and you're like i can't imagine that that's all what i can say if i had realized if i was conscious of this at any age i would have come out i'm actually quite glad that i didn't in and i'll explain why in a second but if i was i would have come out because that's just my character i don't i'm not scared of stuff i don't hide stuff i don't sugarcoat stuff like me hate me whatever but this is me and if you're going to hate me it's going to be because you're hating the real me not because there's a version of me that i'm presenting that you don't like and that's why i've done what i've done now now it did take me 18 months before coming out from when i realized but i think that was because my personality was already established my friendship group was was very established my career was established my football was established everybody who knew me knew me and i thought [ __ ] this is a lot for me to get my head around let alone anybody else and then the stereotypes come in you think am i because even i like it's just like well you had a stereotype in your mind of what a gay man was slightly flamboyant feminine maybe weaker all completely wrong so i'm sitting there thinking well hang on a minute i can bench quite a lot i'm pretty competitive no definitely not gay you know i'm competitive i am the roy king of our football team one he can't be gay can he no chance no no so you process that in your head and then you think what's everyone else going to think and the reaction that i got when i came out reinforced how bad these stereotypes are because a lot of people were very surprised only a handful of people like i did suspect and they were like cousins and their logic was you never brought a girl back to the family you never really brought girls to big family events or weddings or whatever else you always kind of came on your own or with a friend or whatever and that was their reason for thinking well there's there's got to be some reason here so i said i wish you could have told me 10 years ago but a lot of other people who maybe know me more through football or through business or whatever i was like really well oh i wouldn't have thought that and some of the comments around why they were surprised oh yeah but you don't come across gay well what does that mean yeah what is what is what is it yeah it's um it's a i'm i'm honestly i'm fascinated by the subject because me and ben have chatted about this about this quite a lot and when just to relate slightly to you when i was growing up ben knows a lot more about this and you know when i was growing up it was a similar type thing you know out every single weekend thursday friday saturday maybe a sunday as well that was a similar type thing and i know the reason that i was doing that was because i've always acted a little bit feminine i was very you know skinny um all my mates were like a wee bit bigger and when i grew up i had a little bit of like a posture accent at my school because of my parents so then i oh so you weren't scottish then [Laughter] my dad was born born in newcastle okay yeah my mom was born in mississippi my brother was born in zimbabwe but that's we don't have time for that just now so um i i was so probably insecure about myself and unaware of my own identity that at school because i spoke posher than everyone else i put on a posh accent at school and spoke like that for about five years more than five years because i was so scared of being slagged or picked on i thought well i'm gonna be a joke i'll make a laugh and i'll just i'll kind of play on this little bit and um so when i was then going like through my teens and and and then through my my early 20s as well it was very very similar thing and then i looked back on it afterwards i was like well why was i doing that and it was it was it was just it was just to prove a point but the point i want to make on that is like what you said like what like what is like what is what does it mean to be gay what what how does it even come across because i've even had to have conversations with amy my partner when we first got together and just say by the way like i act a bit feminine like i can act a bit camp sometimes i'm not gay by the way but just like just to let you know and i feel as if that's something no one should ever have to justify we should never have to say that what because sometimes i will act like that in that scenario does that mean i'm good no it's just i'm just me you know what i mean and i feel as if like that can then lead to a lot of confusion with people as well and for me it's something that i've never actually you know questioned like deeper you know i've also been very confident and aware of my um of my sexuality of being straight but then it does make you think then why do i'm act like this it's like because you're just a unique person you're unique a unique human being and that doesn't sexuality i feel as if shouldn't always get brought into this i think that can lead to young people getting confused you know even more it's a real problem and and one of the things that stems back to is everyone wants to put people in a box that psychologically fits for them so oh what are you and where are you from and what what sex are you what sexuality are you what type of person are you and it the little triggers for that like so i've just talked about some of the comments that i had about why people were surprised but then i've had people that said they were surprised then a few weeks later say to me thinking i should have known because and by the way for context before i tell you what they said you're not the only one that's uh been a fitness model back in the day here we go this is the competitive side yeah i used to be just as handsome as danny but back in the day i used to do some fitness modelling and in those times you used to shave your legs and and all sorts and i was on exhibition stands and whatever else so i got into the habit because you've probably never done it however although it's me stereotyping you might you might if you don't if you do it and then you don't do it and then you do it and then you don't do it you can get skin bumps and all of this type of stuff because your legs aren't used to it so i just used to always do it because even if i was only going to do two or three shoots a year i didn't want to then just shake just for that and then have that problem so i just went through a 10-year period i just always shaved my legs regularly and you get a better ten on holiday um no you do it um but this person said it always stick with me this person said to me a few weeks after they said how surprised they were because i alpha male r which of course you can't be gay if you are then said i should have known i should have known you shave your legs and i was just like yeah yeah i'll mention his name because no one knows his surname yeah rob yeah because that is a definite gay sign isn't it that's one of the first ones on the list and he was just like yeah that's when you realized exactly when you realized and it's but little things like that it's funny we laugh about it but it's just about saying we can laugh about it but actually when you deep it it's it's a real issue is it people can think oh i should have known because of a physical behavior you displayed once can have some kind of relationship with your sexuality is it's not related at all exactly and i know times change and it's different for different people but some other people have said things oh yeah you are very vain and you've always cared about how you look oh so anyone that cares about how they look must be gay not just insecure or putting on a front or just has pride in their appearance or wants to dress a certain way for a certain event or character type or whatever none of those things just because yeah if you're a man and you care about how you look you must be gay or at least on that scale well everyone's on the scale by the way just so everyone knows this is again an opinion but i had this conversation with my assistant manager recently so john taylor cambridge united x pro uh is still their all-time top goal scorer played up front with dion dublin before dion got his move to man united he's my assistant manager now at thetford unbelievable coach great guy but very very old school so all of this is quite he by the way he's very embracing of it all but he wants to learn and he's this other character so it's a better generational thing but yes he's wanting to yeah exactly so he asks me loads of questions all the time and like he'll think of something like question for you and he'll always start with don't take any offense to this but [Laughter] he said to me um and i'm going to take as a compliment i'm definitely repeating it because it is one so he said to me look i look at some people and i think some people stand out as having something a bit different about them or being you know very attractive or when they walk into a room you kind of notice and they've got presence about them and by the way these are his words not mine but he said like people like you david beckham well yeah we're very similar very very very similar um but yeah he he said that so if i look at you and um think they're good looking what does that mean because i'm definitely not gay and i said that's all right you don't need to prove yourself to me and but you know what what does that mean i said well look in my opinion it's like it's like anything there is a there is a spectrum and it can go from zero to a hundred but most people are somewhere between one and ninety nine so if you take me for example i've slept with girls i've been with girls and i wasn't repulsed by it so i very much doubt i'm a hundred percent over here but what i do know is that i'm much more attracted to the guys that i've been with than the girls that i was with and therefore i am gay not by because i could be with a girl but it would be a bit force and i wouldn't really want to be and it's not the same feeling but i'm not repulsed by it whereas i know a lot of gay guys that are like oh god no no definitely not so they are much further up that end here and i know guys that are like repulsed by the fact that they'll be with a guy but might think a guy's good looking well even if you think a guy's good looking you could you can acknowledge someone being attractive right and that's where he was so he might be one percent he's 99 straight and then that one percent can acknowledge that someone's good looking and then you get people that can't refuse to even acknowledge someone's good looking because it might mean that someone might suspect [Music] now you can be on that spectrum somewhere and be straight or gay but not want to be with someone of the other sex so i think that the more people kind of understand that and it's the same with a lot of social diseases as well so autism there's a spectrum as well it's it's you're not 100 autistic or not at all there can be parts to that where you've got certain tendencies or you've got certain things that make you anxious or uncomfortable or awkward and i think that the more education there is around all of these subjects for people whether it's sexuality gender race social diseases whatever it is that people need to have a greater understanding so that there's less judgment and criticism and because there's awkwardness the other way people can be normal people i say normal people even that's offensive but can be awkward around autistic people because they don't know how to handle that but if they were aware of what that meant and how to make somebody more comfortable and make yourself more comfortable then you would normally be more comfortable as well so i think that education is a massive part and you mentioned before eight or nine people are openly gay in football i mean the situation for me was really alarming when i first came out and sky sports there's a guy who is a friend of mine now a guy called john holmes and he's one of the senior editors at sky sports and he read my story i don't know how he got hold of it it was in local media when i first came out because as soon as i made that decision i got contacted by put it on instagram got contacted by local media they want to do an interview and then john happened to come across it phone me and say listen i'm from sky sports would you be prepared to go national so i don't see why not but why is it national news and he explained i was the height and still am the highest level playing football player openly gay in the uk and i am eight years down from the premier league wow so i play step five it would take eight promotions for us to get to the premier league now i'll be dead by then and i am the highest player in this country the home of football to be openly gay and actively playing that's ridiculous and it's not because nobody else is gay it's because of the consequences that those players feel are there by coming out so they're all they're all hiding that and they're hiding it from their teammates they're hiding that from their families probably their friends the fans opponents media and they're doing it for a reason i'm not saying they're wrong to do it everyone has to make their own decision but what i'm striving for is that we can collectively create an environment where they don't feel that they have to do that where their choice becomes less of a hard decision and they can embrace that and there's so many things that go on obviously there's so many factors opposition fans i was worried about that to a point not because i'm bothered about what they think they call me anything anyway i've been called law sorts by opponents and fans but it was something that i thought will they use that to get me sent off because i am a target for that i've always been a target for that and i've got better as i've got older but the irony is it might and you can only talk about your own experience before i came out i was called gay and had abusive things both from opponents and opponent vans so i haven't always had blonde hair but if i've dyed my hair before you i'll use them on here but obviously this is just for context but you [ __ ] you puff oh gay boy even because they thought i wasn't but they thought it would wind me up and get under my skin because i care about how i look or i've done my hair or i've got tattoos or whatever else um and i used to have a lot of sunbeds so whenever and i don't know for health reasons but if because i always had a tan people would then assume oh you're gay because you have sunbeds so you get abused for that anyway since i came out no opponent and no opponent fan has ever said anything about sexuality wow ever because they're conscious of it now because they know whilst it's semi-pro it's it's it's in our league people know players especially when you've been in that league a while so before when they didn't think i was they'd abuse me homophobically to to gain an advantage to get me sent off to get a reaction and then have and have their team have 11v10 or to throw me off my game either way now whilst i might get called a c next tuesday or a wanker or whatever else no one's called me gay per [ __ ] bender any of that stuff and i don't know whether it's because it could be two reasons right it could be because of [ __ ] he actually is and he will go mad if i do or i'll do it he'll do the kanye west yeah yeah exactly but i think it's actually because because there's a risk of that anyway right it's actually because they're not bad people generally and they realize that's very wrong and it you'll look an absolute [ __ ] if you do that it's like being racist right if someone came and racially abused you on a football pitch i very much doubt even their own teammates will stand by them they'll be like what the [ __ ] are you doing you [ __ ] you're the [ __ ] it's almost always like a small section of a fan that's in the corner somewhere that thinks they can get away with it yeah people won't openly abuse so you know publicly like that generally because there's a good people going to think well what dick yeah exactly it doesn't really happen like that exactly um just touching on what you said a second ago about the kind of consequences and obviously talking about the fear of people potentially you know opponents abusing you in the game and when it came to the reality of it actually didn't happen um how real are some of the consequences that you think footballers are facing when coming out as gay so obviously you know you're the eighth league down there's plenty more gay footballers out there most probably in the premier league in the highest division that aren't gay that aren't publicly gay sorry um how kind of real are some of the consequences that they're facing and what are the barriers that you think they're kind of going through mentally that's stopping them being public about it first of all you know as you said before how we're all friends and he just took that dig yet the eighth tier down honestly who needs enemies sorry um yeah there are a lot of better gay footballers than you really man that's not how i um i started that it depends because you make a good point the higher you go all of that's amplified no pun intended um so if you're a premier league player and there will be gay players in the premier league that clearly aren't comfortable telling anyone if at my level there's 500 people in a football stadium and a couple of them decide to be homophobic or racist you know who they are because there's only 500 people and they're all spread around the ground they're probably standing up and they're going to have someone either with a community it's more of a community if you've got 30 50 80 000 people you can you can be hidden and it's and it's less likely that someone's going to either call you out or that they'll spot you anyway i mean we've all been of big football grounds we've heard something you thought i said that but you can't really unless they carry on while you're watching they can't really see so i think that because football fans feel they can hide in bigger stadiums a bit like people on twitter and social media now you hide behind a keyboard and you can hide your identity and you can say whatever you want whether you think it mean it or not and i think that's a little bit like that but to a lesser degree in a big environment in a football stadium so i think the the fear that people have of opposition fans abusing them if they came out is greater than it is even at my level definitely i've always argued though if it does happen in a bigger ground it's less likely to affect you because if it happens in my ground i probably know who said it so i'm either going to be looking for you or having an exchange with you or the crowd's going to kick off but i know where it's come from and it's probably someone that i know unless it's an opposition fan but it's more personal so to me that would be worse than if one person two people say in amongst 40 000 people and i might not be able to hear them over the other chance anyway so the definite real concern for people i'm not taking that away but they're going to abuse you for something anyway yeah very true and i mean wayne rooney spent 10 years getting called fat by opposition fans every game fast granny shagger everything else i mean one of them was true he was never fat but he was a great athlete but people are still going to say things whether they're true or whether they're not i mean you really look at wayne rooney and you know as a gay man he's not the most attractive person in the world for me but he's not fat he was an elite level athlete he was quick he was strong he was one of the most incredible strikers at the premier league scene yet people are still probably three times his body fat percentage if not more from a stand calling him fat yeah so it's just irony so you if you're in that environment anyway you are going to get abuse at some point especially if you're good the better you are the more likely that an opposition fan is going to call you something or say something so it could be for anything if it's not because of your sexuality they're probably going to say something about your mum your sister your wife your brother whatever i mean even if you're not gay you're going to get gay abuse um what was the liverpool knowledge game where they were willie gilmore yeah they were singing about him being a rent boy so you got to get it anyway so for me i would look at that as an opportunity rather than a problem and it's going to take a certain personality type it you know it has to it's going to be from a leader it's going to be for someone that wants to make a difference so you know jordan henderson a roy keane or wayne rooney someone like that who their shoulders are broad enough to almost take something forward and say you know what i'm gonna set the trend here and i don't like justin fashion who did it years ago yes yeah and he was incredibly brave i mean he was already in an era where there was a very racist uh football following in the uk so he was a black guy growing up in norwich which at the time was a rarity in itself and then later after getting racially abused from the terrorists said oh yeah by the way i'm gay as well and got that too but i think i would bet somewhere in that philosophy was well they're already abusing me so if it's not for the color of my skin it might as well be for my sexuality and he so he was incredibly brave but he was the only one i think now we're in a very different environment it's much more accepting and you'll get much more support back then i don't think many people would have stuck up for him against a racist or homophobic mob i think that the good guys tend to stay quiet now we've got more of an activist community i think so actually the the bad guys and you look at social media there's always comments and racists and homophobes and whatever but for every one of them there's 10 20 people that come on and say you're evil you're wrong you're ignorant you're stupid and they're on them and i think now that's the same in a public environment so now is a much better time than unfortunately for justin it was back then yeah so yeah but then on that note as well so we we had a conversation i think it was it was quite a few months ago and i can't apologize if i'm saying this wrong but something to rio ferdinand had came down i think it was his agent or another agent that he knew had basically encouraged another player to cover up um coming out as gay have i got that right i think so yeah so rio spoke in parliament about a historic player yeah who by the way has subsequently come out so he was talking about thomas hitzel burger right and hitzel burger obviously didn't come out while he was playing in the premier league but after he retired then came out as openly gay a bit like thomas beatty has done ex-hole player but none of them felt comfortable to do it while they were actively playing they always had a plan to wait until they'd retired and then they weren't going to be subject to either commercial issues through brands and endorsements or through the boardroom or the dressing room environment or the stands like thomas bc always spoke about how the dressing room was the one that he fit probably the most even though he deep down you everyone would be okay so there's different reasons but when rio was speaking in parliament he didn't want to give the name and if you look at that clip even though thomas had always already come out the person didn't know who rio was talking about so they're there to talk about discrimination and as soon as rio said that he spoke to a player and the player's agent at the time advised him not to come out yeah the guy who is in parliament didn't want to talk about the subject anymore it was just straight on to the who was it can you tell us who it was no that's the most irrelevant part of the whole story yeah the story is is the whole point not who he assumed it was a player that we didn't know was gay so it was going to be another outing and wanted to get to the who yeah it's not the who it's the why but that reaction is exactly the problem with society at the moment because we're all chasing this premier league footballer to come out and say they're gay there's silhouettes on the front of the sun all the time and and that's encouraged by certain um certain organizations but what do we lead what do we gain from that we just everyone just the whole country guessing who is it who is it and then speculating and then players have to put up with oh it's him it's him i've had people mention to me it's quite funny i'll tell you this story as well so um everyone assumes gay people have a gay doll if they do i don't have it it doesn't exist i mean it took me 31 years to realize i was bloody gay it was absolutely broken yeah yeah but we were watching the england um it was at the columbia game in the euro no it wouldn't be colombia who were we playing where we won five five nil uh ukraine was it ukraine was in the european union in the world cup in the uk yeah it was ukraine was that the watch england games let's say it was because i can't remember so we'll go with that we'll go with that yeah was it we absolutely watched them we just didn't touch the ball yeah coming from the scotland from the scottish boy you're sure you're not england well we didn't wipe so yeah so we're watching that game and i was in um the goat in chelsea with a few friends and uh everyone's obviously in party mode and and a bit relaxed because the scoreline and how the game was going and one of my own friends said to me after a couple of drinks do you uh do you think any of them are gay as an england players well i don't know we're not we're not all like in a whatsapp group um and he was like no but you you can like you can tell you're like a whisperer exactly yeah one sec i'm getting vibes [Laughter] it's funny because it does come back to the stereotype so i i said i don't know why look because there's two players in that team that i'm convinced to gay and i just wondered if you thought they were as well because you probably know i would probably know okay um i probably wouldn't but all right i can guess the ones that you're talking about though go on then and like the two players i got them right i knew who he was talking about in that team and it's because of things that have nothing to do with their sexuality and so okay i'll tell you who they are raheem sterling phil foden smaller skinnier very agile raheem runs a bit like this when he runs i think it's more like a raptor than a homosexual to be honest but it is two amazing footballers but because they're not big seven foot bulky cent halves and one of them runs like a raptor he's assuming they're gay but they're not they're not comfortable saying anything now if running style can determine sexuality there's a there's there's honestly even at our level there's a lot more gay people than letting out it's ridiculous but these are the things that we need to change by talking about it because i'm sure because of that other people along their careers have questioned them accused them thought it about them but it's ridiculous i mean raheem sterling has got three children he he's quite successful with the ladies himself and i don't see anything that would lead you to think that he's definitely gay if he is by the way what's he got to do with you and this is the other thing i don't see why it's a big deal i get it at the moment because it's rare but we need to get to a point where we stop searching for the gay player and who is it and are they or are they or i suspect why are you even suspecting that i want to say is a straight man in a pub on a saturday night watching england smashing another nation in a tournament that was unbelievable for us why is the thing that's on your mind and i know he's a friend of mine i'm being a bit critical now but he's a great guy but why is that on your mind and it's because we're conditioned to think a certain way about what a gay man is and by the way it's the opposite stereotype in the women's game so i've got some good friends in the women's game as well now particularly since working at amplify with a few people so leanne sanderson is one of our stars and she's she's an all-star i guess of england female football players she's paid for juventus chelsea arsenal and england a lot great great player in her day but she was a lesbian as a lot of female footballers are however they feel comfortable in their environment to be themselves to be their true authentic selves because it's more welcoming it's more open but they have had the opposite problem to the men's game in the men's game everyone assumes automatically you're straight unless you say otherwise and that's because it's a man's game and we're tough and we're men and we're strong and gay is associated in men as a weakness or feminine or or less competitive in the female game because again masculinity that stereotype is that men is for football and it's a sport so it's physical and competitive and you have to be strong and therefore that's a straight man or a gay woman so if you're a female playing football you're automatically a lesbian and i remember this all from school like people that played football minority of girls they would always be rumors oh they're a lesbian if there was two in the same school they're together in a couple yeah i mean it's bollocks but it's automatic consumptions based on stereotypes wrong stereotypes because of what we associate masculinity to be and you guys are doing a lot of work around mental health and and this is part of that because until we can fully understand all the [ __ ] that we create for people based on how we stereotype pigeonhole and put people in boxes will never improve and it is getting better and my story is a great example of that because if i if i came out 20 years ago i probably would have got very different reactions how i've come out now now it's 99 positive it's only the minority i mean the sky sports piece i don't know there's about 150 000 comments through the article and i think i only saw about one or two that went positive i did rio's vibe with five podcasts recently with a guy called luke tufts who's now the manager of leatherhead and he's the highest level manager now in the country um that's openly gay how many tears is he above you we won't want to talk about that uh a similar level but he um he was on that podcast as well and you look through the stream of comments there considering it's a big platform there was mostly positive comments and then the odd negative one so you've got to take it into context now i understand that no one wants negative comments but at the same time there's always going to be idiots and we'll even if we get to you know 10 years time when everything's brilliant that you'll still get the odd idiot the odd person that has a problem and generally what you have to look at is how i look at it is they're either their opinions either determined by their religion for whatever reason i'm not going to make any comments on that but i do have my own opinions on on that subject as well or they're very unhappy themselves and anything that they say about other people is just them projecting and venting and and you know what i'm fine with that i actually feel sorry for you making that call because you're clearly not happy but if you're scrolling through social media to racially or uh homophobically uh abuse people you ain't exactly happy are you you've got either far too much time on your hands and you need to get your own life so i can live with that it's fine but if 99 of the comments and the feedback is positive or neutral and by the way i think it should be neutral i also don't think i should be praised for being an openly gay man i just think it should be normal but we need to strive to that we need we need to get to that point how how far away are we from that point would you say is it something that's like generations away or is it within our grasp in our lifetime or is it i know it's a very difficult question but you said we've definitely got better and you've managed to see that change throughout your lifetime do you think we're like five ten years away from it being a normalized conversation yeah i don't think football is coming out openly or do you think it's like a hundred years from now i i think you're closer with five to ten personally i hope so but it depends because there were kind of moments that you can look at as catalyst right yeah and if we were going back 30 years you would have assumed that justin doing what he did would then spark a yeah achieving action almost exactly and it didn't and i think part that's because the reaction he got and the world wasn't ready then and neither was football um and i think football is a reflection of society so people say oh football football football bad environment you know football is still a reflection of society and that's why it's better now than it was then because the pressure from society makes football improve makes football get better because back then if you were in the boardroom and you were homophobic and you're just the chairman of a football club or the manager of a football club brian clough he was homophobic and that's massively changed my opinion of him in the shoes that i'm in now because i used to think you know you listen to the way roy keane who's my hero talks about brian clough and you think what a great manager but that for me that's tarnished because of his personality traits off it for me i don't care how amazing you are at your job whether it be football or business or anything else if you are racist i don't have any respect for you and it's not just a different opinion is it that's someone's whole belief yeah yeah system there exactly it's not like oh we disagree on one thing that's their character and that is them and i feel so but yeah completely agree but also even if it's oh we disagree on one thing for me in my life there are certain things that if we disagree on them we're not going to be friends and one of them is you're racist i'm not okay we can agree to disagree no we can't because fundamentally you are a [ __ ] i'm sorry but you either need rehab education or you need to be put down like if the first two don't work because there's no place for you in modern society if you've got that level of discrimination inside you it's for me it's abhorrent and generally i like to think that most people that are racist or homophobic can be educated because a lot of it will come down to how they feel about themselves and a lack of understanding of how they then make other people feel and i think if you go through a process and you're willing to embrace that then that's fine but there are just some people that are just unfortunately evil and i don't think we'll ever get away from that and that's why i say that you'll never have 100 of people that aren't racist or aren't homophobic because there will always be those people but if you look at the percentage now compared to when justin came out it's so much smaller and my case is proof of that josh cavallo who came out recently so he's now bastard the highest playing openly gay footballer in the world because he's a pro and he plays in the a league in australia i keep telling him that's the equivalent to step five in england not really any different josh but um you know fair play to him and he but he came out because of things that had helped him to do that so he saw thomas bc's story first um and i think a lot of people will do this they'll google you know if you're in the closet and you're really you know upset about your situation you'll probably look to see who else has done this and where can i get support from and he found thomas story and that really helped him and he actually reached out after a few weeks to thomas and thomas spent six months i believe kind of counseling him talking to him helping him advising him introduced him to his manager who does a lot of good work a guy called david mcfarland in lgbt sports and those two really helped him and during that process he saw my story and then after he came out he reached out to me as well and we talked about how he looked at thomas's story originally and then my story of inspiration of oh these people are living the life that i'm i'm living and they've got and they've done this so i can do that and that's obviously a pro level but there are 20 30 examples of josh's story that i've had personally that are in the lower tiers of football not even semi-pro but amateur there was an 18 year old that contacted me about three no he came out about three months ago but six months probably before that and he was absolutely petrified about being his authentic self because he thought i won't be able to play football anymore i won't be able to um be around my friends i might have to move well i mean and that's why you have these micro cultures so you have canal street in manchester you have soho in london people don't feel accepted or haven't traditionally feel felt accepted in their own areas because it's not a popular choice or something that they're surrounded by so they gravitate towards where they feel accepted and then you get these micro communities where people feel comfortable and they can be themselves but and that's great for them but then all these other areas just lose gay people and don't ever develop whereas i think now and this is where social media and media in general can help and has helped the awareness can still reach those places even without necessarily having people still in those environments and then by consequence people can stay in those environments like i have i haven't moved but everyone now has a gay footballer in their area community and that person is the same person that they knew for 30 odd years before that and hasn't changed so their stereotype or their opinion has changed of what a gay person is or a gay man is as well so what um what for anyone listening then what can we do because my takeaway point from this is that a lot of the intended discrimination is better now it's getting a lot better and but it seems to me it's a lot of the maybe naivety or unintended discrimination is the thing that's still hovering about and it's because the lack of education um so what what can we do obviously you know we're raising awareness and and education around it what can anyone do listen to this because there would be other examples like you said um was it sort of your friend or your manager and he was like i want to understand it could still be a generational thing that people are still catching up with this and what advice can we do to just make this not such a taboo subject and also like you said stop golding like what the fa is doing and just trying to get this next to come out stop taking so much interest in it for an entertainment aspect but interest in it in fact because we we actually want to make a positive change because we care yeah i think the first thing is language because that that's if we need more people to be their authentic selves they need to feel more comfortable to be their authentic selves they're only going to do that if they feel that they can do that in their environment so the amount of people that i've spoken to over the last couple of years that have either already done it and i'm too late to influence it because they're now past retirement age anyway but have quit football from an early age even though they loved it because they didn't think they'd be accepted wow and honestly the numbers are staggering but i've had a lot of people saying i wish someone like you was around when i was younger oh how old are you i'm 50 but i quit football when i was 16. why well because i didn't think it would accept me and that's a very familiar story so i've some people i've actually managed to speak to that are still 18 19 20 that have either only just quit or thought about quitting and you can still affect that you can still change that and my whole point on that ethos is that if you don't fit so logic doesn't always come into the equation here people just panic and think they're not going to accept me they're not going to like me so i'm just going to i'm not going to give them that opportunity because people don't like rejection so they take control right i'm just gonna quit i'm just i'm just not gonna play you co if you think logically you just done to yourself what you're worried they'll do to you yeah because you're worried that if you tell them you can't play for them anymore so your illogical path is then to not play for them anymore yeah same outcome so why not give them the opportunity and probably be surprised by their and in my opinion in most environments in the uk not saudi arabia perhaps but in the in the uk in our environment i think 99 times out of 100 those people would now these days be pleasantly surprised by the reaction there's a guy called jam who plays uh shepard united in kent um he came out after seeing my story uh last year and he filmed him telling his teammates and put it on social media i think but if you look at if you look it up on shepard united's twitter you'll see it and it's a great video because you can see only two players already knew he'd already told two individually but then he told the group together and the reaction's great it's a really positive you can see they're a close team they're a good team i don't care i mean most footballers won't honestly like most footballers will be like do i like you well that's not going to change whether you're gay or not fine are you a good player because we want to win yeah they're the things that people care about and it's the same with a lot of managers now as well and the good thing is that those kind of generational um players and managers that maybe would have cared more are either out of the game or coming to the end so this is me at 35 but it it is definitely an environment that's more accepting than people think but if you never give football the opportunity to pleasantly surprise you then it never will so make sure that if if your biggest risk is i can't play for this team anymore if that's the worst thing that can happen don't make that decision for yourself give them the opportunity because actually what will probably happen is they'll tell you oh god you shouldn't have stressed about this we're fine with it you're still you we still love you you're still a good player what's wrong with you and then you can carry on playing for that team absolutely and if not i i did have a guy contacting me recently that um he had to leave a team so he came out and it wasn't um a semi-pro level but it was an amateur level he came out to a team and they weren't cool with it but basically the manager didn't pick him anymore didn't didn't say anything just stopped picking him so he then left and and rightly took to twitter to call it out yeah but then he got contacted by loads of football clubs to say your manager's a wanker your teammates are [ __ ] cavemen we'd love you to play for us loads of football clubs and that's another message in itself so even if your team rejects you which is very unlikely nowadays but even if they do there's going to be loads of teams that will have you and mine included so anyone in my area or that's willing to travel to thetford there will always be a place for you to play football and even if you're not good enough for our first team if you are please get in touch even if you're not we've got a reserve it now it's team time to shine we can't have two fitness models in the football club competitive there's only one there's only one reason we we actually do need a striker though to be fair he keeps telling me he can put the ball in the net so it's um it's a brilliant example of actually the good prevailing though yeah there isn't that definitely exactly and that's the that's the message because the majority i believe firmly the majority of people are good and that's in football and in life so the minority might not be but who cares like that don't let the minority rule your life rule your decisions and and dictate your happiness you only get one life so to live live it unhappily is a complete waste and a tragedy and so many people have done it and justin fashion was a great example because he tried his best to to live his life the way that he wanted to and back then there were lots of factors to it but he ended up taking his own life but nowadays what tends to happen is the people that take their lives and not the people that their true authentic selves because they're generally accepted and happy and it's like a weight lifted off their shoulders and almost everyone that i've spoken to at any level that's come out in the last few years feels like that weight has been lifted off them even when they occasionally get abused josh josh last weekend got abused from the stand and he took to twitter and social media and called it out and the response that he's had from brands other fans professional players supporting him shows you majority of football is behind you the majority of people are behind you not behind the bigot they're really not so even when those little things happen you are in a strong position they're the ones in a weak position so don't let that the fear of that one little thing every so often dictate your happiness because it's 24 hours in a day 52 weeks in a year so why be unhappy for all of that time because you're hiding something because you're worried about a consequence when actually if you're open and you're happy it can just be the odd moment that provides you with a challenge that then you'll ultimately get support from the majority anyway and i think that's really really important because too many people and this is what's got to stop too many people have taken their own lives because they're they they see that as their only way out i've had people contact me families of people that have killed themselves because of their sexuality and not wanting to deal with it and ultimately and this is what i said to my parents because as much as i've talked really positively about my parents and as great as our relationship was and now is again there was a period of time when i came out where it wasn't because of my mom's religion and her her beliefs around what's right and wrong because of what you know somebody wrote in a book two and a half thousand years ago and he said not to get interested i couldn't help but one day my dad because he's he's you know where he was brought up and how he was brought up but my dad was one of those people that this is why i say this about wanting to be educated my dad was homophobic there is no way around here now he wasn't hateful he didn't abuse anybody he just wasn't comfortable around it and he didn't want his son to be gay but he desperately didn't want to lose his relationship with his son and it ultimately made me coming out and being gay and maybe that's part of the reason why god made me the way that he made me if you want to take my mum's stance and believe in that was for people like him because he wanted to understand and he wanted to repair our relationship i didn't talk to him for two weeks it's probably the longest we've ever gone without talking i found that painful but i knew what i had to do i didn't i didn't even with my parents i didn't want people in my life that were homophobic racists or whatever else and that was the most let down i'd ever felt from anyone with my parents at that time considering everything they'd done for me i felt completely let down by them after two weeks he said look i want to sort this out i want to understand and i said listen i've always told you my door's open i just don't want to have a relationship with you while you have the beliefs that you have yeah because they both wanted a relationship with me but they wanted a relationship with the person that hadn't come out so we can have exactly the same relationship matt i just never want to meet anyone that you're with if you have a partner or anything like that i never want to talk about it i want to almost pretend that you're not gay so everything else just go back to how it was and nothing else changes 99 of the time that might be fine because i am the same person but you're telling me that i have to censor telling you that oh so my partner now lorenzo oh it's lorenzo's birthday oh what are you doing at the weekend okay i can't tell them i'm going out with lorenzo for his birthday so um what do i say oh i'm going out for a meal who with now i've got a lie yeah it's [ __ ] and i'm not that type of person anyway so i said until you can accept me all of me for who i am and that's a part of who i am now that i know i'm not running from it so if you want to run from it that's fine but don't expect me to have a relationship with you and pretend that doesn't exist because that's not authentic so until you can accept all of me you're not having any of me and i cut them both off dad lasted two weeks mum lasted four months but we addressed it and now the relationship is fine that's a bit harsh actually it's good it's like it was before but it took some time so anyone that's thinking about coming out that is not you know you you might have bumps in the road you might lose a friend or two you might even have a loss in the family potentially i don't want to be sitting here saying that there'll be everything's amazing there's candy floss everywhere and unicorns and and you know nothing ever is going to go wrong there might be people that don't accept it but you know what i the way that i dealt with that is if you can't accept something that's that's something you should be able to accept i don't want you in my life in the same way that if my best friend my best friend's like a brother to me we've been close most of my life if we were in a pub in a week's time and he racially abused someone i wouldn't want to be his friend anymore no matter how much i love him because that that changes who he is to me i don't want you in my life if that's how you are and as much as i love my parents if you're racist or homophobic you to me you're not you're not the people i thought you were so i'm fine with losing you and and that has to be your attitude and what you're prepared for if you want to be happy and you want to be yourself because otherwise you're just going to be allowing the problem to continue making allowances for people that you shouldn't be making allowances for and if those people are generally good they'll want to change anyway my dad completely wanted to understand one of the things that was that was an educational point for him was understanding that it wasn't a choice and this is another big misconception he kept using that word oh you know even when he even when he accepted it oh you know i love you and you're my son and even when i told him the day i told him before i left the house mum ran out the room screaming and crying and shouting you're not you're not you're not i am dad hugged me and said as he hugged me said i love you you're still my son i'm still very proud of you i just wish you weren't gay and i don't like that part and the end the end of that took away all of the beginning for me it's like okay and that that was kind of the moment but he kept using the word as your choice no it's not the only choice that you've got as a gay man is to embrace it and accept it or to live a lie and pretend that you're not that's not really a choice but it is a choice that you've got you don't choose whether you are or are not gay you just choose whether you accept it and tell people and live your life or not and too many people have felt that i can't do that and if they neither committed suicide quit football left jobs relocated all because of something that they can't help yeah i'm not prepared to do that and i don't think anyone should have to do that now he eventually after then coming to my office and spending two hours in there talking to me and completely fair play to him he wanted to he had lots of questions he wanted to understand but i kept correcting him when he used the word choice it's not a choice it's not and eventually you get angry with it because you said it three times now listen it's not a choice but now he gets it he understands that but because he wasn't born gay he thought oh well it's a choice it's like whether you choose i said to him it's like do you do you choose to be attracted to women well i am attracted to women it's the same thing yeah so yeah but i can walk down the street and say that a man's good looking or not but i don't sleep with him i want to sleep with him i said are you so when you walk down the street and you see that good looking man is it a like john taylor is it a oh he's a good looking chap is it a god we should look like him or is it a is it that he said no it's not that so there you go then it's a completely different thing completely different thing i can walk down the street now and say she's good looking gosh she's a good-looking woman see loads of good-looking women but i don't have a to want to sleep with them or or go on a date with them or or marry them and have children with them i just whereas he did and i think you need to understand that just because you're in your mindset that people can be in the opposite mindset and that's chemical and natural not something that's a choice or a decision because the reality is and this has been completely blunt about it who in their right mind would choose it and that's not because there's anything wrong with it i'm not ashamed of it at all i don't think there's anything wrong with it at all in fact i know there's not and nobody should be but the reason i say who in their right mind would choose it because of all the stresses that we've been talking about for the last hour and a bit because it's an easier life if you're straight the easiest life is to be straight a straight man but you can't choose that so the next two decisions are which are both difficult in different ways but i believe nowadays one is a lot easier than the other and that is i'm a gay man i'm going to embrace it and live my life the worst is that you choose to deny it and choose to live in secret or hide it or repress it and i've never met anyone that's been happy making that decision and i've had a lot of people contact me over the last couple of years not a single person that's done that has been happy and it's never ended well it's usually ended in either a suicide a relocation or i got married i had a couple of kids and then i just couldn't keep it up and i left my partner and oh okay so and that by the way that is tragic that's tragic for the person themselves for the partner the kids and even for the kids yeah by the way i'm not i'm not condemning it i understand it i get it it's it's the extreme of someone trying to live the life they think they should be living to be accepted by society to think that this is the path i should be going down so i'm going to try i'm going to try i'm going to try yeah she she's she's great she's wonderful i did that by the way for um the year before i well so i was 31 when i came out the year before that i was completely single celibate because i was just off everything the year before that i was with a girl called kerry amazing person didn't know i was gay at this point amazing looking amazing personality no stress no drama really easy going successful career literally if you could have written down the perfect partner it would be her but there was something for me and this is the point where made me think you know what you just got to stop this now there was something for me that just wasn't clicking and i would end up even after being with her nine months go a week without seeing her because i'm too busy and she'd be like are we going to see each other this weekend oh i've got a lot on and maybe and how about next week and just kind of fitting her in in kind of these little that's not right that's not fair on her it's not fair on me either but especially it's not fair on her so i ended that relationship i ended it by saying listen this isn't fair on you i don't want you to get any more emotionally involved or attached when i don't think this is going to go anywhere it's nothing to do with you and she's like here we go you know that it's not you it's me thing but it honestly was it wasn't her it was me but then i decided i'm not doing this to anyone else i am not doing that to anyone else so if that means that i'm never with anyone again fine and i spent a year on my own not with anybody and i needed that um but it was for a different reason than i thought i thought it was just because you know that's you now you're just going to be single and buried in work and and addicted to your job and addicted to football and everything like that but how long can you go on being a football playing bachelor i mean there's a shelf life to it right and then i got a message on instagram from actually that's a lie i got added on instagram or followed on instagram by somebody that i didn't know and very good-looking mixed-race guy which by the way is my type but don't panic [Laughter] um and is that why you need a striker yeah yeah i don't actually care how good you are and it was just it was weird because i didn't know this person and i was only on instagram for a short period of time before that so i wasn't like i am now quite as used to it or on it as regularly i only got on it because a lot of my friends kept saying you know you'd love this you'd love this and why would i love this it's a photo sharing appliance oh yeah great and then obviously the rest is history but i only got added by people back then that either i knew or that wanted something a girl or a gay guy adding you and following you or whatever else and i'd had that before and every other gay guy that had approached me either in life or on social media or whatever i would just had no there was no interest at all it was just like you know no offense i've got nothing against it but that's not me i'm straight but thank you i appreciate it and the compliment or whatever else and that was kind of how it was always left i say always it wasn't weekly it was just like a few times a year maybe but um this time the person added me followed me keep saying added followed me and didn't contact me again for like three days and i thought that's a bit i'm sure i don't know you are they from the fitness industry they says they're based in london is it have i crossed your path modeling have i crossed your path in designing a gym or what is it so i messaged them saying do i know you and the response was no but do you want to i was like oh but the feeling here was very different it was the first time in my whole life that it was like yeah i actually do but i don't know why and this is a bit weird and get your head around that and and that was the kind of catalyst the moment that over the next six months have up and i won't go into the details of you know the head [ __ ] that was for six months but it was up and down up and down up and down and but it made me realize why it never worked out with people like kerry or anyone before that because actually now i was attracted to a guy for the first time and this was a bit odd and then we met up and i remember the first date we had and i went down to farringdon to meet him after work on a thursday night or something me being me i organized the first date and it was a class an exercise class before dinner so we went to uh another space which was kind of third space's boutique uh workout so we did a 60-minute workout halfway through he goes i [ __ ] hate you i'm not good it's working went to dinner but i remember before i met him i had a feeling that i'd never had before i've been on hundreds of dates and i've never had that butterflies or nervousness or excitement or never had it and i was 31. and people were like that was my mates at 15 16 or whatever and i was just like i don't know what you're talking about sort of super chilled super cool i don't get butterflies don't get nervous but it was because it was because i didn't really give a [ __ ] whereas this time i was like i had all of that but at 31 i feel like a teenager and be like well that's a bit weird like wow i was fine to go into big meetings or present to audiences of 800 or a thousand people and talk on stage and no butterflies no nervousness i'm meeting one guy at a cost of coffee to go for a workout and dinner at 31 years old and i'm nervous and i'm like oh [Music] and that was the single moment that i can say i 100 at that moment knew 100 new and there was no looking back i thought okay right you're gay wow i love that that's so powerful yeah really powerful it's a brilliant story that's absolutely incredible um matt so um so much information there for people and but so much actual actual stuff that could be actionable so much stuff that people can go away and think about um a couple things i want to go through before um before we wrap up the second is a little bit of a challenge that we've got for you which we haven't told you about i'll be warned about this so i don't think i've told you about this yet so i'm just going to let you sit there and sweat for the next minute while sticking whilst you answer the first question we've talked a lot about equality we've talked a lot about normalizing these conversations and we've talked a lot about how exercise has benefited you um tell us very quickly about where you are moving to now um with regards to your career and with regards to amplify so i think this is something that the listeners um would love to hear just a tiny little bit of context and me and danny are involved in amplify and um yeah just tell anyone listening just a little bit about that and the impact anything you are allowed to talk about just now this is i think this podcast will be out in a couple months anyway so i'm sure it'll be fine to talk about everything now um anything that you want to share with people about this mission that you have in order to totally um totally redefine what exercise is yeah so i historically for the last 10 and a half years prior to the last three years at amplify i've always designed gyms and been involved in the fitness industry so i was the commercial director at escape fitness i was heavily involved in brand and strategy really i sat on the board and we spent 10 and a half years supplying equipment but mainly designing gyms for some of the biggest health and fitness facilities outside of north america and then the last couple of years i was there we went into north america as well which was quite cool and exciting the reason i left that because i didn't think i would leave that business i mean it was a it was a great position i was on the board doing very well financially loved what i did had a great team and i met the founder or the co-founder of amplify and originally it was going to be a partnership so how could we be one of the fitness and brand partners for amplify he told me all about what they were doing and the projects and it sounded exciting and then we kept speaking quite regularly and i had ideas on what else the platform could do and the social media side of it and the trainer side of it and the coaches and it just kind of growed arms and legs and then he asked me to come and join the team and asked whether i'd be the commercial director and um i ended up investing in the company as well i left escape which was a very very hard decision for me um and joined the team three years ago and what we're trying to do and we're about to launch so this is coming out in a few months but so this is january we're about to launch in a couple of weeks and for the first time and it will be a ramp up but we are a free health and fitness platform uh with the social media platform built in for health fitness sport nutrition education and one of the key things that we're doing is working with the biggest brands the biggest stars in fitness in health and nutrition in mental health and mindfulness as well and we'll expand obviously that repertoire over time and in corporate and in health club so we're doing a lot and we're bringing all of that together in a not just a fitness app because one of the key things here is that life is not just about fitness and if you want to be healthy it's not just about what you do in the gym it's it's about how you eat how you think getting the right amount of rest enjoying life being happy it's not one thing it's the balance of everything so one of our key features is something called life balance which basically scores people and educates people on how to have a nice balance across all of those pillars so fitness is our first key milestone but we will be doing nutrition and mental health as well a lot of the stars that we've got sports stars so professional athletes ex professional athletes so that'll be a big part of our social platform but also there'll be workouts and programs that they'll either be writing or co-writing with with experienced personal trainers and workouts that they'll be filming as well and people will be able to get a certain amount of free content from them but also have the ability to pay a small subscription for a certain star that they follow and get exclusive behind the scenes content access into their life but also really high level workout plans programs for particular outcomes or goals so if you if you love nicola adams and you're really into boxing you'll be able to follow nicola adams if you love danny and you're really into mindfulness and lifestyle and feeling fit and good about yourself you'll be able to follow danny and subscribe to his extra content and same with dan and same with mac and if you're really desperate you can also follow mine but i was gonna say if you're this you'd follow dan [Laughter] so it's really exciting um and and more and more will happen over time as we add to this but yeah it's uh it's an exciting start now it's been three years in the making to to launch it to market as with technology there's obviously been a couple of delays and also all was this the right type we all actually want to add some more so we've got a really ambitious team a really good team and part of the uh consequence of that i guess could sometimes be actually we want to add one more thing before it's finished so uh the good news is although the launch is slightly later than it was going to be it's actually going to be a lot bigger and better than it would have been if we did it a few months ago so it's exciting oh yeah very exciting i when i was down um meeting with the team at um there's one of the events that you were doing and there's an individual called elliot who works on the app and i was chatting with him and i was just sort of similar thing to you talking about frustration frustrations of launching a business and i think for people who are business inclined you we have sometimes the creativity and we have the work ethic and we have all these things that people think obviously those are things that you need you know to create or run a business but then one of the things that we're talking about the frustrations is patience and sometimes you need to have that patience and um i was sharing my frustrations with you know i've got this idea you know it's incredible like it's just building and building and he just turned around to me and he was just like dan he was just like doesn't matter how many people you have working on it it still takes nine months to make a baby and i was like that's true and that actually helped massively so and yeah amplify will be um launching very very soon and before we get to this little challenge a massive thank you i think from all of us and i'm not saying this because you're here but i think that was probably one of the most powerful conversations that we've had so far so informative and thank you for you know sharing your experiences and i know i know this is such a cliche thing to say but if it helps one person then we've done a job but i have no doubt that this could potentially help so so many people so thank you for that and when it comes to your personal journey and when it comes to you posting pictures of you pouting and with your top-off where where can people if somebody thinks look i really like matt's voice and i would really like to see a selfie of him singing in his car where can they where can they find you it's all great quality content as well especially the lighting you probably charge for it [Laughter] with matt and danny or that would be like one of those christmas albums with the christmas special uh yeah so people can follow me at the matt morton on instagram um and no arrogance by the way i'm putting the someone already had matt morton really really annoyingly um i'm on facebook just matt morton and twitter is i don't even know what twitter is but just search matt morton i'll put 16 in it and you'll probably find it um what announced our little challenge that we've got so we do this with uh we do this with everyone so you're not alone i'll let ben run through it with you whilst ben's just sorting that yeah honestly a massive thank you from all of us yeah that was yeah just to reiterate what dan said it's been a very powerful conversation and i can't wait for people to hear this one it's going to help a lot of people my pleasure thank you for having me i think it's so important as well because when you're talking um through the podcast you've been talking about how important it is that people educate themselves and i think this will go a long way to um help educate others that might not have um came across something like this before so i think there's one other thing that i probably haven't focused on so much that i should that you just actually reminded me about around education and language is a massive thing and what stops people coming out or being themselves can often be stuff that's miscontrolled or misunderstood so language in a dressing room for example if you take football but also in the playground or at work a lot of guys and i used to be very guilty of this because it's ingrained in you from a young age an insult that's a throwaway comment just like you wouldn't think about calling someone an idiot or a [ __ ] or a [ __ ] or whatever it's the same when people call each other gay or poof or [ __ ] most people 99 of people aren't doing that because they're homophobic they're doing it because it's just what they say it just rolls off the tongue and i used to i've never been discriminatory in any way as you can probably tell i'm the opposite but i still use that language which doesn't really add up at all but it's just for me it used to be like calling someone an idiot or a [ __ ] it was just oh shut up shut up your purple whatever gay boy never meant it and i don't use that language anymore and i'm conscious of not using that language neither does anyone around me the problem is until you're aware that you're using that language and how it can affect other people you will use it in the same way that years and years ago people would have used derogatory slurs around race and they might use it even if there wasn't somebody in the room that was of that race unacceptable in any circumstances but you wouldn't use it if you were conscious of using it and it's the same with homophobia now so i'm sure in most dressing rooms players still say gay puff [ __ ] whatever and that to them isn't because they're homophobic it's just what they do but never happens in mine because people are conscious that oh that's gay so i can't i can't say that so people have now got used to not using it the challenge that i would like to set everybody is no matter whether there's a gay person that you know of in your dressing room or not don't use it because it will stop them feeling comfortable now it's different for me because i didn't realize until i was 30 31 and i was one of the alphas in the dressing room couldn't give a [ __ ] what anyone says so if you're saying that it's not going to affect me coming out or being myself or whatever because if i come out and you use it you you'd only do it once that was kind of my attitude not everyone is me there might be a 16 17 year old trying to break into the first team that's dealing with their sexuality internally here's all the senior players in the dressing room calling each other puffs [ __ ] gay boys whatever thinks [ __ ] they hate me they they won't accept me they i've got no chance i've got to hide this if i want to get into the team i've got i can't tell them or [ __ ] they hate me i've got to leave or i've gotta quit football or [ __ ] they hate me i'm gonna kill myself and you need to realize these things and be conscious about them because most football players won't think about that when they're using these every week they won't think there could be someone in here that's really affected by me calling that person that i think is straight a [ __ ] or a per for a gay boy it means nothing to me it means everything to that 16 year old that's wanting to break into that first team wanting to feel accepted and either ashamed embarrassed or petrified about who they really are so people can start thinking about the language that they use in the dressing room that will make a massive massive difference to the problem that we're talking about because people will then feel more comfortable being themselves and less conscious about that if they were to do it and by the way now because there is somebody that's gay in the dressing room at fedford the the gay jokes are normally started by me because i want to break the ice i don't want people walking on eggshells but i don't use those words but i'll give you an example so we had uh one of the players come to a game once um and he wasn't wearing the tracksuit and he was wearing the most ridiculous outfit it was out there like it was even more ridiculous than some of the things danny wears it was it was it was crazy [Music] it was both models we were until you reminded everyone i make leagues off the premier league but he walked in and he was like a wiring shirt or something and literally everyone was like and i and i just went [ __ ] hell i thought i was the gay one in this team what are you doing and obviously everyone laughs and it's banter and whatever else but that type of thing is fine because it's coming from me and in an environment that even if there was someone that's gay they're going to feel comfortable yeah but if you're starting to abuse people on a training ground or in a game because you don't think they're gay calling them gay [ __ ] puff whatever if someone is and they're hearing that that's going to affect them massively and being aware and conscious of that is going to make a massive difference so yeah that was kind of the last point that i wanted to make amazing thank you for adding it in okay right we've got something here i haven't been nervous until that yeah it's nothing much but we do have a happy tails challenge so our initials are h to h which is obviously head to head as well so gathering you're quite competitive if anyone hasn't picked up on that quite yet you are basically going through the same challenge that all of our other guests have been through okay and you are trying to beat them physically so this is like top gear yeah exactly so we've had we've had danny buck we've had james extend we've had other classes we've had mark if i mean if you're more competitive than mark then oh i don't know about that yeah it depends what if i care about it i might be but if not if i lose we'll pretend i didn't care fair enough so basically all that we need you to do is hold a squat for 60 seconds and answer as many quick fire questions as possible okay okay mac and skye are currently at the top of the leaderboard on thirteen see thirteen is the case if you get them correct or can i just say anything depends on the question it's not joking it's more personal it's more personal it's quick fire so um is there is there chance of a toilet break first because i've been shaking my leg under this table no that's what happened no no we can do it we can do it if you need to go now juggle now yeah that'd be good 60 seconds um if you for some reason or to not hold for 60 seconds the number of questions you've answered by that point will be your total score it's almost pointless you saying that um okay i'll get up yeah you get the timer i'll get a timer ready ben will try and ask the questions as quick as possible and um how are you feeling amazing confident yeah yeah good very confident yeah that match the squat the score to be is to rock ready to go you ready you tell me when to get into position and i'll go okay don't talk slowly though you gotta ask i'll ask quickly don't worry okay squatting three two one off we go when was the last time you were drunk two weeks ago when are you most productive in the afternoon who is your inspiration and why roy kane because he's a legend what's your favorite number and why 16 because it's roy king's number and which subject were you whilst that's true maths and which subject were you best english what scares you uh nothing cats or dogs cats if you could live anywhere in the world where would that be miami what would you change about yourself nothing what's something that you know you have to do but do not like doing playing cricket what's something that you like doing football what's your favorite hallway football sunrise or sunset sunrise what's your favorite color bread what's your favorite cuisine uh italians ago what's the first thing you notice about someone when you meet them their eyes what's the best compliment you could receive you smell nice what's your favorite film uh watership down if you could be any animal what would it be a dog describe yourself in three words an absolute oh that was incredible but what is that the best compliment you could receive is you smell nice it was the way you said it as well it was the way you said it also far too much hesitation on the cats versus dogs sure then he said he would want to be a dog if any animal so it's a bit controversial there's a difference between wanting to be something so cats just easy aren't they my cat looks after itself the only reason i didn't get a dog is because i have to walk it and eat things all right so it's a maintenance thing it's in maintenance far too much effort goes into me so do you want to uh do you want to know what your score is yes do i take a guess matt morton is at top of the happy health leaderboard which is [Music] if you didn't know he loves roy keane roy keane cats or dogs and we'll just quickly say thanks i think from all of us so we'll go around um yeah make always a massive thank you for me thanks for for everything and coming in i think this is going to be so so impactful for many people yeah thanks again mate i think it's such an important conversation that we've had today and if we can help one person out there who's listening to this and they're struggling with um their sexuality or know a family or friend that is then hopefully this can help them just echoing what you guys said and also thank you for just being so generous with your time and the the enthusiasm and kind of the the optimism that you've brought is is really really powerful so yeah thank you thank you guys cheers appreciate it okay and that is a wrap thank you very much for listening we really hope that you enjoyed that guys listen as always please show us some love please follow us at happy2healthpodcast on both instagram and on youtube please show us some support if you like this episode please share it with a friend out of all of our episodes this is one of the ones that is going to be really really powerful so if there's someone that you think that this can positively impact please let them know and we'll really look forward to seeing you at the next episode

Channel: The Happy 2 Health Podcast

Views: 384

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Id: d_zr7oDZcuc

Length: 112min 35sec (6755 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 23 2022