A Question of Performance

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TX: 1.9.19 – Ep 48. Andy Reed

HOST: TAMMY PARLOUR

TP:      Welcome to a ‘Question of Performance’.  I’m Tammy Parlour and in this series I’ll be talking with leading figures from sport and business about what improves, limits and drives performance.

             Join me for 20 minutes of discussion, twice a month, to hear a range of views and what it means to be successful, how to cope with failure and what people have learnt along the way.

I’m in the canteen of the Elite Athletes Centre at Loughborough University today, sitting down with a coffee with Andy Reed.  I wanted to talk to Andy because of his political background.  Andy was an MP for Loughborough for over a decade, now running his own business, he has a wealth of experience in governmental relations and sports policy. Sport and politics isn’t a subject I’ve touched on in this podcast series yet so I thought Andy could help me begin to navigate that area. We talk about sports policy, key issues facing the sector and the role politics plays in sport.  After he passed me my cappuccino, I asked him    first to tell me what’s exciting him about sport at the moment.

 A:       Well I suppose you can’t get away from some of the excitement around the big events that dominated the summer, so for those of us who watch sport, you cant have missed the cricket, you cant have missed some other the other things that have been going on with the tennis, but I suppose more generally, I think what’s finally exciting me, and I suppose this is a policy one, I suppose of where I come from, is the shift in a lot of the attitudes towards sport, around diversity about some of the challenges we face, around how we interact with psychical activity and some of those equity questions as well and then governance as well, so a lot of the stuff I’ve been working on for sometimes seems to be coming to a little bit of fruition, so there’s an excitement because we love sport, but also, I think, from my perspective, having been involved in sport from a slightly outsider, seeing some of the recognition that it needs to change as well taking place.  We’ll probably explore that a little bit, so things around, obviously we’re here at the Elite Athletes Centre, I’ve been involved here at Loughborough some years, the elite athletes were machines who we got to win gold medals, but now we’re thinking about the welfare of these athletes and looking after them and all those other pieces, so I think sport is growing up a little bit.  Still got some growing pains, which we might touch on, but yeah, I’m quite excited that we’re, kind of getting a hang of some of these wider issues.

T:       From you’re perspective then, what’s the point of sport?

 A:       Well for me, I come at it, it’s a really strange one, I come at it just from a very amateur sports person, who got involved playing rugby and volley ball doing a little bit of running when I was at school, so I never even thought about the concept of sport, it just became all-consuming to me, it was part of my life. So, academically I wasn’t particularly interested if you went to school each day, I wanted to know what I was doing, would I be running, rugby, playing volleyball. For me it became natural that sport is what people did, so the meaningful for me and for those millions of people who do take part at a amateur level, that’s just what it is, it’s a way being psychically active.  For me it’s a much the camaraderie because I play a lot of team sports, so that’s the social interaction, I’m not very good at most of the sports that I do, but I’m good enough to get in a team and enjoy the whole thing. For us as a nation, I think sport in itself has a role to play, because of course our history and sporting success in the past and a number of sports we’ve helped shape and form but then over the last decade, 15 years or so, as I grew a little bit older I starting understanding the wider implications of sport, sport for it’s own sake, understanding it’s interaction with psychical activity and then also, really growing up and realising, actually for loads of people, they don’t care one jot about sport and they’re not interested in what we do, there’s lots of other ways for people to get the benefits of what we see from sport in other forms and I always thought that when I used to see the enormous viewing figures for massive sporting events, like England in a semi final of football, they say 20 million people watching, we’ve got a population of 65 million, so you’re saying actually that’s 45 million people either in one of those shared moments where you think, we talk about the nation being involved, two thirds of the nation don’t really care even for that ,so actually there’s a recognition from me that I’m passionate about sport, but also recognising it’s marginal role for a lot of people in society.

T:       I was particularly in interested in talking to you because of your political background, so I suppose one of the questions that I’d like to ask was how does politics influence sport and vice versa?

 A:       Yeah so I suppose there’s a phrase, isn’t there that sports and politics don’t mix and that usually comes around when, I suppose in my early years when I think I was probably still a teenager at school when there was a first boycott of the Olympics, when Americas boycotted the Moscow Olympics and Seb Coe, who is here, who I’ve got to know over the years, obviously had a different view on what the British approach, the UK approach to that, so I suppose from an early age I started to realise sometimes it does and it doesn’t and also probably during the early 1980’s an England rugby team went out to South Africa during the years of the [unclear 0.05.18] and I was a bolshy teenager so I got involved in politics, I tried to put down a motion at my rugby club to  decry the England Rugby team going to, so there’s little bits of me that saw, they do interreact, politics and sport, at that level at, sort of, the boycott of South Africa was the right thing to do, anybody understands that the South African mentality the [unclear 0.05.40], mentality around rugby that was one of those things, along with economics sections, that made everyone realise the world wasn’t satisfied with our part like that, so  changed their way, not in of itself but it was an important part of that mixture.

We shouldn’t have been taking touring [unclear 0.05.54] so at that super national level, I think the two do mix, there are times that you have to take a bit of a stand, but then I started to realise, being an MP, particularly here at Loughborough, how could you not be, I was interested in sport anyway, clearly we’re sitting here now in the athletic centre and we’ve had 20 years of development in the campus of things that I’d been involved in, so I got sucked in slightly to the elite end of sports and being involved in, it was originally going to be called the British Academy Sport and then became The English Institute of Sport so really morphed into that and tried to help create an environment in which we could start to win medals again, and that took government action, the sport wasn’t able to do of itself, and that at the other end, we’ll talk a bit more about this is that I also then started to realise that psychical activity, the language is important, which we can unpack, so psychical activity in a nation that’s getting psychically inactive isn’t a good thing and most public health issues, it requires pretty joined up Government response to tackling that.

If you look at the success we’ve had with smoking sensation, that is because 20-30 years of a campaign, taxation that works on that, public health messages and provision of services to weeding people off of smoking, so it takes all of those in a joined up approach  and 20-30 year approach and that’s what we still think with sport and psychical activity, is that combined joined up approach on taking a long term view about how you turn round 40 years of taking sport and psychical activity out of our lives and putting it back in.  If you think of almost every decision we’ve made over the last 40 years, out of town shopping, you wouldn’t think that was a sport or psychical activity issue, but of course what you’ve done is, you’ve forced people into their motor car to go and do their shopping, so you’ve taken away that locality.

T:       So, what do you think is possible for politics to do for sport, what can, and can’t politics do for sport?

 A:       Well if you’re looking at how involved, let’s go back one stage what is politics?  Politics is just the way we organise how society, isn’t it? So, with a big P it can become Westminster and what I would argue is that, although I’ve been in Westminster for 20 years and probably the last decade in public affairs and around sports policy, most of the delivery is not at national level, so you can set the frame work for what happens, but what where known as county sports partnerships, local government, you know local government has been the biggest spender on sport and physical activity for a generation, it’s been reduced from 6.1 billion to about a billion, at the moment, over the last decade, but that’s almost gone unheard of or missed, you know, youth service cuts, nobody sees them until knife crime and other issues arise, so it requires a massive joined up approach  because you can do all and everything, because it influences national policy pictures, it obviously releases money, so if I just give you one example of sitting in the athletes centre here, we’re going to probably come second or third in the medals table next time round again, that took a combination of the sports system coming and saying, look actually, Peter Keane, whose based here, if you as the Treasury give me this much money, I’ve worked out, or we’ve worked out how much it would take to get us to forth or third in the medals table because we’ve worked out X, Y and Z.

So for me that was a classic really, is that the sports system had done it’s analysis and got it’s evidence and asked the government for some money, so the three hundred million that we put in initially from about 2006 to that whole cycle to get to 2012 the Olympics is that, Peter Keane, told me  and others in a team meeting in the treasury, you give me this hundred million a year up until 2012 I’ll give you 65 medals, quite eerie when at the end of the 2012 Olympics, Peter, was able to come back and said here’s the 65 medals we’ve won, it wasn’t in all the sports we expected though, we could have been either way by one or two, so I think for politics, so governments get the excitement quite often of the national politics, so you would have seen the cricket team in Number 10 the day after a victory, you will see Olympic team in a tic or take parade but the trick for me in politics now is to get those others and Sports Minister and education department and DWP and particularly public health to understand the wider implications of doing sport, not just for it’s own sake but for the betterment of the whole society, and we know all the stuff about knife crime and tackling social issues and mental health and wellbeing that comes from doing psychical activity, but even if you don’t do those if should be necessary for us to be psychically active.

T:       So, how do you convince people to come on board?

 A:       Well this is one of the things I wanted to talk about, because really it is difficult, because politicians are you know, quite a strange breed really.

T:       You’re talking about yourself.

 A:       I am, I am and I find it because you have to be so focused, there’s a really good book by, Isobel Hardman, about why do we get the politicians we do, I’ve just been reading over the summer and actually I did feel this, the more successful you wanted to be the less connected you were with your previous life or other pieces.  One of the reasons I never, I joined the DCS team really early, one of those where tipped to be a minister, I realised these people give up their lives to be ministers and I never wanted to do that, I still wanted to play my rugby and so if you are successful you’ve largely have to give up quite a lot at each stage of your life to be a minister in government, so what I’ve always tried to do is maintain that breath and try to get people to understand, MP’s they’re normal human beings, they’ve all got their own families their own wishes and desires, they’ve all usually have come into politics for the right reason, so it’s helping people who are lobbing or wanting to influence government to understand how to do that, and that’s not to attack people, however thick skinned people say politicians need to be, I’m not quite sure that’s a trait I wanted to develop before going for my policies and I never did, I’m still quite sensitive to attacks on Twitter or whatever, so we need to understand that their human, we also need to understand usually they’re quite strong willed, they’ve got to that position they’ve got a lot of anecdotal evidence of how they view the world and so when they arrive in office, particularly with ministers, they last about two, two and a half years most of them before they move on,  you don’t arrive at a job not wanting to do anything, so actually you arrive as a minister, you think you’ve got to make an impact in your two years, so you set off on your anecdotal evidence and get going, and actually we have to spend a lot of the time trying to rail them back in because they’ve gone off on a tangent which isn’t evidence based, so I suppose really our case is that we’ve got to be ready all of the time to help gather the interest of the new and incoming minister and steer them to point where the evidence shows them where they can make most impact, and so it’s really boring and we keep repeating it, but actually it really is about us as a sector having a joined up approach to what a government should look like in doing all of these things in the right place and so we spend a lot of time having a go at DCMS where as actually most of the impact might be felt in the Department of Transport, if we had a proper walking and cycling strategy, you know, that’s where from a psychical activity point of view that’s where you’d would have the biggest wins, so it’s important with these other pieces, but public health, sport ledger is  great, but actually the biggest impact is elsewhere.

T:       Is the sector joined up?

 A:       No, and that’s why I’ve done, probably that’s one of my frustrations in that when you used to sit in government, it’s quite easy to pick the sector off, because just go off and squabble, I think we often overuse the phrase but logos and egos is still something I feel quite strongly about. So when I left government I 2010 and found myself in a few chair roles in the sports world trying to bring that, one of the first things we set up in Sport and Recreation, for example, was this fit for the future programme which was trying to recognise that we keep going to government saying how brilliant we are and actually we look a bit shambolic, we’re all contradicting each other, we all say things and then go off and brief against each other, so part of what I’ve tried to do over the last few years and particularly want to now focus on with my work with my think tank is really coordinate our approaches and one of the slides I probably over use more than anything, but I really feel quite strongly about, my key notes, is it’s amazing what we can achieve together when nobody wants to take the credit.

I know it’s dead easy and trait to say, bit if we can get the current leadership of most of the sector to really buy into that, you do achieve a lot more and you might not win every little battle internally, but actually if you’re just fighting for the crumbs off of the table rather than expanding the sector and the influence we can have, then we’re just too easy to pick off, so actually for me, my sort of mission at the moment and I know individually I think all the leaders across the sector sort of get this and it’s not always just them they’ve got their boards and their memberships behind them but if we can get to the stage where we generally, sometimes we’d be the leaders in a particular battle or we’ll take a lesser role in another but actually, the rising tide lift many boats does apply here, and we need to be saying the same things. I said to someone the other day, a Chief Ex, there’s no point us going telling government off for being uncoordinated and not joining up government if we’re not, there’s some work going on at the moment and actually if we haven’t got the whole sector saying the same things, why would government think they were under any pressure to do likewise.

T:       What do you think are the key issues at the moment, that the sector needs to join up on?

 A:       Yeah, so, I suppose at the elite level, I’ve always got sports into little boxes where, particularly in the build up to the Olympics where we talked about inspiration and the legacy, the famous L word, so for me sometimes it’s about physical activity, community sport, facilities and coaching and the pieces in the middle and then the elite level. I think in one sense, I thought in 2012 we’d largely ticked the box in elite sport, we demonstrated, actually with a systems approach if you do this, you can achieve that and of course that then put pressure on the other sectors, what do you need to do, however we’ve learnt a few lessons since then about welfare and mental health and other issues so  actually we didn’t quite get that right, so a lot of the issues are now, not railing back but they are first of all, recognising at elite level some of the wider issues around mental health and the pressure we put on individual athletes and what athletes do when they retire, the rest of the sector I think for me one of the biggest issues is around the equity sort of issue, so we have got sport played by predominately middle class clubs across the country, so if you want to look at the biggest determinates about whether you are physically active or not you could determine that by disability, gender and particularly social class so actually for me it’s one of the things, to be fair to sport England, really started talking about it over the last 18 months or so, but I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall saying, actually your biggest issue, is I know here we’ve got an estate about half a mile away from Loughborough University, in which the levels of, two estates surrounding the University, they have got the lowest levels of physical activity in the County the Lemington Ward is the greatest levels of obesity, all within half a mile of the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine, so part of my ambition is to try and translate the expertise we have in here, to communities, so I personally think that is probably, otherwise this cohort is just completely going to miss out on physical activity and that is why you end up with the elite level with elite teams, full of kids from middle class and public schools, the over representation.

T:       Is that about change of policy at a governmental level or NGB’s doing things, where does that lie?

A:       Again, going back to my smoking example, it’s all the them isn’t it? You need political leadership, so when I worked for Gordon, I didn’t always do sport, I used to do quite a lot on international development, so the, “drop the debt”, and sort of stuff in the 1990’s and, make poverty history, Gordon Brown always used to talk about sometimes society needs to be head of governments and dragging them along and sometimes governments need to be  lead and then take society with them.  I think we’re at that stage, at the moment, a little bit where we need a little bit of political leadership, so I know Teresa May just towards the end, created this equality issue where she put in there in the cabinet office, and there is some work the office of disability issues and others, we need to empower them to really start taking some steps to do something through legislation which has made changes, but it makes social change as well. So that requires the MGB’s to buy into it, and that’s one of my difficulties about the governance code, so the SRA we on behalf of the government introduced the voluntary code in the early days because that meant changing the culture of governance whereas obviously we’ve gone into this compliance mechanism and I just wonder whether, if people would still tick the boxes and get away with what they do, whereas I prefer that NGB’s and probably national level they get it, but at club level, recognise barriers the that they are creating.  Some countries are biases and just being unaware of many of these attitudes that they hold and seen as barriers by those who want to join a particular club,  so when we did some research around disability for example, most clubs are saying  they quite like the idea of being accessible but they didn’t have wheelchair access so therefore they couldn’t do anything about it.

As we know 3% of people with disability are in a wheelchair, but it was just this disconnect with understanding what they needed to do to make themselves accessible, so actually it’s a bit of education, it’s a journey we all need to go on, but also I mean there is a money issue here, as I say, slashed monies from Local Authorities who used to do a lot of sport development work in some of those communities, so there is some cash that’s required and so government needs to understand it’s role is setting the legislative framework and investing and then for us at a community level look at all those barriers, that mean why is it difficult for women to get involved in a particular sport, why is it disabled access isn’t negligible or not possible and why are we delivering stuff in the wrong communities where we know the roaming distance of people from mostly private estates is about three quarters of a kilometres to kilometre, so there’s no point in putting a big shiny leisure centre the other side of town and expecting people who don’t, I always remember about a third of my constituency  didn’t have access to a car and yet if you think about the way we deliver stuff, we assume people can get to a physical great big building, that we’ve placed the other side of the town, like a swimming pool and except someone to get there. So I think it’s all of these, there’s probably, you’re hear my ramblings in my head going round, because as usual with these things, there’s no one simple answer and what I usually do at this stage in the talk is, there’s a great Forsyth report in 2007 looking at the interaction of how we tackle obesity and it’s got a great graphic of all the different parts of interaction of both individuals, local government, public health, the government need to work together and of course not one of them is the solution that requires all of these different actors to be doing things differently, so creating a different psychical environment, creating a social environment, dealing with individuals psychology and how they approach these things, so nothing is simple, everything is really complicated and that’s why going back to my collaborative leadership and complexity stuff, as a policy maker you need to understand that and I just fear at the moment, not just us, but I think the level of populism and social media has meant everything works in slogans and so that complexity is lost or just turns people off, whereas actually what we do need is that deep thinking, so all this stuff around whole systems approach in what county sports partnerships and Sports England’s work, is entirely right, it needs to change the whole system in an area, and not just drop in a project.

So, for too long I think sports been doing projects to people or even for them, but not with them, so if you went into an area and genuinely asked what people would like to do, it would probably would look very, very different to what we as sports people would like to deliver to them, and we’re doing that, there is delivery pilots looking at that and hopefully we’re get some answers to that, the trick is with these things is that people like, that’s very nice but we’re going to carry on doing what we like doing.

T:       To go on a slightly different tack, as you know I spend a bit of time with elite female athletes, and a lot of them are now starting to realise that their platform is developing, that people are starting to listen.  For that elite athlete who is understanding that they have a platform, and wants to do something with it, is there any advice you would give them?

 A:       Well, yeah, this is sometimes very difficult because actually in the past we’ve always been asked partly politically to try and grab some athletes because the bit of stardust that adds to the party conference, or an athlete coming out from a particular party, musicians have done it. One of the things I’ve advised elite athletes is not to actually do that, simply because too often when you become associated with a particular political party, it can tarnish the brand, both ways, I’ve always, if anyone is listening, get involved in the politics of sport and why we need to invest and some people have done some really good stuff on that, but don’t get too aligned with a particular party to achieve that, but, yes you do have a platform and therefore it is always important, I’ve been working with a couple over the last couple of weeks on mental health issues, just to talk about it, so particularly in rugby it’s a bit of a men’s game, a macho sport, getting a prop whose talking about their mental health issues, just really helps right throughout the sport, so they’ve got a great platform to open up some of the social issues that relates to it, but at other times, we do need, we don’t lobby very well and I can see the nervousness but actually when you see, you will have seen this, sometimes the Evening Standard or the Times they’d be letters from leading artist or leading musicians or Jamie Oliver, we’ve very rarely been able to coalesce leading athletes and those others to be in that slight campaign mode, so again going back to the sports slightly easier to pick off, is we’re so concentrating on winning the ashes or Wimbledon, we’ll give you a reception at Number 10, thank you very much and off you go. I’d quite like it if we could use some of those voices to be a bit more critical, but I understand it’s very difficult.

First of all the whole point of an elite athlete is that you want to be the single focus on your own work and your need to win whatever your target is, but I think for those who have just retired, they have a life spam of three or four years where people still listen, and some a bit longer, if you’re really elite you get a bit longer otherwise it’s a short time to make your impact.  I am sure we would love those voices to help, however it goes back to what I was saying before, is that elite sport is one thing and I’ve found it difficult sometimes sharing a platform with elite athletes to get them to understand what it means if you are one of those lower social economics groups in an estate whose not interested in that pathway to winning a medal.  They’re great at what they do, and their messages are brilliant, but quite often I’ve embarrassingly had to correct somebody to say, actually no, not everybody loves competition one athlete said, everyone loves competition and school sport, don’t they?  And I was sayinh, no, that’s part of the problem, because actually the third of us who do have just put the other two thirds off, who are sitting embarrassed picking grass in the corner because, no they’re not interested in that.

So, they’re really useful in one sense and a lot more are getting the bigger picture, but there has been a little bit, I think of, everyone thinks like this, don’t they?  No, they don’t actually. And even within those segments it quite complicated really, there’s different reasons for different motivations.  So, yeah, they have a platform, I’d love them to use it for talking about some of those really big issues, I think it’s started to really happen. I think we could use them a little bit better for some of the campaigning work, but I wouldn’t want to overuse them as I think it would be dangerous for their own particular brand. I know athletes who’ve backed the torries, not being funny but just in that pecking order, they’ve just gone down the list of who you want to, I try not to, I try to be a political as I can, but there’s a bit there that’s oh well, I’m not quite sure I feel the same about you now that you’ve pinned those colours to the mast.

T:       Now let’s talk about you personally for a moment, this podcast is about success, performance, different people’s views on really what that means, what is success for you, personally?

 A:       That’s a really interesting one, because I’m just coming to that stage in life, where I think there’s seasons in life, so I’ve gone a decade in local government, twenty years in local politics, ten years running my business, but success to me has always been about personal development and I suppose having a purpose.  It sounds really cliché but I deliberately did a politics degree so I could go and work in the local authority and serve my local community for the rest of my life and retire at 55, that was my vision of success.  Now in a strange sort of way I’ve got to, just about ready to retire at 55, but in a completely different way, so success for me it’s never been a particular goal of traditional success, so it totally isn’t about money, fame or I suppose what would be regarded as today’s modern versions of success if you’re, it’s always been about can I have a purpose in life.  I don’t use the word happiness because that can be short term, but if you’ve got a purpose and I can wake up each day and I can have a positive impact and I’ve enjoyed my day along the way, then for me that’s been the measure of success.  It’s quite low level, it’s not a gold medal it’s not reaching to be the Prime Minster, but actually can I be me for most of my life, with integrity.

T:       Have you been successful for most of your life?

 A:       For my measurement, yes.  As far as I’m concerned.

T:       And after retirement, you’re still have a purpose?

 A:       Yes, exactly and that’s the bit I’m struggling with at the moment.  So, I’ve just been trying to write a lengthy book, first of all the word retirement doesn’t feel right, it’s a new season, then also because I’ve been, I suppose I’ve been lucky/successful in my life and people have cared what I think about politics and sports for a time, writing columns doing key notes.  There is a danger that if I suddenly stopped in September, one of the things I always say to people is, generally understand yourself.  It would be dead easy to, it doesn’t matter, I can just walk away, but there is a bit of me inside that has enjoyed being, not necessary, but there is a sort of a purpose to it, people wanting to know my opinion of things, so actually I just don’t think I’m ready to suddenly say, I don’t care if nobody knows what I think anymore.

T:       So, are you reconsidering the 55?

 A:       It would be different, so hopefully there will be more time to do the thinking, and I think as I explained to you before, I flit around all over the place.   I want to go deeper in a few things rather than just spending half a day on something then.  But that’s one of my strengths as well success wise, quite a lot of the books I’ve read on successful leadership and things about saying no to stuff and being focused.  I’ve been totally unfocused, and I’ll have coffee with anybody, in fact I’ve got the [unclear 0.30.21] , I don’t know these people but we’re going to meet and chat.

T:       We’re having a coffee as well.

 A:       That’s right, yeah, but you’re one of the people I wanted to speak to.

T:       Okay.

 A:       So very different. I’m quite happy to do all sorts and basically you just never know where a coffee will take you.  In fact I’ve just put a post this week around some of the mentoring I do, we all start off with this game plan for life and in a funny sort of way I’ve largely got to where I want to be but, no way would I thought I would be an MP, no way would I thought I would run my a business and do all these sort of things, actually I’ve got there but not in a traditional sort of way.

T:       Open to?

 A:       Open to whatever comes up.

T:       Other experiences?

 A:       Yeah, yeah. So, I’ve had a fantastic life really in that sense, and being an MP probably is a reasonably good time to do it, just before social media really started to make it almost impossible to do. I’ve got friends and colleagues now who have to wear alarms linked to GCHQ because they’ve had viable death threats and I’m not quite sure I could have left my family in Loughborough, you know, Monday to Friday to go to Westminster knowing there are people around who are willing to offer that as the reward so, I was lucky to be there at a good time, was able to make some influence, you know I wasn’t just sport it was international development we made a massive difference to people’s lives.

T:       What are you most proud of?

 A:       Probably the write off international debt.  So the two things I’ve probably had the biggest impact on, yes Gordon made all the big decision but  I was chair and secretary of the debt agent group and we did a lot of work around the make poverty history, we did, we made a difference even to 500 million people’s lives.  We didn’t change the world but we did for a few hundred million people so that makes a difference and then also the Olympics and the elite success, I just happened to be in the right place, some sport background.  I put myself deliberately in the treasury when I was asked to join ministerial teams as a parliamentary private secretary, I’d realised for a decade that actually the treasury’s hand is over everything, so you needed to understand the mentality of the treasury and how they operate, so that’s going back to what I was saying earlier a little bit, we focus so much on convincing the sports minister that actually the real power lies with the treasury but that’s where we get a yes or no, and so actually being involved with DCS, UK Sport and Gordon at the time we announced our funding for our success in 2012 and 2016 and hopefully in Tokyo 2020 for this elite level of sport, just being in the room and I remember walking back into Number 11, we used to have a curry and chilly party just after budgets, so walking back into Number 11 at about  7 o’clock at night and Gordon says, “sport happy?” I said, well not fully happy but that will do, thank you, and obviously seeing those medals of successes in 2012, I did a small part, a very small cog in a  very big wheel, and lots of other people had a role to play but, you know, sometimes just in the right place at the right time to convenience the official who needs to convince Gordon.  So, there’s lots of people names who would never be heard who were part of that success, so two things. They were quite big for me those two.

T:       Let’s just wrap up a few quick-fire questions.

 A:       I’m dreading these.

T:       What did you have for breakfast?

 A:       I had a protein shake.

T:       Is that a regular breakfast for you?

 A:       It is, actually.

T:       Favourite piece of kit?

 A:       It’s my myzone belt, it’s a heartrate monitor, so generally in gyms but I wear it for all my training and I’m hooked on it, always making sure because you get myzone energy points, so it’s all about effort trying to get your heartrate into 90% of your maximum heartrate, I love seeing my little bar chart that shows I’ve worked in the session, I’ve got my little red chart.

T:       Sporting hero?

 A:       Probably Johnny Wilkinson.

T:       Why?

 A:       Just that calm, well I started playing number 10 at the time he was proess, I think the dedication, as much as anything, obviously had a level of natural ability but just that work ethic, he would be the person who would be there the extra two hours after training and his approach, he probably overthinks it a little bit nowadays but his approach to those things, so yeah he was mine at the time.  And that drop goal how could you not be, I love rugby and being an England supporter and not love that drop goal?

T:       Bit of useless advice that you’ve either been given or that you’ve given to somebody else?

 A:       Well the useful advice, I’ve probably mentioned it, say no and prioritise useless, have coffee with anybody, see where it takes you. Have I given any useless advice? I give useless advice every day, my kids don’t listen to me, just run through 24 hours of things I’ve said to my kids, like being back home early or you’re not going to that sleepover, they just ignore me, so I’d go with that.

T:       Greatest passion outside of sport?

 A:       Is probably family.  If you cut me through the middle it literally is, sometimes sport above family but family, just come back after a two-week holiday with family and you just realise how important they are.

T:       And the last one, best performance of [unclear 0.35.29]

 A:       Wow, it’s up here isn’t it? The brain.  It’s being really focused.

T:       So, concentration and focus?

 A:       Yeah, just finding time, I think get rid of your distractions, finding time and dedicating yourself to something you want to achieve in a particular time, so for me, yeah, that makes all the difference taking it to the 100%.

T:       Thank you and it’s been brilliant talking to you.

 A:       Thanks Tammy.

T:       Thanks for listening, you can follow the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and also don’t forgot to subscribe online to a question of performance.com.