Jake Humphrey on Grief, The Trauma Of Childhood Bullying & His Mission To Save Young Men

Begin Again with Davina McCall

Broadcaster Jake Humphrey joins Davina McCall to reflect on how childhood bullying, academic failure, and personal grief shaped his resilien

Key takeaways

• Jake's career was nearly derailed by failing his A-levels, receiving grades of E, N, and U.
• The BBC initially told Jake, 'we don't employ people like you' during his early attempts at sports presenting.

Main topics

• Overcoming childhood bullying
• The power of service and legacy

Notable quotes

Failure is the price of ambition.

Conclusion

A moving testament to how embracing one's vulnerabilities and focusing

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) How did I dismiss that moment so much? Oh, that's the hardest part. Tell everybody what happened. I never thought a kid from a little village in Norfolk would be travelling the world working in Formula One. Why? I was a late developer, Davina. I'd failed my exams at school. I was being bullied and I was fired from McDonald's. But if you keep trying, almost everything that you need is already within you. Oh Speaker 2 (0:19) my God, Jake! Speaker 1 (0:21) So in the end, you're presenting the Premier League, the Champions League. You've got like 300 staff. You've got two kids, a happy marriage. But I felt like none of it mattered. Speaker 1 (0:30) I love my wife, my kids, but I felt like I was getting everything wrong. On the outside, you would have looked at my life and thought, God, that is amazing. But I was lost in this little world. I felt so out of kilter. We've Speaker 2 (0:41) actually got something for you. Can I give you that? I'm going to ask you to read it out to us. Speaker 1 (0:44) Oh, wow. Would you read it to us? Daddy. Speaker 2 (0:59) Jake Humphrey. Danny McCall. I want to start by saying I'm going to intro you, I think, as a brilliant example of a great man. Oh, wow. And I'd quite like to deep dive into your upbringing because your parents had such an amazing impact on who you are as a person. Your dad in particular, I think. Tell me a bit about your dad. Speaker 1 (1:24) Yeah. Oh, I mean, my dad is. Speaker 1 (1:28) on every level, my hero. I felt really sad, actually, because last year, Eddie Jordan passed away, who I worked with in Formula One. Yeah, Speaker 2 (1:33) who was Speaker 1 (1:33) like Speaker 2 (1:33) a father figure. Who was like a father figure to me. Speaker 1 (1:36) And, you know, because Eddie was well-known, obviously, there's a lot of media around him. And I was asked, on the day that I got the news he died, actually, I got asked to go and do an interview on Radio 5 Live. And it was only a throwaway comment, but my mum said to me, and it hurt a bit, she said to me a couple of days later, she goes, ooh, Dad was wondering if you'd even say such nice things about him. And I think he'd heard me talking about Eddie and thought, I wonder if I've had that impact. So can I just be absolutely clear? My dad absolutely has had that impact on me. Can Speaker 2 (2:05) I just say that's really sweet. Speaker 1 (2:07) I know. But I think that we do worry, don't we, about the impact we have on our kids. And we kind of, I can imagine my dad, like son of a farmer from Whiz Beach in the Fens in the UK, who, you know, grafted all his life with a real care for other people and was a... charity worker his whole life, I can imagine that he would look at what I shared with EJ, travelling the world, working in Formula One, experiencing things that I never thought a kid from a little village in Norfolk would ever experience. And then it's natural for him to go, I wonder where my impact lies here. And so I'm so pleased you've asked me about my dad because I want him to realise that the impact he's had on me is more than he will ever know. And I like that. He can think that he's had an impact. He doesn't really realize. And he deserves so much praise for what he did because he was the son of a farmer. But my dad had a calling to do something different. So when he was a teen, 18, 19, he left Whiz Beach to work on the kibbutz, right, in Israel. And left home to go and pursue that dream. And then my granddad, his dad, was going to a wedding. So he went and bought a morning suit. And he went to show his brother who they were farmers. They were brother farmers. And there was a potato picker there. And his brother had taken the guard off the potato picker. And as my granddad said, look at the top hat and tails I bought for this wedding. The potato picker caught the back of the tails of his jacket and pulled him into the machine. This is in the 1960s. And if you know how a potato picker works, your base has snapped him in half. Oh, Speaker 2 (3:43) God. Speaker 1 (3:44) I know. So, you know, thank God he wasn't killed. But his back was broken. Oh, my God. And he ended up in a wheelchair for life. Now, in those days, you were given like 10 years to live if you were paraplegic. Speaker 2 (3:58) So Speaker 1 (3:58) obviously the first thing my dad did was come home, lived with his mum and dad again, helped his dad, served. And I think we can talk a bit about the power of service. We live so much within ourselves and how do we feel and how am I doing? Like as soon as you stop looking inside and look outside. The power of service. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Well, if people are listening to this with... anxiety or a lack of self-worth or a question mark about their place in society, feeling like they're not enough, feeling like a letdown, go and do something. Go and volunteer at an animal shelter. Take some food around for someone that isn't very well. Be of service to other people and then see if you still feel like you have a lack of self-worth or a lack of focus or a lack of, you don't know your place in society. There's so much good to be found in service. And we live in a society that doesn't promote service. Speaker 2 (4:46) No, it doesn't. Speaker 1 (4:47) We live in a society that promotes wealth and greed and collection of things. And all of those simply add to your anxiety. Whereas a life of service, think how great it feels when you give a good Christmas present. It's that about every day. So my dad came back to Whiz Beach and served his parents, as I feel we all should. Speaker 1 (5:10) And this is something else that I'd love to talk to you about at some point, because you've had such an interesting and fascinating life. And I hope that you're able to look back on your life, including all of the hard times and realize that they were hard for you, but they weren't bad for you. Exactly that. Some of the greatest things come from the hardest moments. So the only reason we're sitting here having this conversation today is that my dad came home. met my mum who was living locally they got married they had kids one of those kids was me and here we are having a conversation so if my grandad doesn't break his back I don't sit here today. Speaker 2 (5:52) Oh, God, actually, when you say it like that, that is quite mad. I know. Speaker 1 (5:55) And sometimes it... Sometimes you feel a bit guilty because you think the hardest, worst thing that he would have ever gone through, laying in that hospital bed. And actually, me and my dad had a lovely moment just recently because my dad had a new hip. And he came round from the operation and it was probably a bit of the drugs and everything, but... My dad, for the first time in a long time, was really like open and emotional and was telling me, and you've been through operations recently, he was telling me all about these things in his life. And the reason why he felt like that was because he, because of the operation, he couldn't feel his legs. And he said, for the first time ever, I Speaker 2 (6:30) knew how Speaker 1 (6:30) my dad would have felt in that moment. And then he said, not once did my dad ever moan. There was two things. He said, not once did my dad question why him. He said, the second thing, he said. My grandma went every single day to visit him at the hospital, at the James Paget, I think it was. Every single day, every single day, a different person from the village drove her to the hospital. My dad was like, you need to talk about service. Because everyone loved my granddad, John, John Humphrey. God, Speaker 2 (7:02) that Speaker 1 (7:02) is really... That was my dad. Speaker 2 (7:03) I mean, you're right. If I go back and think about my life, I wouldn't change any of it. Yeah. I would relive my same life all over again because at 58, I am the happiest I've ever been. And that is because I've lived the life I've lived, you know. I know you moved, didn't you, when you were eight or nine? Speaker 1 (7:24) Yeah. I was born in 1978 and we moved in 1987, so I would have been about nine years old. Yeah, we went from Peterborough to Norwich. To Speaker 2 (7:30) Norwich, and it was quite a hard move for you, wasn't it? Why was that difficult? Speaker 1 (7:35) Well, on the funny side, it was a hard move because we couldn't find a house, so we ended up moving into one of my dad's old people's homes. Now, that was great. I was taught to smoke a pipe and play pool after school at ten years of age. Speaker 2 (7:47) Wait, wait, you lived in an old people's home? Speaker 1 (7:49) Yeah, there was an old people's home called Ethel Tipple Court in Norwich. Ethel Speaker 2 (7:52) Tipple Court. That Speaker 1 (7:53) is Speaker 2 (7:53) such a great Speaker 1 (7:54) name for an Speaker 2 (7:54) old people's home. Speaker 1 (7:54) I think Ethel Tipple had left some money to create a residential home and we couldn't find anywhere to live and there was a kind of a house attached to it. So we lived in the house with my sister Rachel, my brother Tom and my mum and dad. And after school, it was like I had the run of the old people's home. Now you imagine how much they loved it. But Speaker 2 (8:12) they must have absolutely... There's a kid knocking about. But also... Jake, it's service. Without you even realising. Definitely Speaker 1 (8:19) without realising. You're Speaker 2 (8:20) giving a beautiful gift. Speaker 1 (8:23) I've created a cool relationship with a guy, an old man, who I'd see him after. You know, memories are weird, aren't they? I don't know whether I did this five times or 500 times. But I remember being in this tiny room. It's knocked down now, the old people's home. You'd go in through the door and you'd go to the far corner and there was like a games room. But all it actually was... was a room with a pool table in and this strong fog of pipe smoke. And this old boy was in there and I'd chat to him about my day at school and I'd play pool with him. I'm only 10. I'm playing pool against this old boy and he's smoking a pipe and I'm sharing his pipe. And I'm like, life lessons, right? I'm getting to know this old guy. And then you also have to learn because they don't live as long as you. So you then have to cope with the emotion of losing these people. Yes. So that was a really... fascinating period. It didn't last very long. Less than a year. And then we moved into our own house. That's Speaker 2 (9:18) quite a long time though. Yeah, it was. Speaker 1 (9:19) Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was cool. It's a great, like, it's a great. I Speaker 2 (9:23) mean, I think we've forgotten a little bit. Speaker 1 (9:25) No, we're just dismissive. Speaker 2 (9:27) We're Speaker 1 (9:27) dismissive of that generation because we're doing far more exciting and wonderful things. We forget like, they created all this. They, they've done all this before. And I, as the population ages and as there are more, elderly people alive we definitely have to lean into what we can learn from the older generation I actually love it when I come across on Instagram or TikTok accounts where it is like the the older generation people in their 80s and 90s sharing life advice and it always does great numbers and you're like good I love that as well so we moved to Norwich lived in the old people's home moved out and then um I had a tough definitely had a tough time at school why um well because all of the friendship groups had been created Right. And I was trying to, I was trying to sort of like find my way in. And then you can't. So then I probably acted like a bit of a dick trying to find my way in, you know, just being over the top. But it's so hard as a young person, isn't it? Like what do you do when... when you're not having the impact that you want to have. I Speaker 2 (10:31) thought it was interesting. I heard you say once that you'd got called into school or your parents had been called into school about you not quite fitting in and that they'd found your emotional intelligence threatening. Speaker 1 (10:45) Yeah, that was a brilliant teacher called Mr. Pugh. And I moved to school. So like the bullying was awful. If anyone has been bullied, they will relate to the fact that you can be almost 50, as I am, and still remember the feeling. The loneliness is hard, isn't it? Were you bullied at school? Speaker 2 (11:07) For being different, because I lived with my granny and my grandad. Speaker 1 (11:10) And when you would drop your kids off at school, could you remember the feeling as they walked off? Speaker 2 (11:15) Oh, yeah. I mean, I tried very hard not to transfer it onto them because my fear was great. Speaker 2 (11:24) A couple of my kids had a tough time at school, but they dealt with it brilliantly. School Speaker 1 (11:30) can be very cruel. Speaker 2 (11:31) Yeah, but they've learned a lot from it. Yeah. And that's what's interesting. And also, I think finding solid friendships after you have had problems making friends. You are so kind of close to your mates because you've got them like, you're like, oh, my God. Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:50) You're so right. Speaker 2 (11:51) Yeah. So that was, how did you kind of cope with it? Speaker 1 (11:59) I don't think I coped with it very well. Speaker 1 (12:03) Apart from just sealing myself off. So one time we were getting changed after swimming and as I took my swimming trunks off, the guys pushed me out of the changing room with no clothes on and no towel, but out into the school car park where there were classrooms sort of all looking. So I'm standing there with, like, just trying to preserve my own dignity, covering off the bits I could with the hands I had. And when that happens, it becomes like a whole school thing. Speaker 2 (12:33) My Speaker 1 (12:33) mum spoke to the head teacher at the school I was at and they decided to ask me to stand up in assembly and announce to the school that I was being bullied and it had to stop. Can you imagine what that did? Speaker 2 (12:44) Oh, God. Speaker 1 (12:45) So in the end, there was these two school coaches parked in the car park. And I just used to go between the coaches in the dark at break and lunch break and just eat my sandwiches and wait for lunch break to end. And then once everyone's in their classrooms, scurry back in. Heartbreaking, actually, Speaker 2 (13:03) when Speaker 1 (13:04) you think about it. And Speaker 2 (13:05) did that persist all the way through? Speaker 1 (13:06) I basically had to leave. So I did two years. at that school and I left for another school and it was so much better. And the point that you make about the emotional intelligence, after I'd changed schools, my parents were talking to my then form tutor called Mr. Pugh. And you know when you just connect with a teacher? I loved Mr. Pugh, really connected with him. Him and Mr. Maxwell were like, changed the game for me at school. And my mum and dad once said to him, like, what do you think is going on or why has there been problems? And he just said, Jacob, as I was known then, Jacob just has an emotional intelligence that most 12-year-old boys are not really connected to. And I think that was probably what is causing the problem. They feel threatened by his ability to be real. And I do think that that's probably what's given me the career that I've had. Totally, yeah. What I would like people to understand is that if you're being bullied right now or your child is being bullied, it's always because they're finding a point of difference. Like they found with you, you lived with a grandparent. Great opportunity for bullying. Like with me, emotional intelligence, great opportunity to bully someone. I can't tell you how important it is to not allow those bullies to knock that part of you out of you. Because as you get older, as you leave school, as you embark on a career and a life, the thing that gives you the most magic in your life is the thing that is making you different to everybody else. And I think if you lose that at school, it's a real tragedy because the real world will reward you for being unique and for being different and having a different point of