That must have been... you wouldn't have believed it, would you?

No, I guess that was probably the next thing or the part where we actually started speaking and become friends was when I first come to the TT and John, I think, does it with a lot of newcomers and a lot of guys that come to the TT always tries to pass on his advice and be really helpful to him in that way and make sure you're doing it in the right way and and as safe as possible and I you know helped me so much to come here as a newcomer and not just not necessarily to come here and be fast or anything like that but to to be safe and do it in the right way have your head in the right space not going out there trying to set lap records when you're when you're still trying to learn the course and um Yeah, it's gone from that to a lot more than that over the last six to eight years or something.

John's basically, like, unofficially mentored me in a lot of different ways off the bike, you know, helping me make the right decisions in my entire racing career, really.

He's usually the first person I ring up whenever I get an offer of a team or... a sponsor or something like that i'll bring john up and go what do you think about this what should i do which should i choose which way should i go what races should i do everything and he's obviously super experienced but i don't think there's a better person to advise you on all of this kind of stuff in the world

yeah and i'm i'm gonna second that like he's he does this for so many writers but and this is not an age joke or crack or anything but it's quite a long time since you started and you probably felt like what me and davey felt seeing like i remember watching you and especially at the northwest before coming here and and things like that and being a fan but it's it's a weird feeling from going from being a fan to someone like that takes first of all that person takes an interest in you what davey's just explained and then genuinely wants to help you with your career and things outside of that and everything so can you can you remember what that felt like for someone like you but first even davey when when that starts to happen the feeling for that because you go holy he's actually talking to me and you know he's showing an interest it must not be that bad or you know all them things you feel and yeah i can still feel that now and it's a fair few years from that happened to me but but for you Oh,

100%.

To start with, it was crazy, really, because you don't expect the god of the TT to be giving me advice.

It was absolutely...

did

confirm this on the podcast.

I've seen so many friends who, who race super bikes at the top of the game and you sit them on a, on a dirt bike that, awfully dangerous like just everything is wrong like it just doesn't work but um yeah so you move from dirt bikes to uh to street bikes and you can actually like figure it out pretty fast it's it's something a little bit different so i thought i'd give this a go see what i can do and didn't really realize the cost difference between riding motor and riding super bikes it wasn't super bikes at the time i was a 600 cc stock class at british championship and uh anyway jumped on this bike and did a few rounds i had my 12 year old brother at the time uh he was my mechanic my main mechanic and my granddad had come and helped me out and uh he was like 65 70 years old and he's a he's a joiner by trade a carpenter so also knew nothing about mechanics at all and uh tried to race this british level championship won two races but then also didn't finish six due to like my uh sump bolt fell out my bike at one round because my brother my 12 year old brother bear in mind and this is not a dig at him because he's also 12 years old he should not have had this responsibility he uh he'd done an oil change and forgot to like do it off and it fell out anyway um missed a bunch of races due to all these mechanical things and realized everybody in this is quite like car racing that's in street bikes you can't do it without money So I was like, I'm not from money.

I'm from like a standard working class family.

Like my parents were like struggling to get by funding like motocross as a kid.

And I never had like tuned motors.

I never had my suspension done.

But it's when you know... fuck