This is an AI transcription, apologies for any typos.

You would think about what you wanted to say every second, every word, everything that you were going to say you did not want to miss a beat,

becoming a dad can sometimes feel like you're adding another spinning plate to your collection, when you're already at capacity. Sometimes you have to step away from something to focus on something else. Jimmy was working in a high intensity job when his wife became pregnant. And it was time to make a difficult decision.

So I was sitting in a waiting room outside the main office, and I knew that it was one of the biggest decisions that I was ever going to make. And you're still not totally sure whether leaving is ever the right decision with these things, you're trying to weigh up lots of different things, you know, frankly, this was one of the biggest jobs that I was ever going to have. But I was also trying to balance it off with, you know, a family coming that was, you know, our first baby daughter was going to be arriving later that month. And so it was a big decision. And I would always feel nervous before these meetings, like, you would always make the heartbeat a little bit faster going in there. And you would think about what you wanted to say every second, every word, everything that you were going to say you did not want to miss a beat, you wanted to be as direct with the time that you had, and as impactful. So you will always sort of prepare a little bit about what what am I going to say? What am I going to open way of, etc. So you would think very clearly about every word that you wanted to say. So I was just standing there thinking about that in my head. And I was wearing a blue tie with highlighters on which my friends at actually sort of bought for me when I first got the initial job. And so it was a tie that I'd always wore on kind of big, special momentous days, it dawned upon me this be the last time that you go through this door. And you that I'd been through you sort of sometimes four or five times a day for the last three years and was going through it for the for the final time to deliver the message. So as I was walking towards him, I thought, I don't think he's going to be expecting this. So he was behind his desk, just finished a phone call of some description looked up and was just like Jimmy, Jimmy good see you what's going on. And it got lots of people wanting to go and work there, you know, not not many that were sort of saying, Actually, I want to leave, I was pretty forthright about it. You You've got to be assertive. And he sort of raised an eyebrow looked at me. And I said, Look, Prime Minister, the baby's coming in a couple of weeks, I don't think I've got any other option. I just feel that I am in danger of being a crap dad, and a craps bad to you. And frankly, it's time for me after three years to go and do something new. I need to resign.

So Jimmy, what an interesting world that we went into, because as a layman, I don't really know much about the political landscape, aside from what I see on the TV, or what I see on the news, but you really had a door into the world that most of us will never never see into what was that? Like?

Yeah, there is a bit of a danger that you get a bit blase about working there and so on. And yeah, I remember Danny Finkelstein, who would be in there quite a lot writes in the Times, Lord Finkelstein, now will sort of saying you don't forget, that's the cabinet room that you're sort of standing next to that you're kind of leaning against nonchalantly. And it was quite good to have people like that around and saying things like that, because it did sort of remind you of the kind of like the history of the place really. And they kind of like can't like cockpit at the nation, really, you know, so many sort of big decisions have been taken there over the centuries. And yet you feel very privileged to work there. But you know, I would often try and remind myself of what it was like first time I walked through the door first time you walk down the down the street so that you wouldn't get too blase about it

was very much an institution. And it's something that we think about when we go back to being kids watching ITN or BBC News, and you're seeing them, seeing the Prime Minister's you know, waving as they then turn around to go go through number 10. And as you were telling your story I was I created the scene for myself of what the Prime Minister's office looks like from the inside and so on. So yeah, it's it's a world that we're not privy to generally. But I think

there's something very British about sort of Downing Street and the way that operates because It is effectively an old sort of townhouse, right? It's not actually that sort of big doesn't really function properly to kind of run one of the world's biggest countries and biggest economies from essentially sort of lots of spare bedrooms. So it's kind of a bit of a bizarre place to work. And I remember, you know, when we would go and visit the Americans or the Canadians in Germany as well, I mean, Angela Merkel's office is, is sort of the, you know, it's kind of like the size of a couple of tennis courts, you know, whereas the prime minister's office is actually not that, not that big, and the whole building itself, you know, there are no kind of palatial offices, you know, none of the staff really have their own offices, either. So it's all kind of like, you know, it's basically old servant quarters, a lot of the rooms there, and you have kind of like four or five people in each one of them. There's no floor plan for security reasons, Eve. And so you have to, you just essentially, kind of have to learn by walking around the building about where people are based, and so on. So it's quite, it's quite bizarre, but it's quite quintessentially British, I think, in lots of ways.

Does it reflects our understated and reserved nature, as British citizens that there isn't these palatial offices for the prime minister? And it's just very sort of, yeah, understated, it's not particularly grandiose, by any means.

Yeah, I think that's probably true. Actually, I think it does kind of reflect the sort of British nature of it. I mean, one of the big things that I would do in my current role as business and entrepreneurship advisor is that I would often sort of be one final people that a company would see before making kind of, you know, big investment in the UK, particularly when I arrived there in 2016. It was, you know, country just voted for Brexit, there was quite a lot of well being, what's Britain's position going to be on this kind of thing, and it'd be my job to sort of see some of these big international investors, and talk to them about the kind of Prime Minister's plans for the country and for for business, and what we're going to do, and I would always request the sort of one particular room for these meetings, which was called the small dining room. And it really was a very small dining room, you could only really fit that to wake people in their maximum. And that was basically the meetings were batch. And Gorbachev used to meet. Mikhail Gorbachev led the Soviet Union. And that a large part of the sort of Cold War was was stored in that room really, in some ways. And so you know, particularly when we got big American investors, you know, having them in that room would sort of, you know, really evoke sort of memories for them of the 80s and 90s. So that was kind of like quite a quite a good way to sort of bring it across. But it was, yeah, it is. We are a very historical nation, and having stuff like that is quite important. And we do need to sort of play on that sort of development of our culture over centuries and centuries, how did

you deal with meeting all of these influential figures from around the world? You mentioned Gorbachev and people like that. And, you know, those those kinds of very private conversations that we never hear about. So what was that like to be to be in that world? And did it take some sort of getting used to when from when you first became Prime Minister's adviser?

It did take some getting used to, but fundamentally, you're, you're trying to build a connection with people and you're trying to build it in as quick a way as possible. And it can be quite challenging, because often you're seeing these people. And you're right, that you're seeing sort of big people, but they're about sort of see the Prime Minister, so they're often quite nervous. So you sort of got to try and put them at ease, as quickly as possible. You know, some people get more nervous about that than others. You're just trying to find that kind of instant connection with people. So I remember one meeting, for example, I share with you, Tim Cook of Apple, for example. So the big global leader runs, if you put Apple as a kind of country's economy, you present the sort of top 20 in its own right. And he was in that sort of room that I just mentioned, like in the in the story beforehand, that we were there sort of chatting away about things and there was a picture of the Queen there and it's wonderful, rare picture of the Queen smiling because often that's that's not the case. And he was just sort of saying that is that really is a magnificent picture. And he just say I've just been watching the crown and so on. So we talked him through that. And then I basically gave him a sort of quick, the Prime Minister is a bit delayed. So I went and gave him a quick tour and we ended up being later for the meeting, but it was only a bit but then we also like you know, one of the thing was, okay, well what have we learned from that 10 minutes that can kind of foster relationship with this mega corporation and we made sure that we got a copy of that picture of the Queen and sent it to him, and I'm pretty sure that hang was now in the new Batsi headquarters that Apple have it in the UK, because it was the that was, again, an example of a meeting of where, you know, this was a big company that was, you know, was not necessarily concerned by Brexit, but it was just like, Yeah, this was an unexpected decision. And yeah, so that was, that was why we were seeing it.

I'm kind of imagining myself in that scenario. And, you know, you talk about people like Tim Cook, and, and all of these incredibly successful people. And sometimes I find myself when I'm meeting certain people that I perceive to be higher status than me, or they've achieved more than me, I find that sometimes this sort of impostor syndrome can come in. But then I just remind myself, this is just a human being. This is, if we're talking about men, this is just a man, just like you and I, he's probably got his own challenges. He goes to the bathroom just like I do. And he brushes his teeth, just like I do, I'm sure unless he's got some incredible technique for brushing his teeth that I don't know about. And I think that's always helps me to bring things back to reality that they're not some sort of superhuman, of course,

it's a bit of sort of impostor syndrome, that somebody's gonna kind of like, tap you on the shoulder and be like, how did how did you get here? Yeah, this job is not for you. Yeah, definitely. And I think anyone that takes on a big job and doesn't have that appoints. You know, it's, it's kind of strange if you don't have that, really. And so, yeah, when you're meeting these people, I mean, yeah, I suppose I was, like, more in all of the kind of like, you know, the business leaders, and so on, people that you were meeting. But yeah, you're right, actually, that you felt quite quickly able to sort of adapt to them, and so on. I mean, it was, it would be amazing when you have met people that had achieved incredible feats. I mean, I remember that when we saw the England cricket team after winning the 2019 World Cup. So came in the day after for reception at number 10. And, I mean, that was just the most extraordinary game of cricket that we'll probably ever see. And yeah, they were all just kind of like, normal men who were just having a good time having achieved something great. And it was, you know, it was almost like you at that stage, they hadn't probably realised, like for them, they hadn't sunk in yet. It was literally 24 hours later, and they were all sort of, you know, they're and they're all kind of like, you know, they I think they almost have a little bit of potential impostor syndrome, right? Or like, it's like, I'm a very good cricketer, what am I doing in the Downing Street garden, and I was all this sort of about, so you're just there to sort of like, yeah, kind of try and put them, put them at ease, and just ask them questions about things and so on. And that was pretty Yeah, that was a very sort of special day,

where you're, you're part of the fabric, if you go into your get your work in from 10 Downing Street every single day, you know, the culture, the atmosphere and the people within it. So I can imagine you be quite comfortable in that setting. I want to know, once you left those, those doors, those big black doors of number 10, you're walking down the street, you're feeling this sense of freedom, what actually did you do next? What were these huge job offers that, inevitably, you would have got, after leaving the leaving 10 Downing Street as an adviser to the Prime Minister. It

was a real challenge because I sort of it's not like it was a kind of unexpected Tuesday leaving office. It wasn't like when David Cameron did, like it was sort of like a bolt from the blue. Yeah, we've been on sort of rocky ground for kind of a while. And I was trying to work out kind of what I wanted to do next. And I think, you know, the sort of you get lots of offers, but it's quite a lot of it was sort of lobbying offers and you know, kind of come in and kind of lead like government relations team and so on, which I was intrigued by, but I just, I was quite burnt out and I just wanted to do something completely different to kind of government and politics and I guess I've met so many of these kinds of entrepreneurs, and so on the kind of wanting to embed myself more in that world, you know, I needed a kind of complete break from it all really about the kind of watching it all incessantly and so on. And it was great to have the baby as part of that and actually went off to go study at Stanford University for a couple of months as well, sort of a new family out there, but we just had a kind of complete break to sort of do that which was, which was great.

Really amazing. What were you studying there? So I studied

entrepreneurship. So they have this sort of To them, of course that you can do, which is where you pitch your business idea. And you then there are 70 of you on the course. And you each do, you split into teams of six or seven, and the most popular ideas, you kind of work on to a new basically apply the learnings that you do in class, you then go in the evening and try and sort of apply them to the sort of business that you're working on. So that was, yeah, incredibly exciting. And just break, which is very different, right? Yeah, I

did. I did a module like that at university when I did business management and economics at university, and we did something similar, and it's really good to just apply those principles into the real world business is something immediate, yeah. But rather than just kind of having it theory based, and obviously there are those teachers of business who've never actually run a business. And then there's, there's, you know, the practising business teachers who know a lot because they've done a lot at the same time. So after you came back from Stanford, I think a lot of people are gonna gonna want to know, what was your kind of foray back into the, the employment world,

my wife would agree to this kind of California Adventure on the basis that we could go camping, for the final kind of week, we could take an RV, and it was wonderful. We had a small RV me, my wife and our baby daughter, and we didn't have any Wi Fi, and it was great. And I remember the sort of beginning of it, there was a scope of like, COVID-19 sort of thing on the on the horizon, we did this sort of the kind of graduation ceremony at the Stanford thing, we didn't actually shake hands, and so on. And then we sort of got Wi Fi again, the day before we were due to fly back. And it just there was such a kind of like, step change in everything. And, you know, I remember being kind of like, gosh, we even gonna be able to, like, get a first notification that came up on my phone was Donald Trump has cancelled all flights back to the European Union. So I'm thinking, well, at least we got Brexit achieved six weeks ago was it sort of was positive. And we were on the last flight back to the UK, and the airport was completely dead, and so on. It's very, very surreal, kind of like coming back for that, and then got home. And actually, my wife is a doctor in the NHS, and was like, Yeah, I think I need to go back. And I'm going to make the offer to go back and see what he's doing. And, you know, you kind of forget now that it really was like war effort at that time. And they were like, Yeah, can you come back next week. And so we've got this sort of scenario, where she went back and I sort of became a stay at home dad to our five month old daughter. And so he's kind of gone from sort of Downing Street to diapers effectively within the space of five months. And it was very much stay at home, of course, because we weren't allowed. We had sort of one our government sanctioned walk around the park each day, but that was it.

That was a shock to me that you're in this position within Downing Street, then you then you do this, this course at Stanford University. And then probably the listeners as well, I'm thinking is going to go into some sort of high flying job and you're in your boxer shorts in the living room. You could never imagine I think back to my granddad, I know your granddad was a coal miner as well. And the idea of my granddad Tom from tilsley in money in Greater Manchester, staying at home looking after my my dad, whilst whilst my grandmother went to work, it just it's almost laughable. Because at the times that it was, you know, it was a completely different time,

in terms of typical masculinity, is that sort of like, the ultimate sort of, you know, hunter gatherer and cave in the cave era, right, that was that is sort of very masculine, you know, going down a coal mines sort of a kilometre underground to use your hands to sort of pull out coal is also about, you think about how far that sort of masculinity has moved in that 4000 years from cave period to coal mining, like, actually, it's not sort of enormous shift. What he's done in the last 30 years, has kind of completely changed, right. And so there is this huge sort of, like, change of what kind of masculinity is, but it was interesting. We had a podcast recording go over the other day. And so my dad had to do an emergency kind of pickup at nursery, and then I ended up really badly from it. And I sort of thinking it's going to be a disaster with my two kids at home. It'll be chaos and whatever. And actually, do you know what? Both kids were changed ready for bed at how the teeth brushed? And we're kind of they were still up, but like, it was, it was fine. It was stuffed to the brim of peanut butter sandwiches, but like actually the paternal instinct sometimes I think it's stronger than sometimes we we give credit for when I think men can sort of sense And understandably rightly sort of defer to the mothers and so on about, about things. But yeah, we should sort of sometimes give ourselves more credit. We often talk about maternity visit as much on the kind of paternal side of things.

One thing that struck me about Jimmy story was just how humbling it must have been to have gone from sitting in the prime minister's office to sit in at home in his underpants watching daytime TV with a baby on his knee. How must this have felt for Jimmy? For my viewpoint, it actually seemed really comfortable with his new role as a man redefine what it means to be a man in some ways. I wonder if I could have handled this transition with as much humility as Jimmy had. He obviously went from battling in this great arena of politics, to battling nappy changing, going from meeting these great titans of business to basically being at home 24/7 with a five month old, some might have seen this as a fall from grace. But he's since gone on to create a fantastic podcast called Jimmy's jobs of the future, which I myself listen to, it really seems like he did all of this on his own terms, and was relieved to remove himself from the political cauldron of fire that he was experiencing on a daily basis. It reminded me of an episode we did with a guy called body aberdaron, about staying at home as a father. And the contrast between the 21st century shift of men being a lot more present in the parenting of children, as opposed to the way that you know our grandfathers or even our own parents raised us. But it's got me thinking, have we changed our prejudices towards a man's role in the home? For instance, I've got a mate who's actually unemployed right now. But his wife has a really lucrative job. And I was speaking to him the other day, and someone said to me, how are they actually paying the bills? How are they getting by if he doesn't have a job? But I guarantee if it was his wife that wasn't working, and he had the lucrative job. They wouldn't have asked that same question. How can we change and adapt our prejudices around men who trade high flying jobs in return for being a more present father figure? Jimmy showed himself to be a man. That's a nonconformist. But I want to ask how about you? What type of man do you think you are? Take our man test to find out more about yourself by clicking the link in the description. Or by going to stories of men podcast.com. It takes less than three minutes to complete. And you never know. You might just learn something completely new about yourself.