 I'm a massive fan of Bruce Lee, like absolute legend, when they say, working on some script ideas. He had a headache. She gave him some pills. And number three, kick the shite out of him. That's not a good deal, is it? You know? Because we're all going to lose people that we love. Buddhism is about learning how to not be so affected by the winds. Chris, how are you, sir? Hello, mate. Very well. Thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm a big fan, Chris. A big fan of your show. Oh, well, that's just an absolute honor to hear. I'm not really good at taking compliments. I've watched your podcast. I like it. I think it's great. I think it's a real brand. It's very clear and definite about what it is, Chris. And you're very clear about your message, you know, get out there and venture like life's worth living. And I love that message that you put out. You were saying about there's no such thing as bad experience. I think that's really empowering, mate, to be honest. And I think that's really, really important for not just young men to hear, but all men, really, and women, of course. But I'm just talking from my own perspective. People look at out there. You're here crediting me. I've just been listening to your work on Buddhism. What is it the Buddha said? He said, you know, you fight anger with happiness. You fight. Yeah. You fight. It's all about transmuting, isn't it? It's like about transmuting emotions, Chris, you know. And that's what attracted me to it very much. I think I think essentially Buddhism and the study of it is about it's about helping people find their place in the world. I don't think it's about telling people what to do. Or what to believe. In fact, my Buddhist teacher, first thing he said to me, he doesn't believe a word I say. He says, run it through your own common sense first. If it makes sense to you, then investigate it. But don't just believe it because I'm saying it. And I thought that was like really profound. You know, he said, get it off the paper, go and live it, go and experience it. And so it's certainly been a source of comfort and help for me through my life. And it's definitely changed the way I do things. Look at things and act and react. And then it kind of matures over the years. And I'm not trying to say I'm anything special, but you know, the more you study and the more you practice it and think about it, it does kind of start to become what I thought was a better framework for living your life, you know. Yes. So there will be many people listening probably don't really know what Buddhism is. I mean, I only know because I spent time in the Far East. I'm not saying you have to spend time in the Far East to understand what Buddhism is. But for me, I had to. And it was very simple things like my sister-in-law was Thai. Yeah. Or is Thai, I should say. And to see her attitude towards things, which is completely different from ours. So, for example, acceptance, you know, just accepting all people and all difference. That was a sort of eye opener. I was wandering through Singapore one day, Chris, and we got to a Buddhist temple. I've actually, funny enough, I put the photo of it on my Instagram today if anyone's listening. It's this, I don't even know if it's a Buddhist statue. It might even be Hindi. It's like this cat looking. I can't even remember, to be honest. But anyway, so I'm walking past this temple with a local Singaporean. And he started to, you know, do some sort of like prayer ritual out of respect. And he turned to me and said, ah, Chris, what religion? And I said, I don't have one. He went, ah, free thinker, right? And I thought, you know what? You've just hit the net. That is exactly what I don't want to be. My family, we came out. We fought our way out of slavery. The thralls did, right? I don't want to go back there. So, but again, this very accepting, you know, there's him, he's doing his, you know, but when I said, no, I don't do any of that, he's like, oh, wow. He just had great respect for me. And yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in that sense, Chris, it's more like a philosophy than a religion. I think it should be, I think it really is actually a philosophy rather than a religion. So it's like, take, you know, you don't have to like worship. And in fact, in Zen, there's a saying, which is like a, it's actually a Chinese that eventually became Japanese version of Buddhism. But there's a saying that says something like this, Chris, there's 10,000 statues of the Buddha in the world. Each single one will be an influence to you, understanding what Buddhism is about. So it's saying, don't, don't worship effigies, you know, don't worship things. Don't do that. Just think, you know, just think, calm yourself down, meditate, understand your own mind a little bit better. And that, you know, and there's a bit of direction and guidance. There's no, you know, there's no commandments, if you're like, there's no, you must do this, you mustn't do that. They say there's ways to live your life better, that are better for you, that create a better life for you. And certainly it created a better life for me. But there's no sort of, you know, it's not hard and fast, I don't show it down your throat. And there's, you know, I think it's quite a peaceful, tolerant philosophy, really, actually, yeah. It's interesting, Chris, isn't it? Because I think anybody that's that's gone down the path to enlightenment has followed the Buddha's story. And we'll, I'll let you explain to people what he was a prince, wasn't he? And he, and yeah, but when I look at my life, in fact, can you tell us about, was it Prince Siddhartha? Was that his name? Siddhartha, yeah. So basically, sort of to just paraphrase roughly the story is that he was a prince and his father wanted him to become a king. And he left the palace. I forget what age it was, maybe 25 or something like that. He left out the palace and prior to him going outside of the palace, he'd never seen death or old age. As the story goes, he'd just been completely showered with like every luxury you can imagine. And then he came out and he saw in the streets old people like dying sick and poor. And he was like, oh, what's this? You know, imagine the privilege, having never seen anybody old or poor. And he was shocked by it. And then he wanted to try and understand it. So he went and studied in the forest and studied with like wise men and, starved himself and meditated for extended periods of time until he came up with a formula of understanding about the cycle of life and death, basically. And again, to cut a long story short because you could talk about this for years, really. But he said, right, life contains lots of suffering that we don't understand. So there's the suffering of age, suffering. There's a suffering of being born. In fact, there's a lot of suffering when someone gives birth. And when you're born, the suffering of age and the suffering of like actually acquiring material goods and being separated from them. So you acquire things, you get attached to them. Like my master said to me, well, imagine you buy a yacht, is that a good thing? I was like, wow, a yacht, wow, that's an amazing thing. And he said, but what about when you're not with it? Are you worried that someone might steal it or might rot or get damaged? Well, yeah, yeah, of course. Well, that's the kind of suffering. So he talks about like, he talks about the subtle sufferings in the things that we think are not suffering, right? And then he talks as well about understanding that as a way to set you free. And when you understand you're suffering, the sort of little bits that you deny in your mind, you change the way that you act and then you change the way just naturally, you don't have to force it. You then change the way you act towards other people because like in your life, Chris, you've had a lot of suffering, you've had a lot of hard times and I'm sure that built a lot of empathy in you to understand other people's difficult times. And so I think, I'm not, I mean, I didn't actually know we were gonna talk about Buddhism on the other side. I'd have read a few more books and like come up with some clever words to try and impress you. But I think essentially it's talking about just understanding being empathetic and kind but not from a place of where you have to be, coming from a place of like just understanding yourself and then trying to understand other people. So that's I think essentially what it is now. In order to step out of the matrix, which I refer to as setting foot down the path of enlightenment or even indeed being enlightened, does it require a traumatic experience? Experience, maybe even a traumatic childhood experience is the requisite, you know, not to say you can't become understanding or some people aren't just genuinely nice people, da, da, da, da, but to actually see the truth in life, which many people find really hard. I know people, they're not in the, they've got like they stepped out of the matrix with one foot, they're in this brave new world, no pun intended or no reference intended. They realize, ah, that old world, it's not, that shit doesn't work, right? But in order to try to make sense of this new world, AKA enlightenment, they use in the old school rules, right? So they'll say, you know, we've got to fix the planet, you've got to fix it, we need to vote in this guy. And it's like, no, no, you can't fix the corrupt system using the same corrupt system. It's not really sense, you know. It's so hard though, isn't it? Because the system's so all-encompassing and it's so big and it supports everything that you've been told from year dot. I mean, it's a bit like a kid realizing that Father Christmas doesn't exist, isn't it? Yes. It's like, wait, Father Christmas doesn't exist. I've been lied to, what? But then you still carry on giving presents and you still perpetuate the same, you know, I would say lie, it's a harsh word for your own kids, you know, to keep them in the system. Can you imagine, like, you've got kids, I've got kids. Can you imagine your kid, when they're five-year-old, you're gonna, there's no Father Christmas and I want you to go tell your mates, it's all a big lie and I'm not buying you anything for Christmas. They go to school, they tell their mates that and they're like, what the hell? Everyone's, like, you almost do it just to keep fitting in with everybody else. You know, you have to, the system is designed so that, you know, it keeps you in. It keeps you in. Yeah. And you have to have some degree of, you have to have some degree of like, you have to kind of have one foot in it to survive, you know, to pay the electric bills or whatever. I'm on the same page as you, mate. I like, I've long thought that we are, you know, we're like slaves building pyramids, really. You know, the big banking system and everything. It's like, you don't own your house, mate. You, what you do is you go out and you slave for somebody else so that you can pay the slave master so you can rent that thing that in 25 years, you say is yours. And then, won't be tied to anyone who drops out of that system. Even when it's yours, when you die, then your kids or whoever you leave your property then have to pay a third of it to the sociopaths. You know? It is funny though, isn't it? It's the perfect system, isn't it, Chris? If you're in charge, you know? Yeah. You know, there's a saying in Taoism, an analogy that springs to mind. It's like a drop, like you think of a wave on the seat as the waves going forward. And you know, you guess the top bit, the white bit, the crest of the wave. And then on the crest of the wave, there's little drops of water that come off the wave and they come off the wave for a little while. And while they're separate from the wave, they say, hey, I'm separate from the wave. I am a drop of water. I am all alone. But then give it a few seconds and they join back with the ocean and they become part of that wave again. So that reminds me of that, Chris, for a brief moment we think that we're separate from the universe and then we, while we're separate, we think, well, I'll do this, I'll do that. I've got to do that. I've got to find out who I am all the time, not knowing that they're actually part of the wave. And not knowing that there isn't anything to, it's crazy, you have to, I've had to travel the planet and do every single mental stuff that I possibly can to realize that I actually didn't need to do any of that and the pieces in my head and that I am, like I say, I'm insignificant and I mean that in a good way. You know, I don't have to attach any bloody importance to myself. You know, I don't have to achieve any, all I've got to do is just maintain some kind of equilibrium in my life and open my eyes and appreciate it and do a few crazy stuff because after all, we're life-experiencing itself. So why not throw yourself out of aeroplanes if that floats your boat? Let's go back to your history, Chris. Where did Hong Kong come into it? I guess I was about 17 years old, 17, 18 when I went out there. I've been doing much lots of that. Sorry, yeah, go on. Yeah, I thought for some reason you'd grown up a lot younger. Can you tell us where your surname comes from? Yeah, so I'm half Irish, half Italian. So my father's Italian and mother's Irish. So that's my background. I didn't grow up with my father, I grew up with my mother and life wasn't easy as a kid. As a teenager, we had a, well, no, I wasn't a teenager. I don't know how old I was, maybe 11 or 12 or something. We had a break and it was fucking horrible. You know, and it was like petrol burn the house down kind of gig, it wasn't pleasant. And that's the first time I experienced the feeling of, oh, fuck, I'm gonna die here. I really did believe that. And you know that where you think, oh, I'm helpless, I can't do nothing. That's it then, that's my number, that's it. There's like that terminal-ness to it. And that scared me so much, Chris. It really did, it really affected me. And a couple of weeks later, a friend of mine says, come down and do some kung fu. And I was like, that's my luck, isn't it? I'd done a bit as a kid because my family were involved in it. And I was like, I'm not interested. Anyway, they cut a long story short, they dragged me down there, started doing the kung fu and just kind of obsessed with it really. So I really took it to heart and it gave me that structure that I wanted probably something similar to what you found in the military in terms of like regular training, discipline, self-respect. There's a kind of an order and a ranking system. And the more you work, the better you get and the higher you climb and the better you become within that organization. So I did quite well just because I worked so hard I didn't really have anything else going on. Wasn't the internet then, was it? And from there, I went to, I just started going around all different schools, I went very good at schools, it's Lexic. Got a high IQ, but not very good at school. Started traveling around all the different schools, getting on the bus and going and trying this school, that school, the other school. Ended up in a Chinese community center and kind of got taken in really and taken under their wing. Trained there for a good few years. And then went off to Hong Kong when I was about 17. That's where I got involved in Buddhism, by the way. So the guys at the Chinese community center would dabble in things that they probably shouldn't have been. And I know that you know about that sort of stuff and a lot of them went to jail for very long stretches. And again. We're talking the organized crime thing as opposed to the drug thing now, right? Yeah, yeah, no drugs, no drugs. And so what ended up happening was, again, I was left without anything to do really and without that family structure and that was a driver for me very much. So I thought, right, well, I picked up a little bit of Cantonese, a few words by then. I was the only white kid training in that community. And I went off to Hong Kong and went out there to find some kung fu. And to carry on training and find another sort of structure for myself, really. And I came across a Buddhist monk. And I'll never forget. I had a chat with this guy. He was sitting in there in these orange robes and stuff. I was a 17-year-old kid from Birmingham. You know, quite rebellious, really, as a youth. And I said to him, excuse me, that kind of word. And he spoke English. Yeah, yeah. I said, what's with the whole, you know, like wearing an orange sheet? No disrespect. But what's it all about? And he said, he said, I'm a Buddhist. He says, what's that? And he said, well, he said, Buddhism is like, if you think about it like this, he goes, you know, on a tree, you've got leaves, right? And he goes, the leaves, at the certain time of the year, they fall down to the ground, don't they? I was like, yeah. And he said, well, when the leaf falls down, the wind blows it from the left to the right on the way down. And I'm like, mm, okay. Well, Buddhism is about learning how to not be so affected by the winds on the way down. So what he was saying, Chris, is the practice of Buddhism, not the religion, but the practice of the philosophy, like the understanding, the meditation, the study, you know. He says, that helps you not, you're born into the world, you're that leaf, you get dropped into the world, and you're gonna die, you're gonna go back to the earth. Right, you are that leaf. The wind blows you left and right. The sufferings, the different kinds of suffering that you encounter in life, the different, you know, the different things that you do that cause suffering. And he said, so the study of Buddhism helps you not to be so affected by the winds of suffering on your journey. So you can travel in a more direct path. So that was what, so I went to, long story short, so I went to Hong Kong, and then I was quite taken by that. And I was like, wow, that really makes sense. And I think that's kind of what I'm looking for. So I started studying that as well as the Kung Fu out there in Hong Kong. And I found a great teacher who was a really positive human being. He was a good man. He was a member of the community. You know, in fact, his dad was not knighted because of CBE or something from the Queen. But they were a good organization, very positive, and they worked with youth in Hong Kong. And that was a change of environments for me, Chris. And the Buddhism got me into reading more and studying more. And then I eventually sort of came back and went to university and did a degree in Chinese in London and over in Beijing as well. Beijing, yeah. So it kind of led me in a different path. I don't know if our friends at home can see that one there. I believe that's the Buddha, isn't it? That is the Buddha. And then when you turn it, it goes to Guanyin, yeah. Is that the prince or is it? I don't know what that. No, so basically the first one is a Buddha in there. That's brilliant. I've got to get one of that. Is that like a fridge magnet or something? I'm going to explain it because what you've just said made me, I've just got it out of my wallet, but go on. So Guanyin is the goddess of compassion. So she's popular in Hong Kong. You'll see a lot of Guanyin. Do you get in Hong Kong? Have I just given myself bad luck because I thought she was a bloke? No, no, she wasn't listening. Chris, there is some story that that, I don't know what you call it, it's saint or something like that in English, I suppose. I think she was a man, but then turned into a woman because she had so much compassion for... I was a little bit right then. Something to be there. Yeah. Yeah, no, I, and I want to, let's go back and talk more about Hong Kong because that fascinates me that we've trod the same, you know, we've trod in the same street. Yeah, yeah. No, I was just, I think I just got off the Star Ferry and was making my way into Kowloon. Yeah. And one of the Orange Road, said Orange Road monks came up and do they go like that or something? I've got this stage in my life where sometimes I just can't be asked to say, no, I don't want to give you my money, so I just went, all right. How much do you want? And he went, so I gave him 100 Hong Kong dollars as well, it was about a 10, or isn't it? 10, yeah. And then he went and he gave me this and he gave me this little flippy thing of the Buddha and this man girl. And ever since this was 2011, so for 11 years I've carried that in my wallet. For good luck. I'm not saying I'm massively superstitious, but I thought, why not? I'll keep that for good luck and my dreams will continue to keep coming true. And of course they have, but so 17 years old in Hong Kong, I was 25, so a bit older than you when I got there. What year were you there? Let me see. 90, I guess it was probably early 90, maybe 1990, 1991, something like that. I asked for you, there's the four me. Yeah, I guess, yeah. And which area did you live in? So I lived all over, initially I was in Kowloon because that's where the school was. And then I went up to, I started, I'd run out of money basically, so I started living on over in the West side on Mount St. Davis, which is there, like a youth hostel on the top of the mountain there, and it was like two quid a night or something, you could stay there for, so I was over there for a few months. Do you know that place? No, I wish I could have found a place for two quid a night when I was... I know mate, I know, because it's really dear, isn't it? It's really expensive. It was a slip though, I have to say, because I'd have to get up at like four o'clock in the morning. It was about an hour down, took me about an hour and a half to walk up, and then you'd have to walk down to the town, get a tram, and then get a bus. It would take me like three hours to get to my teacher's school. So, and then of course, there's no food up there, there's hardly any electricity actually. So you come up at the end of the night, you're walking up for the mountain at night time, it's pitch black for an hour. And if you've got, I haven't got any food, I didn't bring any food, so walk back down to the 7-Eleven, it's like an hour and a half down to get back in noodles, you know, so it, but I'll tell you what, it's one of the best times of my life, I was really, really happy up there, it was really fantastic. So I was there for a while, then I've lived back a few different places as well. I've lived up in Chenchao in the island, the island, one of the islands. Yeah, so yeah, all over really. How many years did you stay there? In Hong Kong, Hong Kong altogether, like probably, if you added it all up, probably a couple of years, because I went there after uni as well, I started working out there. Did you get into Wan Chai much into the night clubs? I didn't actually, to be honest, but I do know of the area, I might have been there once or twice. I know it was kind of, I was more like, to be honest with you, I wasn't really into, I wasn't really mixing with the expat community, and I know a lot of the expats spent a lot of time there as you did, but it wasn't really like, if you've got to get up at four in the morning, man, you can't really go night clubbing, you know? Yeah, just do what I did, you just stay up all night. There is that. But for nine days on end, and actually, no, don't do that. Doesn't have a great result, yes. It's got a very bad reputation, hasn't it, Wan Chai? You know, there's a lot of trouble there, although it certainly was, you know, back when we were there. Yeah, it was just, it was interesting. I had two different Hong Kong experience. The very first time I ever went there, which was I was there for like a two week holiday, I just didn't get under the skin at all. I was wandering these big streets, and to be completely honest, I couldn't have told you whether I was on the island, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Island, or whether I was a mile away across the sea on the mainland, because the, in fact, I didn't even use the underground system because I didn't know they had one, right? Or I was a young traveler, so I just thought you've got buses and taxis to places, right? So everywhere I went, I just jumped in a cab and I went under the harbor tunnel, blah, blah, blah. But a lot of the time I was realising, I don't actually know which part of this crazy, huge, vibrant metropolis am I in now? And Chris, it was a different time scale, wasn't it, mate? Because, you know, they didn't have, you didn't have Google Maps and you didn't have like the internet to read, where am I now and where's the restaurant? Mate, I didn't even know what a guide book was when I went out there first, did you? It was like, I can get a guide book in Hong Kong. You just land, don't you? And try and sort it out when you're on the ground. And so it's a very different timeframe. Yeah, it's interesting. You say I didn't know that there were travel guide books until I started travelling in the Americas about, I don't know, let's just say 10 years later. So I'd rock up in a place, whether it's Hong Kong, China, Macau, you know, Thailand. And I'd just say that taxidermy will just take me to the, where's the bar area? Where can I get my little backpack on? And that's it. They go, no, no, you need a hotel. No, I don't, I want a beer. Take me where, where can I get a beer? And that was kind of like my travelling, but of course I missed out on all the touristy sort of things because I didn't know there were books that told you where all this stuff is. So my first time in Hong Kong, I just, I didn't get it. I actually started to get bored. It was so tiring walking everywhere, you know. In that case as well. I couldn't, I would go in a restaurant, look at a menu all in Cantonese or in Chinese hieroglyphics and I just, I wouldn't know what to order. So I'd walk out again and I'd go in McDonald's. So for two weeks in Hong Kong, should be a food paradise. I'm eating, you know, bloody breakfast burgers or whatever the thing, you know, the egg McMuffin or whatever. And they are good over there though. And they sell lemon tea as well in the McDonald's. Well, that's the thing about Hong Kong, isn't it? That it has such a huge competition with Cantonese cuisine, which is the one, probably next to Thailand, the best cuisine in the world, if you ask me. That McDonald's has to be cheap. So you can get a, when I was there, you got a whole McDonald's for a quid, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because they were really trying to push it weren't they to really try and get into the market to compete with the Cantonese food. And the Cantonese like the eating habits are really strong in their culture. Yeah, it's a shame they couldn't have just said that to the big junk food places. But so when did you get your, when were you awarded your first or when did you earn your first black belt? Oh gosh, you know, I guess, well, I tell you what, I was first awarded like a teacher status when I was, I guess I was 18, probably, but by then I've been doing it for, you know, five, six years, pretty much full on. So the teacher status, like there's a, I was told to go teach now, right now you've qualified off you go and teach. 18, 19, I remember I was 19 actually, you know what I mean? Wow, in which discipline? That was Kung Fu. So it was in an art called Yaogun Mun in Hong Kong and yeah, it's a Shaolin based system that my teacher's father had taught him and his teacher's father had taught him. So it had been passed down through the generations. It was really pretty cool, I think. It's quite a rare style and it means. Can you repeat the name of it? Yeah, Yaogun Mun. Yaogun Mun. Yeah, in Mandarin it's Rogun Mun and it means soft. So the ro, the ro character means soft, same as judo in Japanese, like in Japanese if you'd pronounce it with ju, a gun means kung fu, the same gun. And then mun, the word mun means door or gate and it's an old, it's a term that is used before the words like nowadays, you've got chuen, like, you know, like kun, like hong ga kun, the style or the fist in the old days, it's in mun, which means the gateway to. So it's the gateway to the soft kung fu, I suppose it was called. And it was, so yeah, that was the first real thing that I sort of qualified him to go teach. Yeah. Can you tell us the history or perhaps like, you know, you hear this stuff about Shaolin kung fu, don't you, that it was, it was taught to the returning warriors when they hid out in the monastery. Yeah, over to you. Yeah, sure. So any specific area, because this is something I'll wrap it on about for hours, Chris. Well, just so, I mean, if I was to ask you, Chris, where did kung fu come from? How did it originate? What would you tell me? So with the kung fu, where did it start from? I suppose one popular belief is that the monk called Dhamma, an Indian monk was traveling, Indian Buddhist monk traveled across On foot to China from India. And he landed in the northern Shaolin temple about 2,000 years ago, something like that. And he was saddened, he was a practitioner of Kalarata, I always pronounce this wrong, Kalarata Piyatu. So in Indian martial art, he landed there and he was doing yoga and he was stick fighting and doing martial arts and stuff in India. And he thought, you know what these monks need, a bit of physical exercise. So he started teaching there, like yogic type exercise, which eventually became Shaolin kung fu. So that's the popular known about sort of theory of how kung fu evolved. But there's another theory which is less proved, but probably more realistic. So whilst we know all that stuff did happen, the Shaolin temple over the course of its history has also been a hiding place for bandits and criminals. So where would you go if you were on the run? All right, so we know that happened. And we think that maybe there was some influence from those people who've done martial arts practically, and they bought their fighting arts and shared them with the monks in the temple who had an interest in martial arts for life preservation. So it's a bit of a melting pot really, Chris. We know historically as well, China, because there's records of this, there's actual written records in paintings, K paintings and texts that does codified martial arts been going on there for over 5,000 years. There's an art called Jiao tea. And I think Jiao tea, and they would like, they'd fight, they knew through throws, they knew grabs, they knew locks, they knew head butts, they'd wear like horned kind of antlers and skewer each other for competition. So we know that codified martial arts practice was practiced there. In fact, as it was in Egypt, we've got the tombs of, I won't bore you with all the details, tombs of Benny Hassan that they found and they've carbon dated it, 5,500 years old. There's hieroglyphic works there showing codified practice of martial arts, which to be honest, looks a lot like Judo because there's throws and grabs and breaks and all that sort of stuff. So it's been going on for ages, mate. And I think a lot of people just claim it, they say, well, it's ours, it's ours, or for whatever reason they've got. Did it originate as a fighting art or was it like more like a yoga or a meditative kind of thing or a sport? Well, I think it's a fight. I think you're fighting arts, to be honest with you. It was rough back in the day, wasn't it? And in the period of cold weaponry, like steel and before we had guns and explosives and stuff, or the gunpowder was used in that way. I think it was much more important to be able to know your way around a blade, a bladed weapon. So, yeah, I think it's just been practical for people to guard, to protect certain people, to protect prisoners or to move prisoners around from A to B, to protect gold and the transfer of gold. Historically, those were the sort of jobs that martial arts were used for. So it's a, you know, war has been around, hasn't it, Christopher, since mankind has been around and then people have wanted to get better at it, better at war because it's not nice to get skewed, is it? So I think that's, you know, do you know what I mean? It becomes codified and then, you know. Yes. Break off and do their own thing, but ultimately it's all the same and it barely fights in. And is it true then that, I mean, in Cantonese it was, I think it was gung fu, gung, they call it gung instead, not the kung that we do in the West. Is it true that means open hand or originally it did? No, no. Karate, isn't it? Karate. Actually, I'll tell you a story. So yeah, karate, kara, te, te, te is hand and kara is the Chinese word for kong, means empty. But originally when karate was evolved, you know karate originally came from China and it was originally called China hand, not empty hand, but then as it transferred, I think from Okinawa to, which is a lot closer to China and had a lot of Chinese influence. And when it transferred over to the mainland of Japan, they then changed the name. They didn't want it to be called Chinese hand, they wanted it to have a more, a name that would spread better in Japan. Yeah, well, they've not always had the best relationships those two countries, have they? That's putting it mildly. Yes. Yeah. And how many martial arts now are you sort of proficient in? Is it mainly Chinese-based ones or is it...? Certainly Chinese, really. I've done a bit of the other stuff as well, you know. I've done a bit, I've mixed and matched a little bit. But essentially it's Chinese stuff that I love, yeah. So I've studied a range of different kung fu's, tai chi's, and that's what I teach now. I teach tai chi, I teach kung fu. But yeah, it's Chinese arts, essentially. I've studied a bunch of different Chinese kung fu's, yeah. It's all the same, ultimately. There's just different ways of doing things and different flares and different emphases, really. I know, you have a lot of people who come on and they sort of say when they're talking about martial arts, this is better than that and that's better than that. And, well, how could you say they're all similar? Well, they are, to be honest, because there's only so many ways you can hit somebody, you know, you dress it up, do you know what I mean? Dress it up as much as you like, but ultimately, yes, you know. I mean, the philosophy has got to be that of Bruce Lee. Is it not be like, I mean, you got to do whatever does the job and you not anticipate what might do the job. You've got to be fluid in that moment and someone's going to stick a headbutt. Probably the most obvious thing is just, like, move out of the way. You know what I mean? That's your first reaction, isn't it? Or avoid it before it comes, you know, if you can read the situation before. And you can see a matching closer into your space. You know, make sure that you've got that fence up, you know, that you're at a distance where you don't let them get too close. So let's just get some boys' own questions at you then, Chris. So have you ever had to use it in a real situation? Yeah. Tell us what, how did that materialize? A few times, a few times, to be honest. If you, it didn't materialize too well. If you see this knuckle's gone here. Oh, flat knuckle, yeah. See, that's all right, that one, but this one's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was, I got into, you know, I got into scrapes, didn't I, as a kid growing up as a young man, looking for adventure and not really being, not, you know, being, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say gobshark, but like, I wasn't, as a younger man, I didn't really know how to diffuse situations, Chris. I didn't really know how to, you know, maybe I didn't know how to really communicate well and I didn't know how to back down really and to walk away, you know. I think it's lack of confidence really, ultimately lack of self confidence as a younger man. And so, yeah, I have had experiences which resulted in, you know, fighting. For the most part, I've done, all right, I've been able to look after myself. But as you'll know yourself, when you find yourself in rough places and you're a bit sort of orientated towards finding a bit of adventure, sometimes you go down the wrong, you know, you go down the wrong way a little bit in life. And yeah, so. So I mean, my problem, like, working the doors in Hong Kong, particularly on this one club that I mentioned, because I had the anti-progression. So I went from being very spiritualistic in my door work, which is what you need to be, right? Yep, yep. So for example, three six foot two black dudes would be walking down through Wanchai, three abreast, right? Blocking the pavement. Blocking the sun, everything just, yeah. Right? And you know, immediately, they're American servicemen off one of the ships in the harbor, right? You know, for the simple reason, you don't really see, back in the 90s, you didn't see many black people in, you didn't see them out and about, tended to be part of the immigrant community that hung around Chunky or lived in Chunky mansions, right? The cheapest. Yeah, yeah. My buddy Garnay and Mark. And so these guys will come up to the door. And of course, our club was just an RC club. It had a rule, no servicemen. And it also had a rule, no fur and no hats. It just had real finicky sort of owners. So, oh, hang on. Hi, here. Sorry, I'd just like to do a little bit of kung fu every now and then to keep my... Yeah, clean the nasal passages, yeah. And keep my skills up, you know? Because you never know, do you? I mean, you never know. Anyway, so there I am. I've got three guys that each of them are twice the size of me. They come up to the door and they do the, you know, go to walk in the club and you'd have to go, gentlemen, I can't let you in, I'm afraid. Why not, motherfucker? It's, there's no servicemen. Right? And I... That went down well to me after a few minutes. Oh my God, I'd point to the board which literally had 20 rules listed on it, right? Anyone who remembers Joe Bananas in Hong Kong will know exactly what I'm talking about, right? They had a board which listed it, you know? It was almost like things like no boas and it was just... I got it, I got it. It's like, if you've got too much money and you've got too much power, you can invent a load of crazy shit rules anyway. So how do you know we're servicemen, motherfucker? I'm like, because I've lived in Hong Kong eight months and I've never even seen another black guy, let alone three walking side by side. In perfect formation. Where, yeah, we're in Georgetown sweatshirts with the muscles you guys got, look at that, look at that. And then the guys like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I work out. And they're like, oh well, I was military, I was in the Marines back in the day. Oh, you're a Marine, oh, doodle, yeah, okay. All right, we're gonna go and find somewhere else. Cheers, buddy, right. And that was it. I was a good dormant, you know, I could diffuse situation. I could see stuff happening, I could see trouble. I knew how to go up to a guy and go, you're all right, bud. Guy, give me your time, mate. Just ignore, just ignore. Oh yeah, thanks, mate. You know, just little psychological techniques to diffuse trouble without having to fight or throw somebody out, right? By the time I'd worked through three nightclubs and I was in my fourth, one of those nightclubs, instant it was a DJ of the biggest club in Southern China, which is just another adventure again. But by the time I got in this triad run club, I was so like strung out on the crystal meth that I'd gone from being that nice, cosy sort of docile, not docile, but disarming dormant to someone that really felt quite violent and needing, you know, I'm not gonna take any shit. I'll work with the triads, you know? This guy's an assassin, this guy's a street fighter. Don't come in our club and fuck with us, right? And the trouble he was, Chris, I didn't know how to fight. But I was fearless, right? That is a bad combination. So the next time these, you know, the next time there's an American or the next American ship that came in, one of these dudes, and I'm telling you, if you're listening, they like basketball players. They are huge. These African Americans that man the ships, not all of them are huge, obviously, but they just come from big stock, you know? So I've got this guy wandering around in basketball kit. I mean, literally had a basketball vest on, and he's got a beer that he's bought in a 7-Eleven. And of course, I'm like, dude, don't drink that. Whereas before I'd go, bud, look, can I just put that down here for you? Just grab it on the way out. It's just my boss, he'll get up. Yeah, the guy would have gone, oh, yeah, buddy, yeah. No, instead, I'm like, hey, dude, fucking outside with that. You know, like my attitude is changing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, I threw these two dudes out, and then they, or I threw this dude out, and he came back 10 minutes later with one of his mates who was equally as huge, and they stood at the top doorway going, come on out, mother trucker, come on, we are gonna kill you. We are gonna, and I like being, you know, never having backed down from a fight, I just wandered up, I start to make my steps. Fortunately, the triad big brother, the gang leader, was counting the money at the, counting the takings at the lectern, and he went, this guy never looked at you, he just, his body told you what to do, and he went, just put his arm out like that, and I kind of stopped. And then the guy's like, come on in, mother trucker, come on out, we're gonna kill you. And I'm like, so I went for it again, and the boss goes, and when a triad big brother tells you not to do something, you have to obey, right? When you're bossing under Confucianism, tells you anything, you have to obey. So, I was quite pleased he intervened, because those guys probably would have beaten the shit out of me, Chris, you know? Have you ever been in that, I mean, have you, can you give us examples of, have you ever been unfairly picked on where the other guy's not gonna back down, and you've had to think? Oh, fuck yeah. How did you, I mean, well, quite a few times, mate, quite a few times, where there's a number of them, do you mean, or? Well, whatever, I'm just, I'm looking for a story, come on, we want some Bruce Lee shit. Being a bit evasive, aren't I, really? Yeah, you're being humble, mate, in this humble, there's a time and a place for humble, and it's not now. I'll tell you a story that winded me up in Sri Lankan prison, if you like, for a few days, it wasn't very long. So, yeah, I was out there on holiday, and with my girlfriend at the time and her sister, and I don't know if you've ever been to Sri Lanka, it's a lovely country, and they do these great oil massages, right? And nothing funny about it, but they're quite into their Ayurvedic medicine, so here I am on the beach, having in the hotel having this massage, and my girlfriend comes running in with her sister, and her sister's got a big, massive welt on her head across her face, and I'm like, well, what are you disturbing my massage for, girls? I said, what's wrong, what's wrong? And they said, well, there's a guy outside, just basically he jumped on one of the girls and tried to sexually assault her, plain day on the beach, and the sister had got involved in what the fuck you're doing, tried to drag him off, and he picked up a log that was on the, and whacked her across the head with it. And again, I was a younger man at the time, and a little bit more temperamental, I suppose. So I went to, so right, which direction did he go in? Because it's not acceptable, is it? Doing that sort of thing is not acceptable, right? So I'm not one to get into trouble myself, I don't go looking for it, but I wasn't quite, I was in a very bad mood, had what I'd just seen and heard, and so I went looking for him and I got him, and he was in the next village along, and it didn't go well for him. I came a bit of a hide-in, to be honest, and then some banana farmers came down with the machetes and all that, and it got a little bit ugly, it got a little bit ugly, cut a long story short. I ended up, I knew the police were sort of looking for me, so I handed myself in, because they told me that I went back to the hotel. Did you disarm the people with the machetes, or did you knock them out or something? I took out three of the lads with this one bloke, right? And then when the machetes came, I spoke to them, I said, right, this is, I kind of like, I thought, fucking hell, I don't want to get into this. I've done what I needed to do, I'd spoken to and had words, let's say, with those other guys. And I managed to kind of de-escalate a little bit with the banana farmers. To be fair, there was probably about 10 of them with big hooked machetes either being minced meat, you know, I managed to de-escalate and get out very quickly, and I went back to the hotel and told me, you know, police are looking for you. So I went, as far as I was concerned, I didn't do anything wrong. So I went to the police station and I said, look, I'm here voluntarily. This is what happened. And they decided to hold me because they wanted money. Then they said, well, what's happened is the one guy who did what, you know, you said he did, he crushed his windpipe, so he had to go to hospital. He's in hospital, he's got to pay for it. So, you know, crushed his, you know. And so I wasn't going to pay, basically, I was a little bit belligerent about it. I'm like, I'm not fucking, you know, you're trying to rape somebody in midday, a girl, then somebody else gets involved and you hit him across the head, a young woman with a log. I've gone to try and catch him for you. A fight has broken out and his mates have come out and they've been acted violently. So what am I supposed to do? Two of them tried to grab me and put hands up. I was like, I'm not having that. So I gave him a good hiding. And as a result of that, some of the chappers got injured with his voice box, he couldn't speak. It was quite funny, actually, because they came down to the station after his hospital treatment, he was kind of like, speaking like that. And I have to say, I didn't feel sorry for him. My normal Buddhist empathy just wasn't really there that day. So, you know, the chat was known to the police and it wasn't the first time he'd done it apparently. So, yeah, I have kind of, in my younger days, I have kind of, you know, I have sort of got myself in and out of sort of trouble. But I was never going to look for trouble, Chris, and I was never trying to hurt anybody at all. But certain things, I feel very strongly that sometimes we have to act in certain circumstances, you know, so, yeah. Probably could have handled it a bit better, but, you know. Yeah, I was chatting there when I spoke to Steve Green, the other day, we were chatting along a similar thing, and that is, in our day, if you were out of order, you got a punch, you know, and then it taught you not to be out of order the next time. Now, there's so many protective measures in place and laws against that kind of behavior. And to a degree, it's quite rightly so. But, you know, there was a reason that you got punched or you punched someone. It's when that they overstepped the mark. And by taking away that kind of, that control measure, let's say, you then give people an unrealistic idea of what it is to be in a community. And by community, I mean our, you know, local community, our community as a country or the internet community, right? So you've got young people now, it's quite funny. You know, they talk to 51-year-old, 51-year-old combat veteran, like you're a piece of shit. Right? Not that being a veteran means that you... I know what you're saying. Respect is earned. It's not something you just get given because you were in the forces when you were a teenager, right? But what I mean is, it's like, dude, I'm like 51. When I was your age, we would never have spoken to, you know. It's not even like being like abusive or anything. I just mean that like the whole way is like, yeah, we'll fuck, you know, there's this kind of, you know, my narratives just like way more important to me than yours, dude. And, you know, you don't understand it. And it's like, dude, I'm 51. I've lived in 87 countries. I kind of like know life probably a bit better than you. And because you've been allowed to get away with this attitude all your life, because no one's ever been allowed to smack you one. You're living under the delusion that this way of being is acceptable. And it's not about the pain that you're putting out onto others with this belligerent, you know, I can say what the hell I want, you know, it's the fact that you're going in the complete opposite direction of, I was gonna say enlightenment, but probably maybe you'll end up so unhappy that you won't come round to it. Yeah, you'll do what I did, get so unhappy, you've got to work out enlightenment, but yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Interesting. Different age, different age. What about the fighting spears, the asagai? Did I see you doing a bit of TV work around that? You know, like the Zulu fighters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Zululand, yeah, I went out to film a show out in, well, we were out in Durban and then we went out into Zululand, yeah, and I got to have a fight with, who was the tribal champion, actually, he was the son of a chief out there and I absolutely loved that place, man. Those people are so warm, they're so incredible, such an incredible race of people. So yeah, I got to spend time out there and went to see shamans and witch doctors and spent time with them. And I've done that kind of stuff before, you know, in South America and in various parts of Asia. But yeah, Zululand was incredible, so yeah, we had a stick fight, so a funny story there if you're interested. I was at the time, again, I guess when was that, man? That was like, I was living in South Korea at the time and my son used to play, do you remember the Wii? Like the Wii, he had the Wii. Do you ever have a Wii? It's like one of them. Ah, yes, yes. I mean, you know what I mean, it's like a game, it's like the older tarot, like Xbox or whatever. Yeah, you anyway. So he used to be, Chris, he used to be playing this game, right, on there. There's this Wii sports and it was like, I think it was like Kendo stick fighting, it was Kendo or something like that on there and you get these hand controllers and you move them around. And I was trying to do the research because I knew I was going out there to fight and I was trying to find like what, how did these guys fight? I'd never experienced it before. I'd never really seen it. And I got a couple of videos on YouTube which kind of gave you a hint about their stick fighting art which is really, really cool by the way. And I was talking to my son about it, he was about five or six years old at the time. And he was like, dad, come on, let's practice on the Wii. This is how you're gonna do it. And anyway, my six-year-old son came up with this strategy like on the Wii that when they hold the stick this way on this sword fighting game, if you strike that way, it's gonna block the stick, right? So whenever the stick's up, you don't hit them across, you hit them down. Whenever the stick's, if their block is across, then you hit them across. And so I just trained that in and I was trying to move in a certain way so I could take advantage of the way that they defended and it worked surprisingly. Yeah, very good, very interesting. Incredible. I love all the African history. Yeah, yeah. All the stuff about the Zulu. Sounds unfair saying the Zulu wars, doesn't it? It's more like the Zulu genocide. Just another native population genocided to make way for white European progress. And no, I'm not bashing white European people here, folks. I'm just, I'm actually talking about history. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's easy to look back at a situation and understand it, that's one thing, isn't it? Like I understand it. You had very money and wealth orientated settlers arrive on a nation that looked like the land of, the continent looked like the land of milk and honey man. The only trouble is, there's some other people living here but their ways are so different to us. We can kind of like manipulate them for the most part. We'll just give them a load of shit and tell them it's cool. And then if they don't, if that doesn't work, we'll get the old guns out because they've only got spears and that will send them a good message. And then of course you encroach more and more on their pastoral land and their hunting grounds and their agricultural lands that they've got no choice but to fight back, in which case you massacre them in their thousands, right? So yeah, it's not, it is just the way of the world, isn't it? But when you're in Soweto, so the ghetto in Johannesburg, the township as it's called, you actually are looking at the repercussions of our behavior back in the 19th century when we had like Rorke's Drift and Isala Wanda. You're actually looking at the displacement of these people in their own homeland that are now shoved into shanty towns. They still have their history, they still have their spears and they still sing and dance the tribal songs. So it is a thing. It's not like, oh, that was ages ago in history, Chris. It's like, no, it's still to this day, they're the oppressed minority. It's affecting people, yeah. It's affecting people all over the world, yeah. But yeah, I love, I've read a lot of Wilbur Smith, he talks about the Assagai, the stabbing spear and the shields and the impi warriors and the horns of the bull was there fighting tactic, wasn't it? Their pincer movement was called the horns of the bull. Can we talk about your television work? Because that's quite, you know, it's quite an achievement, isn't it, to get yourself on to, now it's the opposite. No one wants to be on mainstream media, but well, I guess our Middleton still does. Bless him. Sorry, that sounded really patronizing and I didn't mean it like that. I just meant he's doing really well with it, isn't he? You know, he's really smashing out the TV shows and good credit to the guy. But yeah, you've done a lot of it. How did it come around? Yeah, well, long story short, I suppose about two year 2000, I think, I, like, 99, 2000, I came back to the UK. I've been overseas for a long time. And went to drama school and started doing bits and bobs in theater. I wasn't very good. And I wasn't paying the bills. I was renting this, like, rooftop apartment, which was an absolute shithole in North London, just struggling to pay the bills, mate. And honestly, it was like, it didn't even have a toilet in this place. This is in North London. It was like, it was in the, there was like a toilet in the bedroom that reeked a piece. It was dreadful, like, absolute hovel. And yeah, so I just thought I can't do this and getting odd gigs in theater and stuff. So I started trying to break into TV. So I wrote a bunch of formats for TV, started pitching them around. No one was listening, knocking on doors. I just thought, well, I believe that there could be a show in martial arts on TV. And so I started meeting producers, going to production houses around London. And most of them said the same thing to me. It's a niche within a niche. It's never gonna, you're never gonna do that. It's just not interesting. And then 2003, I've got a job at BBC, making the show that I'd created, Mind Body Kick Ass Moves. And it was basically, it was like, I've done a lot of traveling in my time. I've done a lot of studying with different masters. That's what the show's about. So I went around and just filmed with loads of different masters in different countries and see what they did get and get involved with their stuff. And lo and behold, that first one, they played that on the BBC for five years, many nonstop, just kept repeating it. It held viewers, it just held the viewership. And at the time. Can I ask you about the money side of it then? What was your, how did you, how was that an earner for you? So yeah, so basically I got paid as a presenter. So I had three contracts with them. One was as a presenter. I got back end payments as well as the right, I got a writer payment and I got a creator, whatever it is, I forget the name of the contract, but it basically gave me a really good percentage. I forget what it was. It was a really good percentage of international sales. And then the show, of course, became one of the best selling BBC TV shows in BBC TV history. It was a Zali for something that was niche in from BBC three. They sold it to over 180 countries worldwide. So it wasn't kind of, it's not, it's BBC three money. So it's not the kind of, you can't retire on it, but I was able to pay my bills for the first time in my life, you know, and, you know, yeah. So that did really well. That's how it started, Chris. You know, it's just like persevering. It's really knocking on doors and just saying to people, no, I believe it when they're telling you no, that's no good, it's no good, no good. Yes. It's like me talking into my webcam, isn't it? It's right, all kinds of stuff. It's got, you've got like that self-belief to start with and just believing it and to start doing it. And eventually, whatever it is, you'll get there, you know. Yeah. And did the BBC try to interfere with the narrative much? Did they try to shape it this way or that, or was it just not really that sort of program? It did a bit on the first one. Sorry, it did a little bit on the second one more. So I would say the second series that I did with them. Yeah, there was a bit more of that going on. And like when you first go into TV or any kind of creative thing, Chris, you know yourself, you're like, you're quite precious about the work that you do and you think, well, no, I've got this vision. I want it to be like this and you fight for that and stuff. But eventually like I came to realize that I was a bit late to the party really, realizing this because I'm a bit dimmed up that way. But you realize actually, you know what? What these people are saying is actually, they know their job really well and they're trying to tailor it to their audience. So just make it, you know, be more collaborative. And I wasn't, when I first started, I wasn't as collaborative. I was more, you know, I still had that hard mindset of like, no, this will work, which is what you've got to have to get to that first place. But then you need to soften yourself and say, right, now I'm here. I need to collaborate and work with people that kind of take their opinions on forward more without losing your own shape. And that's a skill in itself because you're either like from my training, probably similar to yours, Chris. It's like, you're either taking orders or you're giving them, it's one or the other. You know what I mean? And then so to be the guy who's, you've gone from, you're like, well, no, I'm not taking orders now. I'm giving them in terms of your, you know what I mean in terms of your physical training and your martial arts or your military background or whatever. So you get to a position of authority where you finally, the vision has worked and this thing's working. And you want, and you're still strong to that vision, but then you have to soften yourself a lot and really start taking on board, like other people's, I know it's probably makes me sound like an absolute wanker, but it's not like that. It's like, you've got a strong vision, but you have to, you know what I mean? You've got to develop that skill set, Chris here. Mate, we've been doing a whole podcast and it would be like a five hour one, just discussing what you're saying because it's, I mean, I give you one example from writing. You know, my history until I did podcasting was writing for the previous 10 years. And there are, there is so much stuff to learn to be a consummate writer and publisher. By publisher, I don't mean necessarily like you've got your own publishing. I mean, to understand the process of it all. Yeah. And there's a balance between your art and what's gonna sell. There's a balance between your creativity and what needs to be edited. There you go. There's a balance between your morals and giving the audience what they want. That for me, obviously as someone who tries to be a bit moralistic in my, at least in what I put out on my YouTube channel, that's the hardest one is, you know, I don't know if you ever notice in all my military videos or anything to do, I always want to explain both sides of the fence, you know? I just wanna explain what war really is and what conflict really is. And that's because I can't, I could easily have a channel just saying, oh, military soldiers are the best people in the world. They're just all heroes and yeah, you know, and then bang, they're smashing his audience down on this enemy and bang, you know, it's not really telling the true story, is it? And if I thought, I don't mind young people listening to my story and thinking, do you know what, I want a bit of that, I'll join them, you know, that's just life, right? But I want them to know that I have told you, right? Forget the freedom and democracy shit, that's just the rhetoric they tell you at the recruiting office, you know, you'll go into massacre other teenagers and a lot of people will get very rich off it, right? You need to know that that's primarily your role, not saying that, you know, you might not be deployed in a peacekeeping, you know, a genuine peacekeeping capacity, but when you look back at war and who's traditionally profits from it, it's not the people. Something young kids don't evolve. So I get it, I get it, I can see where, you know, you've had to compromise, I can see where it's like, and it's exactly the same with YouTube, Chris, you know, at some point you have to, I don't say take a knee, but it's the equivalent, at some point you've just got to just like take one for your own team and it's hot, you know, but if you're putting content and no one's watching it and it's not working the YouTube out, there isn't much point being on that platform, you've got to move, you've got to move on and for me, I balance it up a lot with saying, well, look, I think overarchingly, the message I put out helps young people, you know, it helps them make sense of life, you know, sometimes it's brutally honest and not everyone's ready for that, but that's just it. It pisses me off, if I'm watching something and you just ask, I've just been tricked into clicking this, it's like, I don't want to go there again in the future, it just annoys me, so I think, so have a genuine following is much more important than just having to handle those, you know. And it's interesting, you know, it just is interesting and I think the problem guys like you and I are gonna have to negotiate, Chris, is that we've got, we understand that our moral compass is intrinsically tied into our spiritual wellbeing. They're not mutually exclusive. The decisions we make in this life are what we will have to live with, you know, not in eternity, he's not the right thing, but, you know, we have to live with under universal law. So, you know, if I, you know, we just have to and it becomes something that when you're working with other people, you then have to negotiate. For example, a YouTube producer wants you to be the most controversial, hateful, bitter, backstabbing. I'm not talking about my wonderful Ben here, by the way, although we have had, you know, conversations of his nature, what is the channel about and I get it. He's got, you know, we could make $100,000 next year. He's easily, Chris, you know, everything's in place to do that, but I won't do it because you know, it's like when the devil took Jesus up on the mountain and said, look around, all this is yours if you come and work for me. Jesus said, you know, he said, if I come and work for you, I've got nothing. Yeah, it doesn't matter what I've got in material. You know, I've compromised myself. Yeah, I was in a, just this is how kind of tired you get sometimes when you're on the road. I was doing a series for the BBC, Kickass Miracles and looking back now, I'm so glad they edited this out because it's really stupid. But at the time I was like, this is the best things in Sly Spread. I was in a graveyard doing this piece to camera about we just being like some of the graveyards in the Philippines, you know, they're like open. So there's a lot of, you know, bones and bodies and stuff like that. And we've been in there for, I don't actually think it made, I don't think I'm not sure. Can't remember if that made it into the show anyway. But it was interesting because like people were living in the graveyard and for some stupid reason, Chris, I got into my head that it would be good to quote Duran Duran lines from songs when I was doing this piece to camera. So I was like, you see, if you look around, if you look now, all around, there's no sign of life. You know that song, you know, there's no sign of life. And first I got it into, yeah, I just got it into my fucking head, Chris. I was like, I think I was so exhausted. 90 days of filming, we'd been like 40, 50 flights. No, I think it was about 30, 40 flights in 90 days, just exhausted, not sleeping, making really bad decisions. Like thinking, I'm going to do some pieces to camera about something, you know, you just kind of, kind of switch off and it all goes a bit dark. And I thought, right, I just started dropping lines from Duran Duran everywhere I was going. And thankfully, albeit Duran Duran is a very brilliant band from Birmingham, I think. They edited all that out, Chris. So you do start, you do, you know, when you get into it, you kind of, yeah, so it's at the time you're thinking, what do you mean? Well, that is funny, it's brilliant. And it's like, well, you're the only one that thinks that. I've got a Tai Chi franchise at the moment. So people who've been doing martial arts for a while can come and learn with me, beginners can come and learn with me, or people have been doing it for a while. And what you find quite often is when somebody goes out to start teaching, when they first come out teaching, same as they first write their book or they get published or they go to publish something, they think that the world is gonna come to them. So they're good people, but they just haven't been through the process before. And so they think that, well, as soon as you open your doors to teaching or you publish your first book, that you're gonna get customers coming through the doors just because of who you are and you know your stuff and you know your content very well. But it doesn't work that way in the same way as martial arts. Like our guys need to go out and actually build the business as well. It's not just about opening your doors and you know, it was at Kevin Costnerfield, build it and they shall come. It's nonsense, isn't it? It doesn't work that way. You got to understand the business, you got to understand the marketing. Chris, Bruce Lee, right? When I was in that bodybuilding gym in Hong Kong, when Bruce Lee came on the telly as it was, but we didn't have screens back then, we had televisions. Bruce Lee came on on the national news or you know, some item about him in the media. Everybody in the gym just put down their weights and stared at this iconic legend of a man on the screen. What can you tell us about Bruce Lee, mate? Oh, I'm a massive fan of Bruce Lee, like absolute legend, aren't I? He was a guy who, I think, like I think the two things, two massive things that he did were first of all, like breaking into film, right? As an Asian man breaking into Hollywood in the 70s. I mean, it's how many Asian leads did you know now? Even now, you know, 2020. So he was a dynamo, an absolute force of nature, right? So come through a side. So what he did for Asian people was incredible. And I think the figures are still to this day, his last film, The End of the Dragon, is still like Pound or Dollar for Dollar, the highest grossing film in terms of what they've put in and what they've got out. So it shows martial arts can make huge amounts of money in the box office if it's done well. And it shows that, you know, the lead actors in Western films don't always have to be the blonde hair, blue-eyed boys. You know, you can, there is diversity will sell. You know, if somebody's got charisma, they've got charisma, don't matter what colour they are. So I think that was massive, right? And all of that came out of his martial arts, didn't it, Chris? He was, like in terms of his martial arts, he was a guy who broke away with tradition and he started taking the best bits of what he could find at the time and integrating them. You could say he was the father of mixed martial arts. It wouldn't be a leap to say that, mate, because he was incorporating bits of judo, throwing techniques. He's like, well, Kung Fu's stand-up game from Hong Kong hasn't got any groundwork. So let's take a bit of that. Let's take a bit of this. I was just at his house last year and that was like massive for me. So my wife is American and we went over to see her family. She's actually down in the South, but we were over in California and we landed in San Francisco. So we went and did all that thing and then when we left, we had about a day left in San Francisco. So we went up to his old house in Oakland, the place where he first started teaching martial arts in America. Incredible, mate. It was one of his mate's houses. And here's the thing, he's already done a few films by this stage. Now, Oakland, it's expensive now, but it's a slightly downtrodden neighborhood in many ways. It's out of town. You know, it's like probably about half an hour out of town. So it's in the suburbs. And he looked to me from looking at the structure of the house like he was actually renting the top part of the house because you can see like a separate sideway entrance and that's been there for a long time. If you look at the old voters as well. So he was so dedicated to his art, right? He's top of his game in terms of his martial arts, top of his game in terms of he'd made films. He'd already made films at that stage. And yet he was renting a roof section of his mate's house in a suburb of outside of San Francisco. So he'd compromised an awful lot to keep focusing on his art and his film work. Cause you know as yourself, like when you're a dad, you want to settle down a bit, you want to do the best you can for your family. And if you're still running around chasing a dream, it's kind of quite hard. So on all of his family, it would have been really hard. So yeah, it was just inspiring to see that house and to actually, and I took some of the, I looked at some of the old photos you can find them on Google of him standing outside the house and you know, couldn't come forward and you're just like, that's it. Wow, they haven't painted that wall. Well, they changed the garage door, but you can work, you know, you can see this stuff in a young Bruce Lee in the first place that he taught. So yeah, just, I'm a huge, huge fan. Bruce Lee came along and he's this young cool dude who's very, very handsome, you know, particularly handsome for it in the way it transferred from being Chinese into America. He's got this ripped body that just looks like he, you know, it's a tone to race for, tone to perfection. Everything that came out his mouth was just so simple and yet so wise. And of course, he's a bloody ninja at the old Kung Fu. Yeah. He must have changed. I mean, he made, I mean, he made being Chinese cool, didn't he? He did, mate. He totally did in a time period where, you know, the powers that be were not that way inclined. In fact, just to tell you a story, you know, even recently, my wife's cousin bought a property in New Mexico, in Albuquerque, in America. And I think there was something on the land contract that said, no Chinese, I don't know how to buy it. It's obviously an antiquated law, but they hadn't got up to date to getting rid of it. It was still on the contract. And you're thinking like, what? How can this be possible? So like, yeah, in the psyche of the Western people, it wasn't cool to be Chinese. And Bruce made it very cool. And he was very Chinese, wasn't he? You know, he sprouted off the philosophy. He did the Kung Fu. He was a badass. He took no prisoners for a lot of kids around that time. He's, I mean, he is an icon, but he was also, he was like a guy who said, you know, you don't have to live in the normal way, man. There's another way to be, you know, you can get involved in this cool philosophy, get involved in these cool arts. You could be a man, you know? And yeah, resonated, I think. And it still does now, like 50 years after his death, you know? Yes. What a wonderful human being. There's so much mystery surrounding, isn't it? There's been some, I don't know how true they are, but there's been some really good documentaries that have been out. Some had these kind of things like the last 24 hours of so-and-so's life. I think they did one of those on Bruce Lee. And there was a lot going on behind the scenes, wasn't there that we, we didn't, as the public didn't really understand. So there was, I don't know if I'm tarnishing his, his, what's the word? His legacy, but you know, I think there was a bit of infidelity going on there. I think there was- Alleged, alleged. Alleged. A bit of wacky-backy chucked in the mix, which I think he started smoking when he had disc problems, didn't he? He had very severe spinal problems. Yeah, he put his spine out as a, disc problems as a lot of people have in the martial arts. And I think it was popular as well at the time, wasn't it, the wacky-backy and all the rest of it? I think, I don't know if I'm wrong here, but I think they found that in a toxicology report, you know? That from someone in my background, there's not a judgment call whatsoever. What I meant is it was a bit shocking for people that held him as this absolute idol, that this guy's perfect to subsequently learn. No, we're all human, unfortunately. Well, fortunately. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's good. And for me, it becomes interesting, going back to our conversation about what his art is, you then start to see, ah, ah, he had a stuntman for doing that backflip dump because he'd broken his back, right? You know, he had a busted back. I get it now. And then your mind starts to think, ah, I wonder how much of the film work was, you know, it was essentially stunt work. It, you know, he's not- It's all choreographed, yeah. All the fight scenes, they wouldn't stand up in real life, it's just dramatic stuff on TV. And I don't, he wouldn't have thought that way, either in real life, you know, he's fighting art that he developed. Gekundo is very, it's not, you know, it's not, it's not filmic, it's very direct. It's called the way of the intercepting fist for a reason. It's very direct, it's very quick. It's based on essentially like his Hong Kong Wing Chun style at the time, which is very close quarter fighting. And he added in bits and bobs from other stuff as well. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't, you know, it didn't flail around and look wonderful. It was just about stopping people in their tracks, you know. What about the, you know, without compromising yourself, Chris, because I know you're a man that obviously knows lots of people in different places, but what about this route? There was a rumour he'd upset the triads, which was by teaching the West, you know, the secret art of Kung Fu, was there any truth in that? I think it's one of those things again, like where there's some truth in it that's got mixed up historically over the sort of course about, you know, our group memory, if you like. There's a couple of things going on. There's questions as to whether he was involved in any triad activity as a youth before he left Hong Kong and that some people rumoured that, in fact, his dad sent him to go study in America because he was getting into a lot of trouble. He was an energetic lad, you know, and he loved Kung Fu and he was out there and he wasn't afraid to tell people if he thought they were wrong, which is one of the amazing qualities about his, you know, his courage really as a human being, you know. So there's that question. And then I suppose the other thing that we're talking about is when he started teaching Westerners out in San Francisco, what exactly happened around the Chinatown people, I don't know whether they were or weren't members of organized crime, I'm not sure. Wouldn't surprise me if they were. They tend to look after each other and band together especially in overseas cities and Chinatowns. They could, the tongs in America, aren't they? Yeah, as a lot of communities have, the Italians have done exactly the same as well, you know, they've bought some of their cultures and some of their associations originally to when they've emigrated to different cities as well. So there's the question of, first of all, were they or weren't they? That's still an open-ended question, I think. But there was certainly, he experienced a lot of pressure from Chinese groups and martial arts masters at the time who didn't wanna share the arts with Westerners. And I think, again, historically, there's probably reasons for that. And he just flew in the face and he said, no, no, mate, I'm doing what I want. This is what I believe in. There's no difference between any people, no matter if they're white, black, Asian, whatever, they're all people and I'm not gonna view them in any other way. You gotta remember, though, one thing, I think Bruce had some, I think maybe his grandfather or something was maybe German or his grandmother or something, he had some European blood and I suppose that may have influenced him as well to be more open-minded. But he was just like, look, I'm a martial arts master, I'm gonna do what I wanna do. And that resulted in him having some fights which isn't particularly uncommon in martial arts circles to have people, they're martial artists, they fight, that's what they do. And sometimes things are sorted out that way if they can't be sorted out otherwise. So yeah, you had that to deal with, didn't they? In the early, what was it, like in the early 70s or whatever it was? Is there any truth, Chris, in the story that when they were filming, I think it was Enter the Dragon was in that big famous house in Hong Kong with the big grounds, like I think they probably would have been tennis court grounds but they co-opted them into the film as the training ground on this secret island or whatever it was. And I heard a rumor that, or I saw it in a documentary that because all the extras in the Hollywood film industry have traditionally been triads, the triads traditionally running the movie industry in Hong Kong, which isn't a secret, anybody, that a lot of the extras in that Enter the Dragon were gangsters, basically, in the brotherhood. And every time they had a break, one of them would wanna try his luck with Bruce Lee just to say, I can have you, right? And so Bruce Lee would just say, okay, come on. Let's see what you've got. I think so, mate. Yeah, I've heard those things as well that he was challenged on the set a couple of times and just kicked ass. I mean, that's what he did best, wasn't it, really? He was incredibly fast. He was fucking lightning fast. Well, you have to be, if you're that small and light, it's like you say, you've got to hit up with the fist. I mean, you're not gonna grab someone to the ground. You're not going to... No, you're right, mate. You've got to get in and out very quick and that's what he was brilliant at doing. Just getting in, being very accurate, like precision strikes, soft targets, boom, in and out, gone. So yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, people give you a lift, don't they? And you're dealing with rough people, it happens. I don't think any hard feelings were, probably quite gracious about it. Just give them a couple of licks and then picked them back up, shook their hands and dusted them off and back to work, you know? And there was one documentary watch that explained his death really well because there were lots of rumours around that. I can't, I'll be honest, I can't remember what the summary was, but... It was an aneurysm, basically, he had a brain aneurysm. Yeah. For an allergic reaction, they think to analgesic. So like an aspirin or paracetamol, we call them, don't mean England. Yeah. So he had a reaction to it and he had a brain bleed. And that's what he was talking about was, because he was found in another warden's bed. She was an actress that he was working with and he was over there, they say working on some script ideas. He had a headache, she gave him some pills. He went to lie down in her bed, that's why he was found in her bed, you know? That's, you know... And she didn't... That's what happened. She was hesitant to call a doctor, I think, because she knew he'd been smoking or something and of course, by the time the doctor did arrive on scene... What's the message that she... Yeah, I think she called the producer first, didn't she? Was it Raymond Chow? Who was, I think, head of Golden Harvest Studios. Yeah. Yeah. I think with a lot of... Yeah, which is a bit of an unusual thing to do, isn't it? Yeah, if... Well, it's just that substances were so taboo back then. I mean, it's taboo now, but then... Yeah, right. You know, it's how many people have watched their friend die rather than just call a bloody ambulance, right? Because they're afraid of some retribution... Consequences. ...some repercussions, where in actual fact, ambulance crew, you just want to know what's wrong with a person so they can save their life. Yeah. But it's a bit like the Michael Jackson situation, wasn't it, and also Diego Maradona, two people in there who were still under so much pressure to perform and still sought the adoration of the crowd, both of whom actually took amphetamines to try to get their careers back on the go. So Michael Jackson was taking amphetamines to try to perform his dance routine, as he had as a 21-year-old, but now he's 40. Diego Maradona was the same. He, when he was banned from the World Cup, he tested positive for some form of amphetamine. And it's sad, isn't it? Because something that you understand, you know why these guys wanted to be up there. They, you know, they... A bit like Paul Gascon, isn't it? You know, they have this massive glory year or two, then they get beset by an injury or something, and through no fault of their own, they have to take this step back and they have some down years, and then they get the chance to get back on a horse again. And of course, you know, it's really tempting to want to, you know, put the odds in your favor, right? You know, I completely, you know, still don't understand this thing. But I heard a little bit similar thing with Bruce that, you know, his body was failing him, I think, because he was in his 30s when he died, was he 40 yet? Yeah, I think he was 34, 32, something like that. He was young, very, very young. But he'd over-trained as well, haven't he? Yeah, that's... He's so intense, man. And it's like, people say, well, the more training you do, the better. And as a younger man, you know, yourself, you're like, you agree with that. You think, oh, yeah, just go all day, eight hours, nine hours, doesn't matter. Whatever you've got to do. But you can't run a racehorse like that. The racehorse will die. Or it will, you know, it will start malfunctioning. So I think, I do think that it probably, I think I personally think that his death was potentially caused by actually over-training by training too much, man. He put himself into the wall, wouldn't he, did you know? No, I didn't know that. He put himself into an emergency for dynamic tension. So your whole body tense is up. So your whole body goes really rigid, but it's like doing weight training, but on acid, it's like, you know, it's... So I think he was a human being, he was a human dynamite. He had so much power, personal, like energy that he had to find an outlet. And he did incredible things in his short life. Had he lived longer, God only knows what we would have seen from a creative and intellectual, a philosopher, a writer, a fighter. You know, he had it all going on, film star, movie star, you know. As I think his wife said at the end of one of the great documentaries that was made about him, she said, I don't like to remember how Bruce died. I prefer to remember how he lived. Once again, on behalf of Bought the T-Shirt, thank you ever so much, Chris. It's been brilliant. And stay on the line, mate, to our friends at home. If you could please like and subscribe and click the little bell thing. Friends, a lot of people are missing podcasts and going, oh, why did I miss that one? And it's like, if you don't click the bell, you won't get a notification. So please do massive thank you all for your continued support. Things are really firing off now and that's because of you guys. So much love to you all. Be like water.