Ruby Wax’s Funny Mind
In the Dark with Shep Gordon
The Teenage Brains of Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
Winning with Lawrence Dallaglio
Margaret Busby, Daughter of Africa
James Corden, Man of the World
Nicola Sturgeon, The Brave
Breakfast with Bill Gates
Peace Talks with Patrisse Khan-Cullors
David Eagleman’s Vast Ignorance
Gloves off with Laila Ali
The Contrary Nature of Niklas Zennström
No Secrets with Caitlyn Jenner
Index
Behind the Book
INTRODUCTION
WHEN I WAS A CHILD my father often took me fell walking. We spent misty days climbing the gentle peaks of the Yorkshire Dales and Lakeland crags. Each trip a new route, a different summit to climb, always a bar of chocolate at the top.
I don’t remember him teaching me per se, but I inherited from him the rituals of the Great Outdoors: close the gate to keep the sheep in, walk at the edge of the field to protect the crops, stand aside for those coming uphill.
My favourite tradition was placing a stone on the cairns, the small pile of rocks that walkers create to help mark the way. A simple, easy practice, both altruistic and self-preserving in its aim: to help others find their path, knowing that the next time the lost fell walker could be you.
We benefited from those cairns ourselves many times, when the clouds came in and the path was unclear. And even on bright days, those cairns provided welcome reassurance, while more distant ones hinted at different paths still to explore.
Off the mountains, I’ve come to appreciate that sometimes a few words of advice can act as cairn stones in life; a wise sentence or two that get you back on course when you’re lost in the fog or stuck in boggy terrain, knowledge from a fellow traveller who can point out the best views of the safest route.
On at least three occasions a single piece of advice has changed my life. And over the years I’ve gained a deep appreciation of learning from people both wiser and more experienced than myself. So ten years ago I made a simple promise to myself: whenever I met someone remarkable, I’d ask them for their best piece of advice.
The result is this book.
If I Could Tell You Just One Thing … walks the full spectrum of human experiences and emotions, from those of Simon Cowell at one end to those of Lily Ebert, an Auschwitz survivor, at the other. In between, you’ll find the considered wisdom of presidents and popstars, entrepreneurs and artists, celebrities and survivors; from people who’ve made it and from others who have endured incredible hardships, from those who’ve climbed as high as you can go in life, and from people who’ve witnessed the worst of what humans can do to one another.
Good advice is like a nutrient-rich broth, made from boiling down the bones of life. And being fed so much of it, sourced from such remarkable people, has enriched my life and understanding of my fellow Homo sapiens immeasurably. If chosen well, a few words can capture and disseminate the main insights gained from someone’s hard years of experience, thereby allowing us all to benefit from them. That is certainly the aim of each of the encounters in the book.
Every person is someone I’ve met, either through running my own business, or from my subsequent varied career working in government, charities, the arts and the media. Some people featured are friends, some are people who generously agreed to be interviewed, and a few are unsuspecting folk I ambushed when fate put us in the same room at a party, a conference or, in one case, at a urinal.
When I ask people for their best piece of advice, I urge them to really think about what they consider to be most important. I put the exact same question to everyone: Given all that you have experienced, given all that you now know and given all that you have learnt, if you could pass on only one piece of advice, what would it be? There is something about asking people to stand behind just one nugget of wisdom that gets them to reflect harder, dig deeper and be more candid in their response. And it has led to some extraordinary answers. The material is diverse and wide ranging, and covers everything from achieving success to dealing with failure, from finding love to having better sex, from getting the best out of people to surviving abuse. There should be something in this collection that speaks to everyone.
Most people when asked for advice are happy to give it. This desire to help is a manifestation of the better part of human nature; it costs nothing, can be shared infinitely and will last indefinitely. And I hope that this is the first of several books. For there are countless remarkable people on the planet, and this first collection only captures the insights of a fraction of them. There are endless stories to be told and wisdom to be captured.
Over time I hope to help create a global commons of advice, a shared pool of wisdom that everyone can both contribute to and gain from. After all, as a species we are much more alike than we are different. And while everyone’s path through life is unique, we can all benefit from the knowledge of more experienced walkers ahead, who can tell us of the most beautiful things to see and guide us to the safer places to cross the river.
Richard Reed
June 2016
IN THE BUBBLE WITH PRESIDENT CLINTON
HIS STAFFERS CALL IT BEING in ‘The Bubble’, the experience of travelling in President Clinton’s entourage. You ride in the President’s plane, drive in his armed convoy, sit at his table. You don’t so much as move, you glide. There’s no queuing for passport control, no checking in, no checking out – it all just happens behind the scenes. You go wherever and whenever Mr President goes.
I got to ride in The Bubble on a Clinton Foundation trip round Africa. It was a gruelling schedule: eight African countries in eight days. Every day the same: wake up in a new country, get in the convoy, drive hours down dusty tracks and potholed paths into the middle of nowhere, visit a project – an HIV testing clinic, a malaria treatment facility, a woman’s empowerment group – then back in the jeeps and on to the next project, at least four times a day.
At each visit, the President was an unstoppable force: straight out of the 4x4, hug the local community nurses, talk with the dignitaries, dance with the local tribal performers, pose for the photos, do the speech, present the gong, stop and chat with the locals, play with the kids, notice the quiet one at the back, make a point of talking to them, give them a hug, coax out that smile. At every event. In the searing heat and dust, all day, for eight days straight. I’ve not seen
