Going in at the deep end
Therapist Gary Bloom puts sport stars on the couch for his new radio series
IF YOU’RE a sports fan, particularly of the couch potato variety, you’ve probably heard of Gary Bloom. He’s had a 30-year career as a sports commentator — most notably for a decade on Channel 4’s Football Italia show — but also covering swimming and athletics and well, you name it. So it came as a bit of a surprise to hear that he is hosting a new radio show, which is a quite different approach to sports broadcasting. A sort of sporting In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, with Bloom as the Anthony Clare figure, talking to top sports people about their darkest moments.
How did this come about, I ask when we meet at his snug Oxford home, a converted church with a large mezuzah on the doorpost.
It turns out that Bloom combined working as a commentator — he’s soon off to the World Swimming Championships in Budapest — with training and then working as a psychotherapist.
“I had no idea that my training as a therapist, which was a very traditional training, would in any way one day link up with sport.”
Seven or so years ago he went through a difficult period in his personal life, which took him into therapy.
“I decided that when I wasn’t broadcasting I would train as a therapist. Now, though, I see my role as a counsellor and therapist as my bit of tikkun olam — to repair the earth, it kind of fits in a very spiritual way.”
His series will be aired on TalkSport next month. Called On The Sporting Couch the six shows include stars of cricket, football, rugby and athletics.
There’s England and Somerset cricket legend Marcus Trescothick talking about the anxiety issues which robbed him of the captain’s role for his country.
“It was all about the anxiety of being away from his family,” Bloom explains. “Marcus couldn’t be away on tour — he talks very honestly about this.”
The former Manchester United and Northern Ireland footballer Keith Gillespie examines the gambling that led to him blowing £7 million, and his conviction for harrassing his ex-partner, for which he received a community service sentence. The judge told him that his behaviour amounted to “a form of domestic violence”.
And there is a highly moving account from darts champion James Wade on his battle with bipolar disorder.
‘For James, it really was a case of whether he should take his medica- tion and not be as good a darts player as he was.
“Or should he not take it, and be forced to deal with the consequences?”
For the final show in the series, Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington, OBE, agreed to talk to Bloom about the problems she has had dealing with the attention which came with her stellar career.
“She said she didn’t want it all to be about body image, which has been a big part of her career,” says Bloom. The swimming star was often subject to personal comments in the media about her appearance.
In the show she did eventually talk about body image — and also discussed in some detail how hard she
I see my role as a therapist as my bit of tikkun olam
found dealing with fame. Perhaps the most moving episode is Bloom’s session with Nigel Evans, who refereed the 2015 Rugby World Cup final. He breaks down in tears after admitting that he tried to take his own life over his struggle to deal with his homosexuality.
“He talked so honestly about lying to his mother over the fact he was gay,” Bloom tells me. “I remember thinking thank God the red light is on — we are recording this.
“If one person also struggling with their sexuality listens to this and manages to come out, then I’ve done my job.”
The series owes much to Gary’s recent work with Cognacity, a Harley Street based group of clinical psycho-
BRITAIN IS one of the wealthiest countries in the world — yet our education system is unfair for tens of thousands of children who deserve much better. I have been working to help change this since 2001 when, as a 27-year-old management consultant who had only been in Britain for a few months, I took what I thought would be a three-month break from supporting the profit margins of banks to look at inner London state schools — at that time some of the lowest performing in England. This project led to me writing the business plan for a new charity — Teach First — which I founded 15 years ago and have led ever since.
When I started this project, I went into a school in London. It was a tough school, serving a tough estate and was in chaos. I spoke to the head teacher, who told me: “The thing you have to realise Brett, is that success with these kids isn’t getting them good grades, it’s not getting them into top universities or into great jobs. Success is keeping them out of jail, keeping them off the streets.”
His was not a Jewish attitude, not one we would want any educator to hold about any children in our community nor any who we know, yet it wasn’t unusual at that point. In 2002, there were no London schools serving predominantly low-income communities that were achieving above the national average. Many otherwise wellintentioned people had simply given up on these children — they had lost the sense of possibility that Judaism teaches us is inherent in every child.
This has changed drastically over the past 15 years. There have been fantastic improvements in many schools across the country and London now is seen as one of the best cities in the world for education in low-income areas. I visited that school again last year and saw young people from the same council estate achieving at the highest levels and going into the best universities, apprenticeships and jobs. Their school and teachers are no longer letting them down. During this time, we have recruited more than 10,000 teachers for schools in low-income communities across England and Wales, growing to become the largest graduate recruiter in the UK (beating PwC into second place). We have reached more than one million children and helped to create a leadership revolution.
The majority of our alumni (we call them “ambassadors”) have stayed in teaching, most in school leadership roles, and others have remained part of our movement by changing educational norms through roles in the business world, in government and policy, or senior roles in other educational charities. Over the past 10 years, this idea has expanded around the world, including to Israel where Teach First Israel (Chotam) is now the largest graduate recruiter in the country.
Later this year I will be stepping down as CEO to become honorary president and founder and move onto a new challenge elsewhere. The approach of Shavuot, as a festival of learning, has helped to focus my mind on how my Jewish upbringing and values have influenced this journey. Teach First is not a Jewish charity, but the more I think about it, my vision for it has been hugely shaped by my Jewish identity.
People often ask me if being an immigrant made building Teach First more difficult. After all, when we started, I didn’t know anyone in the country, had no idea of societal norms, and wasn’t aware of what was acceptable, or unacceptable behaviour (my wife would say I still don’t).
This outsider-insider mentality has helped many other great Jewish entrepreneurs and leaders through history create transformative change and it was very important for me.
Being an outsider enabled me to create a revolutionary charity that rocked the boat in a way that would have been more difficult for an insider who felt constrained by the normative culture around them.
By not being a member of any political or professional “tribe”, I was able to get cross-party support for the initiative and work closely with teacher unions, university departments of education, businesses, and other charities that often struggle to collaborate. In 2010 and 2015, we were mentioned Darts player James Wade talks about being bipolar positively in all three major political party election manifestos.
I remember meeting the head of careers at one of the UK’s oldest universities who sniffed “our graduates have better options available to them than to teach in a comprehensive school — you’ll never get more than a handful”. We are now the largest recruiter at that university.
His words never made sense to me. As Jews, we are taught that teachers are among the greatest leaders in society. Only a powerful leader can help young people succeed in ways that many of them, their families and social networks don’t believe possible.
Of course, a few weeks after celebrating the teaching of Rabbi Akiva at Lag B’Omer, it’s good to remember that the most respected person in most Jewish communities through history was not the businessman, soldier, or farmer, but the rabbi, a word which doesn’t mean priest or leader — it means teacher.
Justice has been a key driver for Teach First — the idea that some young people don’t receive the education they deserve is neither fair for those young people nor the country as a whole. We think it’s fundamentally wrong and unjust that a child from a low-income background in the UK has half the chance of getting good grades at school purely because of the street they were born on. This seems even more important, as we see an increasingly divided society, with communities feeling left behind.
Judaism has always placed huge importance in the transformative power of education. Wherever we were, Jews built schools. And Teach First has always been about the value and power of education not just in itself, but as a key to unlocking wider social mobility, fairness and bringing communities together to help heal the world — tikkun olam.
On this Shavuot I hope all of us can commit to supporting the vision — one that would have been as recognisable to Talmudic rabbis or my shtetl ancestors as it is to us today — that no child’s educational success should be limited by their family background. That is why in my final year we have launched our Challenge the Impossible campaign to highlight the lack of social mobility in this country and call for support so every young person can fulfil their potential.
You can find out more about this campaign at: www.teachfirst.org. uk/challenge-impossible.