George’s Financial Times Weekend essay on immigration

A Home From Home: From Immigrant Boy to English Man by George Alagiah

A Passage to Africa by George Alagiah

The Burning Land by George Alagiah

CRAIG

Hello and welcome to Desperately Seeking Wisdom with me, Craig Oliver. This is a podcast for people who want to live a simpler, more fulfilled life, but aren’t sure how to get there. A little while back I hit the buffers. Outwardly I'd had a successful life, but I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t see much point in anything. I rarely felt at peace, and thought of life as a grind that I just had to get through. I realised I was far from alone, and wondered if there might be a different, better way.

So, for Desperately Seeking Wisdom, I’ve been talking to some wise people. People who’ve managed to change or have had change forced upon them. What was the wisdom that got them through it? What would they say that would help others, who like me, were struggling?

GEORGE

How have we got to the stage that it takes a trauma to find the wisdom? Why did it take cancer for me to stop and think?

CRAIG

My first guest is one of the faces of BBC News - George Alagiah. He’s had a very successful life, and not just at work. One of those people who is extraordinarily centred and you can't help but like. But everything was thrown into question when he was diagnosed with aggressive bowel cancer. We spoke about living in the shadow of a terrible disease - and what it's helped him appreciate. How are you?

GEORGE

The short answer is brilliant. You know, I'm here, Craig. Er, just over seven years ago, April 2014, I was sitting in front of, er, a couple of top consultants and, and they were saying, ‘Look, we can't really predict anything for you. Um, you're a very sick man’ and, um, I was in kind of sort your affairs out territory, and it could be months, could be a year, whatever. So, brilliant. I, I’m, I'm here.

Medically? Well, you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to get rid of this thing. I've got the cancer still. It's growing very slowly. My doctor’s very good at, at kind of, every now and then they hit me with a kind of big red bus full of drugs, because the whole point about cancer is it bloody finds a way through, and it, and it gets you in, in the end. Probably [LAUGHS] it will get me in the end. I’m hoping it's a long time from now, but I'm, I’m very lucky, you know.

CRAIG

Is there something in the way that your demeanour and your approach to it, do you think there's anything in that? Or is it really down to the drugs and the way in which the doctors treated you?

GEORGE

It's interesting question ‘cos a lot of people say to me, ‘Ah, you seem so positive, I bet that's helping you’. I, I tell you what my approach has been, and, and it took me a while to work this out, probably a couple of years. I remember talking to my consultant said, ‘Listen, doc, I'm not gonna worry. You're gonna have to do all the worrying for me, ‘cos this worry thing is just, it, it's tiring me out’. It was a - quite early on in the treatment process.

What I will do is make sure when I turn up every two weeks for the chemo, or when I turn up for one of the five operations I've had, I will be the best patient I can be. And, and that is, you know, as physically fit as I can be, but as happy as I can be.

CRAIG

But just listening to that. I mean, that seems to me that’s something very easy to say, but actually living the ‘I'm not going to worry, I'm going to be positive’, that does require a certain amount of energy, [Yeah] doesn't it?

GEORGE

Well, it took me definitely months to get there. At first, when you're told you've got cancer and then when you're told you've got it bad, and then you're told, sort your affairs out territory, you know, you just shrink. Um, you don't know how to, how - how to kind of respond, and it took me a while to understand what I needed to do. I had to get to a place of contentment and the only way I knew how to do that was literally to, to look back at my life, because actually, when, when the guy’s sitting there telling you you’ve got cancer, and, and it's not looking good, the first thing you're thinking is, ‘Oh, I’m, I'm being cheated, I'm being robbed’, you know, I'm rob- being robbed of all the things I could have become.

I'm being robbed of all the experiences I might have had, and I had to stop and say, ‘Hang on a minute. If, if the full stop came now, would my life have been a failure?’ and actually, when I look back and I looked at my journey, where it all started, er, the family I had, the opportunities my family had, the - and, and the great good fortune to bump into Fran, who's now been my wife and lover for all these years, the kids that, that, that we brought up, it's - it didn't feel like a failure.

CRAIG

Let's talk about the cancer in a, in a little bit, because I wanna sort of take you back to the sort of childhood stuff and you're, you're talking a bit about that and the experience of that. And you've spoken a lot about your parents, and you know, it’s when I've been reading around you, and you described your father as an idealist and your mother as a realist. Talk a little bit about them and the sort of values that they gave you and the wisdom that they gave you.

GEORGE

I got different things from my parents, that's for sure. My father, yeah, he was an idealist. I mean, a, a better word about me, he was a dreamer. He was a professional guy, was a civil engineer. Hadn't been able to go to university, by the way, so did it as an apprentice. Um, precociously bright. This is in what was then Ceylon, so, um, precociously bright. Got to university very early, family saved up, sent him to uni and then the money dried up. So yeah, so he was, you know, he - he was very bright, but he was also a dreamer.

I mean, let me just give you one story. I mean, here's a guy with five kids that are under 11. Things are not going well for Tamils, we’re Tamils, er, a minority ethnic group in Sri Lanka. The discrimination is beginning to be obvious. This is late ‘50s, ‘60s. And he gives up his job. He sees something in the paper, which makes it clear to him that there is no future for Tamils in the civil service, in public service in Sri Lanka, and he gives up his job.

And my mother sort of thing, ‘What have you done?’ And, and that's a dreaming side of my, of father and, and you know, what a dream, because had he not done that, we would not have got out of Sri Lanka, we would not have got out to Ghana, I would not have had my education in this country, I wouldn't be here talking to you, you know? So -

CRAIG

It's interesting, isn’t it, because when you look back over the years and what has happened to the Tamils in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, [Yeah] it's been, you know, it's been brutal. Um, so is there a sense in which he maybe sort of helped save your family?

GEORGE

Without question. Whether or not we'd have been in those places, we probably wouldn't have been in those places where the actual fighting took place, you know, in Jaffna in the north of the country. We're from the east of the country, but I only have to look now at the face of some of my cousins and relatives who are still there, and who I'm in touch with, um, to know that we dodged a bullet. I mean, we - in terms of life chances, no question about it

You know, I, I - it doesn't take much for me to understand, in a very tangible, practical way, what it was my father achieved through that dream, and the dreaming bit of it is to give up your job when you don't want have - don't have one to go to, but just thinking, ‘I've got to get the family out’.

CRAIG

I love the story that you tell about your parents, where you say that every night, they would sit in bed together and hold hands and do the rosary together, [Yeah] and that's quite interesting isn’t it? It’s good - so they were obviously Catholic, but it sort of seems to me to go beyond religion. There's almost a kind of wisdom, like we need to bond together, spend time together, be close to each other and cement our relationship every day. Is that right, and has that had an impact on you?

GEORGE

It definitely ha- I, I think because my parents were so desperate to get us an education, they had these five kids, but as each of us turned 11, we were sent off to Britain, so actually since the age of 11, in my case, I haven't lived in a family. You know, we - for about eight weeks of the year, we went on our summer holidays, but the rest the time we were with, you know, other - Tamil friends, or with our - the friends we made on the shorter holidays.

Family life, for us, has been quite extraordinary, and yet, we're very bonded, and I think that came from watching our parents, and I, I don't know how it - look, I can't get into their heads of sitting there together but th- if you look at that image, these two people holding hands, saying the rosary, there are two things going on there. Um, there's a quietness. You know, it’s a very silent, you’re just mumbling this thing; this rosary.

And it reminded me of, you know, the journalist Katherine Whitehorn, and I think she, she’d lost her husband and, um, was talking to a friend of hers, and this story came up and somebody had sort of said, ‘But you're going to be fine. You got so many friends to do stuff with’. And this person had said, ‘But I've got no one I can do nothing with’. And I think that's where my parents were. They could sit silently, in companionship with each other.

CRAIG

So it feels like there's a sort of, almost a decision there to work at it, to be you know, to be together and -

GEORGE

Well, do you think it's a dec- I don't know, is it just -

CRAIG

But if you’re doing it every day, it's like a routine isn't it? It's quite meditative. It's quite being present. It's making sure that you're bonding with somebody.

GEORGE

Yeah. I mean, the other thing I should say, y- it was a rosary. So the, the other thing they had is faith, Craig. I don't know about you. Are you -

CRAIG

Do you have that faith?

GEORGE

I don't. I used to row with my dad quite a lot about religion. I mean, he was, he was quite fundamentalist about his Catholicism. It was the only way. You know, I've travelled so much around the world, I know there's lots of different ways to find peace of mind, to find your God, if you believe in one. So I used to row with him a lot, but the one thing I would give him was that I wish I knew how to find that place that he found every evening; that he was being looked after. This notion that it wasn't all chaos out there. Now, I don't know, if you talk to s- er, psychologists, they might say, ‘Oh well, actually, that's mindfulness or that’s science, something else‘. Doesn't matter. They, they did find that at the end of each day.

CRAIG

It feels though, that there is a sort of spiritual dimension, and I think when you use that word, ‘spiritual’, people sort of like, a little alarm bells going off in people’s heads [Yeah] but it's almost that there is something that is tapping into something else, which maybe isn't some guy sitting on a cloud judging you or whatever, but is just tapping into something together. and that seems to work for a lot of people and their relationship lasted.

GEORGE

In fact, if I think about it myself, I got stuck on religion. [Yeah]. ‘Cos my father represented religion, I mean, re-represented lots of other amazing things, you know, but he also represented to me, religion, and I got stuck there. You know, abortion, contraception, you know, er, all these other things that, that, that we used to argue about. And I regret it now, you know. Um, I wasn't grown up enough to say, ‘Dad, that let's park that. Show me how you got to faith’. I remember, actually, I was doing a documentary on, on the Queen and the Commonwealth. Was with a cameraman - I hope you - I'm sure he won't mind me saying this, whose father was very, very ill, and he'd not had many conversations with Dad, and I said, ‘For fuck’s sake, write a letter now, and tell him you’re gonna come and’, you know, ‘And talk to him’ you got to come in and talk to him, because I - that I, I'm left with that. This is not a good thing to be left with.

CRAIG

What, that you didn't say all the things you wanted to say?

GEORGE

Yeah. The worst - kept thinking, has been probably on my head ever since I knew you were going to come here and talk to me, is intimacy. [Mm-hm] And my life is, for what it's worth, is, is divided into pre- cancer, and post-cancer, okay. All the differences in my life are to do with intimacy. And I loved my dad, but I don't know how intimate I was with him. I respected my dad, but I don't know how intimate we were and I - There's a photograph of me and him. Um, I’m, I'm five, six years old. He's in his Sri Lankan sarong. And there's a kind of lovely, kind of protective quality to that. There's an intimacy which I now see, you know, with my, my grandchild. I mean, there's, it's just a lovely photo. And what is it about life that that you don't carry that through?

CRAIG

A lot of the stuff I've been reading is about the importance of those early years and feeling that you have a place and that you're loved and that the, you know, well-balanced people continue through their lives, competent in that. And others who perhaps aren't so well-balanced struggle and it - feel they have to fight and kick and, and that kind of thing. But it seems that you do actually have that balance, that you did feel loved and secure.

GEORGE

We felt completely loved. I think, put yourself in the mind, if you can, of an Asian woman, had to give up education around 16. My mother. Her life is about nurturing children, but her focus was about children, and to give up each of those children in turn and send them off to this place, you know, England, takes a massive sacrifice. And I think we understood that quite early on, that that sacrifice represented a kind of love. So although by the - simply by dint of the fact that we, we, we were sent abroad for our education, didn't live as a family under one roof for a very long time, we're very, very close and I think the closeness came from knowing always at the root of it, was this, this, this love that our parents had, and we're very for- one of the things when I said I reached a place of contentment, I understood how lucky I was.

CRAIG

So it feels like, in a way, um, they've given you that kind of wisdom in your life that you want to keep there and offer that to others too?

GEORGE

Would I call it wisdom, or just that, that how important I think, um, love is? Um, and, and support, and, and I see that mostly, actually now, funnily enough, ‘cos I think when I - as a parent, you know, we've got, er, Fran and I have got two boys. Well, they’re in their 30s - well, one’s a, yeah, 30s now. You’re so preoccupied with just bringing your kids up, getting them to the nursery, getting them to the school worrying about all the other things, are they eating enough? Are they eating the right stuff? And I now have a granddaughter, and and I'm stripped of all that rubbish. I just got to hug her every morning, you know? Um, and I can do actually, ‘cos that- it so happens that they're living with us at the moment ‘cos, er, they're having some work done on their house.

CRAIG

I noticed the front door, you had two cards that you've presumably got on the front door, one of which is ‘Baby sleeping’, and one is, ‘Old man sleeping’.

GEORGE

Er, the old man is me ‘cos I [Thank you for that, yeah] I, I'm afraid, you know, you know, er, I'm on chemo regularly still, and at those times, I’m, I'm knocked out and I'm on the, on the sofa you're sitting on, flat out, having a kip. So yeah, that's the old man, and the other one is, yeah, this amazing kid.

CRAIG

Do people respect the sign?

GEORGE

Yeah, they do actually, [Brilliant] they do.

CRAIG

I just wanted to finish off on the Sri Lanka stuff, and when you went, moved to Ghana, um, and you talked about being in Ghana from the age of five to eleven, and you said that that was a hugely important time in your life. And there was a quote I just wanted to read to you. You said, ‘Those were the years when I had the sense that things were going to be going well for my family. My mum and dad were incredibly happy. I understood that there was a new beginning, and I think that has stuck with me. Even now, every day, I'm always looking for a new beginning’. What do you mean by that?

GEORGE

I think I read - this is a while back. I think I understood even as a child, five and six, looking at my parents’ demeanour that there was new opportunity. I mean, that was the difference. Our life before had been one where, of diminishing opportunities. And, and I think I understood that, and as I've, as I - you know, as the w- years have rolled on, what I want is this gift of opportunity, which I think I've been given, and that's what I mean by the new beginning; that [Yeah] every day is an opportunity, isn't it?

CRAIG

So I thought it was really interesting reading that, that you've chosen a career where, basically, there is a new beginning every day. So you know, when we were making bulletins, it's like, it's done, and it's over, and you can't get back to it and you have to start again and do another one the next day. And the same with a report, you know, you do your report, it's finished. It's either good or bad and you, you need to start again, the next day. Is that related to the new beginning thought?

GEORGE

Well, it, it - th- a s- in a sense, it is. I mean, people always, actually, you know, when I got cancer, the number of people who said, ‘I'm not surprised, you know, you do such a bloody stressful job, you know, deadlines, and this, this and that’. And actually, I used to say to them, ‘Y-you know, I'll tell you what stress is, stress is a care worker trying to make her next appointment while she's not getting paid for the journey, by the way, and, and knowing what she's gonna have to do when she gets there’. To be paid the kind of money I was being paid, even as a reporter, and to do a story that's, you know, you do it, good or bad it's over, you know. Get yourself a beer and it's over, you know, and I did that a lot, actually. You know, you'd come back, pour yourself a drink, and it's, er, you know, to-tomorrow's another day. So there are two types of stress. I think you and I experienced, you know, a s- a kind of surfeit of adrenaline coursing through our veins, you know, I do remember that, you know. Well, I don't know about you, but have we really, do we really know what stress is? The kind of stress that, that's going on in, in some people's lives?

CRAIG

I agree, it is a very different kind of stress. I do think though, that I mean, I look at my life of being, you know, um, editing TV news bulletins, and then in Number 10, and I do realise that basically, for years and years and years, I allowed myself to have vast amounts of adrenaline and cortisol pa- passing through my body, and that's not healthy. When I stopped doing both of these things, it took me quite a long time to come down from it and I was sort of looking around for something to do. Why - why aren't I doing something?

GEORGE

Are you, are you a - because I would say I've had, I don’t know, four, five editors now. You know, no question you were a successful one, but you were al- you were quite driven. I remember that about you. So you - what are you like now? Are you chilled?

CRAIG

I, I, I'm getting there. I think I'm learning to be less driven, and learning to realise that that's not necessarily the thing that's going to make you happy. I definitely think early on in my life, in my career that I thought if I just pushed hard enough, if I drove hard enough, or if I achieved a certain standard of excellence, there'd be a point at which you crossed the line, and you'd be happy and everybody’d look at you and say, ‘Oh, yeah, you've made a success of your life and everything's okay’. And actually, you realise that it doesn't work like that. And actually, you need to find happiness, um, in, in other ways.

GEORGE

And I don't know if this is a direction you wanna take this chat, but you see, I think something's got to happen to make you stop. I don't know if you've had that. I mean, in my case, I had a diagnosis of cancer, of, of an incurable disease, caught at a very advanced stage, and it stops you in the - in your tracks, and you've got to take stock.

CRAIG

There's definitely something, isn't there, that people talk about the wisdom of trauma, or the wisdom of a, you know, like an explosive moment where you have to stop. And what I did was I, I realised that I'd been in a relationship that, that, that didn't work, um, and it made me stop and think, ‘Actually, you know, I'm sort of, I'm now in my 50s, you know, I've been working incredibly hard all my life. I don't feel at core happy, so what can I do to make myself happy?’ And I started off by reading a huge number of books. And you know, where is modern thinking, and where has that got us to? And when I read them, I actually felt even more, more depressed.

GEORGE

Well, you see, th- it begs a question, though, Craig. I mean, how have we got to the stage that it takes a trauma to find the wisdom? I mean, you know, why did it take cancer for me to stop and think? And I think I was always - look, I was a pretty optimistic sort of person, I enjoyed life I had, I knew I was in a, in a, in a happy home and a happy relationship and so on, but it shouldn't, you know, we shouldn't need to have trauma in order to get us to this place -

CRAIG

It’s in- it, it’s interesting, isn't it, because I think that you have to have something to push against. So you know, you know, light doesn't mean anything without darkness, [Yeah] or unless you've experienced something difficult or negative, then how are you gonna push against it, or how are you gonna grow?

GEORGE

Yeah, but imagine what you're saying. I mean, there's a philosophy, if we were - and look, I know I'm saying this too, because I'm, I mean, I’m like you, I mean - but imagine writ large, what we're saying, that we can't get to this place of contentment, which I now have, if you don't have something horrible happen to you -

CRAIG

So - so one of the things I read actually was about somebody who was doing an experiment into, you know, moths and butterflies, and they got a chrysalis in a cocoon, and they got a scalpel, [Yeah] and they sort of helped open the chrysalis, and so that then the moth or the butterfly would come out of it. But they discovered if you'd done that, it can't fly ‘cos it needs the moment [Yeah] of like, pushing hard to get out, to gain the strength. [Yeah] And I - that was a moment for me of like, the penny dropping. I suddenly thought, ‘Actually, that does start to make some sense’. And you can look at it and go, ‘This is so unfair, life's awful, life's terrible’, or you can actually go, ‘This has helped me shift perspective’. And I think that I'd also got myself into a position where I was thinking that life is quite a grind and it was something that I needed to get through, and there would be a point at which I got through it and then maybe I could then sort of relax.

And actually, I read a lot of people, like there's a guy called Michael Singer, who has sort of made me sort of help understand to shift my perspective that, hey, there's been a 13 and a half billion years of universal history, isn't it amazing that you happen to be here now? You're conscious, you get to experience this amazing thing. And if you start looking at life in that way, no matter what's actually happened to you, even lots of negative things, then you can start to sort of live a happier, more balanced life. So Viktor Frankl is the great example of that, who literally in the concentration camp said, ‘I am going to choose at my - to look at my life as a gift’ [Right] and that was an extraordinary thing, where he'd had one of the worst things that could possibly happen to a human being, but he decided to shift his perspective and say, ‘It is amazing that I'm here and this is a gift’.

GEORGE

Yeah, well, I think that's really important because you can, if you're in my position, I think you can get angry, you can, you can feel regret, and, and all those other kind of quite negative things. And, look, there are as many ways of dealing with cancer as there are people who've got it, I mean, we're all different, both physically and, and psychologically, but to get to that point where you're able to see life as a gift is, I think, really important, and th- and I think in a way, that's kind of slightly obvious. The question that -

CRAIG

It is, but loads of people struggle with it, don't they? Because actually, lots of people do find it a fight and a struggle.

GEORGE

I know and that's why I think someone - well, someone like you who's lived in the political world, how do you fashion… a world in which there is time to, to have that thing? You know, short of saying everybody's got to have a failed relationship, everybody's got to have a cancer, everybody's got to have somebody in their family die before we get to this point of wisdom. I mean, what a recipe. But the real question, you, you and I and us, actually all of us, have to figure out is how we create the space for that thinking, in our daily lives. [I think] And, and, and you know, pol- politics, I’m sorry to keep coming back to politics but you know, you're -you know, you were after all at the heart of it. I don’t think politics is very good at that, is it?

CRAIG

No, it's terrible. And I think that that was [Um] that was absolutely the, the classic thing was, how do you get your head above water enough to just take a sense of what's going on, and you know, actually have a proper strategy that’s seen through because the reality of politics is, it is utterly brutal. They’re people whose job it is to trip you up and cause you problems and - [Full of negativity] Yeah, it is and look, I'm not criticising them.

You know, it's really important that the people in power are held to account. But the truth is, it is a minute to minute thing and it used - when I started at Number 10, there was like the, you know, there was 24 hour news and so, you know, the top of the next hour was the, the next thing where everything would click into place. And then actually, very early on, the time it took somebody to do a 140 character Tweet was the next deadline. It was sort of instantaneously. So you were constantly firefighting, and it was a recipe for disaster, and it's interesting, you're right to criticise the political environment but increasingly, I also thought that there's this weird kind of dance with journalism as well, where it just doesn't stop and there's no moment to just be thoughtful.

GEORGE

No, I think, I think journalism has also got a lot to answer for. You know, we want to have our politicians, our leaders to, to think and - but when they think aloud, journalists they say, ‘Oh, but you know, six weeks, six weeks ago, you said this, now you're doing that’. Well, that's what experience is about, guys. [Yeah] You know, if a politician changes their minds, suddenly, it's a U turn.

CRAIG

This is a podcast about people who've decided to change, or had change pushed upon them. [Yeah] So you fall into the sort of latter category, like cancer came along and it made you sort of look at your life. I - we were talking to you before; you were telling me about just quite how frenetic your life was leading up to the day of the diagnosis and it sounded almost to me as if you like, you’re a race driver going round and round a track at 200 miles an hour, and then suddenly you spun off. Is that an accurate description?

GEORGE

It’s, it's accurate in this sense, that, that like a race driver, I was enjoying it, I wanted to do it. I mean, the three months before, you know, my cancer diagnosis in April 2014, I'd taken the news at six and ten to Rwanda. We'd done it from there, from Kigali, in, and, and it- for that story. I’d, I'd flown to America for eight hours to do an interview, to one person. Er, there was Rw Rwandese exile, for eight hours, can imagine? Come back, then fly to thing. I'd been to Colombo. While I was in Colombo -this is the Commonwealth, er, conference that you were at.

Um, there was, there was a typhoon in the Philippines. My editor found something to throw together for the Philippines, you know. Didn’t sleep for 36 hours, got to the Philippines, did the news at ten, flew back to Colombo for the end of the conference. Yeah, it was great! I loved it. Just running around and I was buzzing with kind of, what I thought was creativity and so on. What wasn't happening is I wasn't listening to my body.

CRAIG

So beneath the surface, was your body trying to tell you it was sick?

GEORGE

Yeah, it turns out it was except I didn't notice. I was, I mean -

CRAIG

Did you not notice? Or did you push it to one side?

GEORGE

I think I didn't notice, and nobody told me either. That’s the other thing, you know, we have a health service that - that's very good at dealing with us when we're ill, I think. Less good at, at kind of helping us to prevent getting ill in the first place. I mean, look, I've got bowel cancer, okay, and that's all about, you know, bowel movements, and, you know, changes in habit and so on, and that was happening. You know, I just put it down to, I've just been flying round the world - flying round the world. You know, I’ve been in the Philippines, for goodness’ sake. I've been in a, you know, sleeping on a road in, in, in Tacloban, you know, on a pavement, and God knows what I caught. You know, putting it down to those sorts of things. Actually, that, that's also going on. What was actually going on was my cancer.

CRAIG

You had the test, and it was positive. Just describe that moment.

GEORGE

[SIGHS] Ah! Craig… well, I remember thinking about Fran.

CRAIG

Your wife?s

GEORGE

My, my wife. I just…I couldn't bear the thought. Actually, this is gonna be…

CRAIG

It’s okay. [Um] Take your time.

GEORGE

[SNIFFS] I couldn’t bear the thought of, um, of leaving her. [CLEARS THROAT]

CRAIG

That, I mean, that's incredibly understandable and it's also, it's something lovely in there, that you had her.

GEORGE

Well, I'll tell you what we learnt… to sit opposite the woman you love… and to find a way of telling her that you might not make the end of the journey with her, [SNIFFS] is a form of intimacy. God, this is crazy, isn't it? I mean, seven years in Craig, I’m -

CRAIG

It's not crazy at all. I think it's, I think, I think it's lovely, and in many ways, in the sense that you know that it's so important, and I, I am interested in the -

GEORGE

I’m just amazed that I’m still -

CRAIG

- the way that you’re, you're talking about, we're talking about wisdom and change and that kind of thing, but - and the word that you’ve said that you want to come back to is intimacy, and actually having that, finding that, and also worrying about the loss of it.

GEORGE

Yeah, I mean, look, as I said, I mean, to, to get to that point where you have to be so honest with each other, and say, ‘Look, you know, this thing that we envisioned together may not happen’, got us to a place where, you know, we thought we had a great relationship, and we got a better one. You know, obviously, I wish I'd never ever had cancer, obviously, but I'm not a hundred percent sure that I'd give the last seven years back… ‘cos I've learnt stuff about myself, I've got my - think about life differently.

Um, my relationship with friends…

CRAIG

You've become wiser.

GEORGE

… is - I’ve b- become wiser, and, and life's richer. Is it - why is - am I wi- Yeah, I think yeah, whatever wis- I mean, I’ve been thinking about what is wisdom? You know, wisdom is - it comes from experience and, and it’s - the interesting thing about that is you think, ‘Okay, wisdom comes from experience, and that, that's like special pleading from a 60- year-old or a guy in his mid-60s, oh, you can only be wise, you know, when you're, when you're kind of old’, at, at the wrong end of life, as it were. And I don't think it is - you know, age is a part of wisdom, but it's also I think, a part of, of doing stuff, of putting yourself out there, going beyond your comfort zone. And, and, and learning lessons. I mean, what, what is wisdom if it isn't kind of, um, you know, an accumulation of lessons learnt?

CRAIG

So two things. I mean, the first is it's sort of knowing what's important, [Yeah] I suppose. It sort of forced you to look at what was really important, and sleeping on a pavement somewhere or rushing around the world is fun, or can be interesting, but the thing that mattered to you most was, was Fran.

GEORGE

Totally, totally, and, look, I - you know, and obviously Fran, the b- the boys. Yeah, definitely, de- it, it, it would not matter to me now - I brought out a book during all of these last seven years, a novel, my first novel, um, which is great and I'd like to do another one, but it would not, it's no longer the most important thing in my life. Um, the most important thing in my life is to enjoy the relationships I have, to enrich them, to nurture them. If you're a presenter, doing the job I've done, you get invited to lots and lots of things. It’s nice to go to quite a few of them. I just stopped.

CRAIG

It's, it’s interesting, isn't it? Because both of us, I think we're saying, that what the world, you assume is important or the world tells you is important, and that you chase after and grab, often isn't. So as you say, going to some glittering party or completing a book, or something like that actually, quite far down the list of priorities.

GEORGE

What really gets me, what worries me, and going back to what we were talking about earlier, is why did it take cancer? You know, how can we build this thoughtfulness? Being in the present without going through trauma?

CRAIG

And I think that's part of what, why I want to talk to people like you is because I think it is people being open and ex- talking about their experiences, and say- and that to me is part of the wisdom is, ‘Look, I've been here, I've been down that road, I've seen it, I can tell you my experience and I can tell you what's truly important, whether or not that's something that you can truly hear until you've had some experience yourself’. Because, you know, I will chase after things, or I will go after them.

GEORGE

Okay, let’s, um, give an example, and one of the things I've learnt is, is it's okay to be vulnerable and it's okay to tell people that you're feeling vulnerable.

CRAIG

It's not only okay, I think it's, it's sort of advisable.

GEORGE

Yeah. Yeah.

CRAIG

It's actually, we should all be talking to each other about our experiences and why we feel stressed or anxious, but we, as you say, that you feel that you have to kind of cover that up. You were talking about how at the BBC, did we ever have an intimate conversation? Because actually, we were in an environment where that would probably be considered, [Yeah] why aren’t you focusing on the day job? Or [Yeah] you know, shouldn't you be chasing after this? Why are you talking about your feelings?

GEORGE

Yeah. I mean, I - look, I, I remember, um, about us meeting at, at the Royal Albert Hall. We were both at some gig, I can’t remember what it was -

CRAIG

It was, it was w- it was one of the Proms and I was in one of the boxes, very fortunate, and somebody said, ‘Oh, did you know a few boxes down, George is there?’ You know, er, and they, and then they warned me. They said that you were very sick, and I saw - came along and, and had a chat with you and you were as charming as ever, but you looked really ill, and people were basically saying at that moment that you weren't long [Mm] for this world. And actually, then you sort of had a period of, um, you know, it appearing to get better and then you were told again -

GEORGE

It came back, yeah.

CRAIG

- that it came back. That must have felt quite cruel.

GEORGE

I wonder what it is you saw in me, I mean, when you say I didn't look well. You see, I - the thing I remember most about that period, in a way, is not all the operations, the five surgeries. Not all the, probably now hundreds of rounds of, of chemo. What I remember most is feeling diminished. Probably what you saw in me that day, er, I lost confidence. So I might have - and, and, and that - you know, you might have spotted that in me, actually, ‘cos so much of our lives, so much of how we, when we meet people, how we present ourselves, is about a confidence, you know, in being me and you project that and especially in the job I do, you project, you, you have to project kind of confidence ‘cos if you're not sitting there in the, in the studio showing confidence, the audience is gonna feel, ‘Oh my God, I'm not in safe hands’, and they’re not gonna th- think about the news, they’re gonna think about is this guy gonna get through the programme?

And I remember that period very, very well, feeling very vulnerable, feeling very diminished and I remember going back to work and actually telling my editor at the time, Paul Royall, and saying, ‘You're gonna have to hold my hand on this one’ ‘cos I’d been off for 18 months, and I didn't feel very strong. That was an occasion where I had to say to someone, ‘I'm feeling vulnerable’, someone professionally. I can see it, actually photographs of me at that time, yes, I'm a bit thinner and so on, but actually, I, I d- I, I sort of feel I can see that kind of diminished personality, if you like, in there.

CRAIG

I want to go back to you know, I know, I know it's very difficult but you know, like, the, the thing about leaving Fran, and also the - being diminished. A lot of the stuff that I've sort of read about wisdom, people talk about acceptance and actually, when you get to a stage where you go, ‘Okay, that is the way it is, and I can either fight it and exhaust myself and be unhappy, or I can accept it’. Do you feel you've been able to accept?

GEORGE

It’s like - you use the word ‘acceptance’. I think what I've got is contentment.

CRAIG

You’re content that this is the way things are?

GEORGE

Yeah, I am. I had to work at it, as I said, I had to do the pros and cons. And I'm content that if it all had to stop now, that actually it's been, it's been, been a good run. So I've got to contentment. Acceptance,

I'm not gonna give up. You know, I'm not giving up.

CRAIG

I don't think it's about giving up. I think it's just that this is the way of things you know, thing- things begin, they peak, they end. You know, things ch- that change happens. There are things that happen in the world that are unfair and difficult, but actually once you start accepting that that is all - become contented with, that that is the nature of things, then it's, it’s not such a grind or a struggle.

GEORGE

I think I always knew that, that, that there was a kind of impermanence. You know, you can't be a foreign correspondent and do the things I, I, I’ve done, seen the things I've seen, and not know about the impermanence of, of, of life, and too often lives curtailed. Um, I, I've seen that. What I think I have got to a place is, is to see life as a gift and, and rather than kind of worrying about when it's gonna end, I've got to a place where I can see it for the gift it is, and how much -

CRAIG

Yeah, and I think that that is a true piece of wisdom because actually, a lot of people see it more as a struggle.

GEORGE

And I, I have got that and I, and I, I feel that gift keenly, every morning. You know what I do, Craig? I have a few mantras, and one of them every night I say to myself, ‘Georgie boy, are you gonna be here tomorrow morning?’ And you know, for other, how many th- hundreds or thousands of days in the last seven years, the answer has been, ‘Yes. Yeah, George, you are gonna be here in the morning’. I think, ‘Fuck me, what a gift’.

CRAIG

So we talked about, you know, the time in Ghana and wanting a new beginning, and, and that kind of thing. One of the new beginnings was when at the age of 11, you went to the UK and you were, you were sent abroad and went to a boarding school. [Yeah] Um, and that it was in that moment that you realised that racism existed.

GEORGE

Well, I didn't know I was brown. [LAUGHS] Like, I mean, it happened in, in, in the first week, you know. It was a Catholic school, it was a day - basically a day school with a bit of kind of boarding attached to it, and I can remember, you know, being in the showers in the first week, and being teased about my colour, and, and feeling - I felt embarrassed, lonely. But what I did was I laughed with everybody else. ‘Oh, yeah, what a great joke’.

CRAIG

Do you feel the pain of that, looking back?

GEORGE

I'm so glad that my children didn't have to go through that.

CRAIG

‘Cos I, I can see why, you know, you'd carry some anger from that.

GEORGE

I - I'm - actually, no I'm not, I'm not angry about that.

CRAIG

Why not?

GEORGE

Um, I think because there's a lot of talk, discussion about race in, in our country, and you know, is Britain racist? I think there are plenty of racists in our country, I think there are plenty of. there's plenty of racism going on. I've never been able to subscribe to the view that Britain is inherently a racist country. I know about its imperial past, I know, all of those things that, that might make people think, how can it be anything but racist?

And the point is that though I did face racism, I can remember being chased down a street in Pompey in Portsmouth, by, by skinheads, you know, chucking milk bottles at me and stuff. But the people who, who defended me on those occasions, I didn't have an immigrant home to go to, I had a boarding house to go to, and the, and the guys who defended me, who came back to protect me were white. You know, so I had, I had examples of, of white people being racist, and white people not being racist, so, no, it didn't make me angry but it did make me, as I say, I kept my head down, and I regret that.

CRAIG

A younger generation, in terms of dealing with the fact that racism exists is that, you know, that there should be zero tolerance. It is a cancer, it's a stain, it's a real problem. And that not all calling it out and just stamping down on it when it happens, and being absolutely explicit and clear about it, is - there's a danger that's what allows it to continue, and that actually, if you make an excuse by saying, ‘Well, there are plenty of other people who aren't racist, and people who came to my aid’ that in a way, you're allowing it to perpetuate. Is - do you understand that way of thinking?

GEORGE

I, I do, actually. This last 18 months or so since George Floyd's murder has, I think - I’ve, I've had to think very, very hard about it because just within the BBC, you know, we have these forums, and I've been to some of those, and, and it's the difference between my generation, I'm the generation that, that was almost grateful to be in Britain - I’m the grateful migrant. And when I've been along to these forums at the BBC, it's a younger generation, these are the children of immigrants, the second generation or whatever, or third, some, in some cases, and there is an anger, and I've had to understand that, that I need to learn from them, actually, and to be much, much angrier.

CRAIG

So do you, do you feel that there's a kind of wisdom to their thinking? Or is there something they could learn from your approach? Or both?

GEORGE

I - both, I think. I, I certainly think I'm learning from them. There is something in that anger, that, that you need that almost, to, to, to really push back harder, whereas because I was, I was thinking, oh God, how lucky I am, you know, look, compared to my, my cousins, you know, in Sri Lanka, look at the life I've got, I must be grateful. And they’ve moved on from that.

CRAIG

It’s, it's an interesting example of wisdom not necessarily being the preserve of older people.

GEORGE

Yeah,, it, it's expressive. I mean, you wouldn't say, you wouldn’t necessarily look at these young people and say they're wise. You’d just say they're sharp, and they're angry, and they're dedicated. But yeah, there is a kind of thing they've learnt, actually, for - at, at their age, they've already learnt that they actually need to sort of plant the flag, stand in a place and say, ‘This far and no more’.

CRAIG

And one of the things we've been talking about is that you want to have this Museum of Immigration for immigrants. Um, tell me a bit about that, and why you feel that's important.

GEORGE

I think it's important for, for lots of reasons. Firstly, you look at someone like America, which recognises the contribution. I mean, you know, America’s got plenty of problems, alright, we know that. But if you go to Ellis Island, which is this port where immigrants used to come through, and it's been turned into a museum. It's, it helps Americans work out that they are a country of, of migrants, and I don't think we've got to that position yet, and I, and I want a museum, a migration museum to be a place where we can A) celebrate the fact that people like me didn't come here empty handed but you know, we came here with our talent, we came here with our capacity for hard work. And I want to tell that, that story, but I also think, a migration museum, this is not some fusty old institution with columns outside and so on, but it's a place of debate where we can take, I think, some of the, the unkindness out of the debate and actually talk to each other, [Yeah] I think.

CRAIG

We're coming towards the end, [Yeah] and I'm afraid I'm gonna get a little bit heavy again. Um, Michael Singer, who's a guy that I've been reading and find very wise and very interesting about life and that kind of thing, it’s at the end of his book, a book called ‘The Untethered Soul’, the last chapter is about death and he talks about death being an amazing teacher, because when you properly take that on board, you start to realise how you should live your life.

And then I was reading another guy called Eckhart Tolle, um, who's also quite famous in this kind of like, how do you live a good, wise life, and he says that it's almost illegal to see a dead body in Western culture. That, you know, it’s most people go through their life [Well, we - yeah] never seeing it. But you, as a foreign correspondent, must have seen endless dead bodies, and then you're also confronted by your own death. I’m just interested in getting you to reflect on that.

GEORGE

There is something certainly around that, that we don't deal with death, I can remember still, ’67, going back to Sri Lanka and my uncle dying, and his, his body being brought back to the house. And, and as kids, you know, seeing this dead body there. Um, it was, it was a wake, and we don't do wakes anymore. That wake, I remember, I remember that wake so well because all the living people around the, um, around this body, and mourning crying, laughing, shouting.

So it became - that, that body lying there was a kind of continuum, it wasn't something separate. And, and I think there's people living there, as I say, mourning, crying, laughing, around this dead body. This is a natural thing that happens, the kids can be there, they can see it all, because this is how, how it, how it all ends. We don't talk about death enough, I don't think. Our, our medical system is geared up to intervene, intervene, intervene, but there does come a time when you need to have a gradual acceptance that actually this is the way it's - you know, that, that the death is coming, and that you have a choice about, about, about how that should happen, and I don't think we do enough of that. Cancer, of course, for me, has made, made it much more real, hands down.

CRAIG

And that’s why I think that word ‘acceptance’ that we were talking about - you, you used contentment - the, the word ‘acceptance’ I think is so important to a lot of people, in terms of talking about being wise. It is that sense in which you have to, you know, this is the way it is. If you're fighting reality, then you will be anxious and unhappy, and there'll be something that's discordant in you. [Yeah] It does mean understanding that you have been born into this order. This is the pathway of it, and I'm going to accept that that's the way things are and I'll probably be happier for it because I can't avoid it.

GEORGE

Yeah, I mean, in that sense, that acceptance, but, but you need to, you need to have those conversations so that, so that acceptance becomes possible. We just treat, constantly treat death as this t- you know, terrible shock. Oh, my God, so and so’s died. Actually, you know, it was going to happen. Um, and, and that can only come about by making it something that, that's not a taboo. And I think it probably still is a taboo in our, in our society.

CRAIG

Almost like trying to stop it, that it [Yeah] you know, you can’t - it - let’s - the worst thing that could possibly happen is that, is that you die.

GEORGE

I mean, it was interesting. My, my father died, actually, just the year before I was diagnosed, thank God. Um, and I remember, we had an exceptional doctor, he was a very young guy, could have been my son, and he just quietly took me to one side and said, ‘You know your dad's not going to leave this hospital’. And it was, it was quite an interesting moment, er, the way, what - the - what he was trying to tell him. I thought that was wise.

CRAIG

We've covered a lot of ground in, in this conversation and one thing that I'm talking to a lot of people about, you know we talk about change in people's lives, and wisdom. The, the question I sort of wanna ask everybody at the end is like, you know, if there was one piece of wisdom that you would give to people or say to people, what would it be?

GEORGE

Wow. I think it would be something like this. I think it would be to constantly ask the question, what is it we can do together? ‘Cos I, I think that's what I've learnt over these last seven years. You know, we've talked, Craig, you and I, er, about vulnerability. We've, we've, we've talked about intimacy, but all of those things that are, are to do with sharing thoughts, ideas, asking for support, asking for help, um, they're about togetherness, and I think, what is it we can - yeah, what is it we could do together, would be, would be what I would pass on.

And because we don't do that enough. I mean, you know, take the world that you were in so recently, the political world, it's all about being adversarial. Um, we've talked about in my work, how so much of it is, is, is driven by competition and deadlines and so on, and, um, and I think to, to actually try and get to a place where we're talking, asking each other, ‘Okay, we disagree about things, but what is, what are the things that you and I can do together?’

And, and what worries me actually quite a lot, is the way in which - it's a very, if I may say so, kind of a very Western approach to life, and what I find really sad is the way that's now sort of bleeding into, into other cultures. You know, I mean, it - I spent a lot of my time, as you know, in Africa, and, and it - this is, in South Africa, they have a word for, this word, ‘Ubuntu’, which is this thing, idea that, you know, I'm only human if I recognise the humanity in you, and, and actually, you find that in lots of other African cultures. There's this, this collective notion of life which I think we have lost.

CRAIG

Many thanks to George for his wisdom. He's currently off work, having more treatment for his cancer. We send him our love and wish him and Fran well. Thanks to Gloria, Barney and Georgia for their help putting this together. Please like and subscribe to this podcast, and tell people about it. For transcripts and further reading, head to our website, desperatelyseekingwisdom.com. Next week's guest is the director, screenwriter and Comic Relief co-founder, Richard Curtis.

RICHARD

Life has a pile of good things and a pile of bad things, and the good things don't mean the bad things don't happen, and the bad things don't mean we should ignore and not relish the good.

CRAIG

Make sure you listen next week to hear Richard speak as you’ve never heard him before. This is a Creators Inc Production and I’m Craig Oliver.