Russ Cook (Hardest Geezer): I Haven't Told The Whole Truth About Africa!, They Took Me Into The Jungle To Kill Me!

Steven Bartlett
When I say day 102, does it bring back any memories? Yeah. It's the only YouTube video that I didn't release. My name is Russ Cook, and I'm attempting to become the first person ever to run the entire length of Africa. It was probably the hardest part of my whole life.

What happened? So I'm going down this dirt path and two blokes on a motorbike pull up. I knew that I'm on the bike for longer than half an hour. It's bad news. I ended up spending 7 hours on that motorbike going into the jungle.

Russ Cook
I was getting kidnapped. Your partner told us that she thought you had died. I mean, I thought I was gonna die as well. Were you thinking about people back home, Russ, I don't think many people know that you did all this stuff before Africa. 22 years old, you become the first person to run from Asia to London.

Steven Bartlett
You buried yourself alive for seven days. You pulled the car as well, which is pretty, pretty crazy. What were you looking for? Course. One hell of a question, man.

Russ Cook
Things had gotten pretty bad. I wasn't speaking to my family. I was drinking and gambling. I would wake up throughout the week, just burst into tears, crying. You had dark thoughts?

Yeah. But ultimately, you know, no one was gonna come and save you. It had to be me. And I thought Africa would be the best adventure ever. But May 30, you start pissing blood.

I knew it was bad. It'd probably end. You get robbed at gunpoint. They got passports, money, and then a. Falling out amongst the team.

Steven Bartlett
You've not talked about this in detail either. I just blew up shouting. Everyone throwing chairs. What happened? Well, congratulations.

Diary of a seal gang. We've made some progress. 63% of you that listen to this podcast regularly don't subscribe, which is down from 69%. Our goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button?

It helps this channel more than you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode.

Ross, you know, you're someone that has achieved and has pursued really anomalous feats in their life, feats that most of us as muggles would never have the insanity to take on. So I was. I was so curious to understand, from your perspective, what are the dominoes that fell in your life that led you to be the guy that sits here, that everyone around the country and around the world is perplexed and astonished and inspired by. Where does it start? Class.

Russ Cook
One hell of a question, man. I think, really, I had quite a normal upbringing, and maybe that's, like, the basis for why I ended up doing all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, like, dad. My early memories of, like, my dad were he was a very hard working man. He cut metal for a living, and I didn't really see that much of him. When I was young. He would be out working 13 hours a day, coming home, metal dust all over him.

Mum would look after me and my brothers, and I think he kind of instilled the, like, that hardworking mentality in me. And, you know, a lot of the dominoes fell from that, really. And what was your mum like when you were growing up? My mom was very. What I always remember about our mom, she really enforced it in us to be polite.

That was, like, a big thing for her. So always like, yes, yes, please, thank yous. Whenever we'd go around to people's houses, she was like, make sure that we behaved well and all of this kind of stuff. And her dad is, like, military man, so 18 to 65, always RAF, like, very well respected. So I think she got that from him, and that's what she passed down to us.

But she was very caring. She hurt her whole life, was her kids, really? So, yeah, like, a lot of respect for my mom. The absence of your father, you said a second ago that because he was quite absent, your mother kind of carried the responsibility of raising the kids herself. Do you reflect on that and as you look back in your life, understand how his absence had an impact on you?

Steven Bartlett
Because before. Before this conversation did, I got to speak to my team, and I got to speak to lots of people around you, as you know, because I'm sure they're all little snitches. So we spoke to your girlfriend, we spoke to your dad. Yeah. Spoke to your team, spoke to everyone around you privately and got all of their take, sort of perspectives and stuff.

And it appeared from those conversations that the early sort of absence of your father had a pretty big impact on shaping you as an individual.

Russ Cook
Yeah, I mean, I guess. I think my. Now I'm older, I just look at it like my dad was doing everything that he could to provide for his family. You know, I think he took that responsibility really seriously.

And, yeah, I mean, it's hard to really contemplate how that affected me, but the few things I did see of my dad, he was just always. He ran a marathon when I was a kid, and I remember that being like, a big. You know, he would always talk about willpower, and he didn't say much, but, like, he was more of a man of. He did things rather than spoke about him. So he'd go out and work really hard, or he'd go and run a marathon, and I'd see these things happening.

You know, he'd come home from work and he'd be knackered and he'd be on the sofa and, like, he kind of just. That was the way he led, you know? It's a generational thing in many respects, isn't it? Because my dad, I feel like, is very much the same. I don't think we had many deep conversations at all.

Steven Bartlett
But he led by example in the sense that he worked hard, loved his family. Yeah. That marathon your dad ran, did he do things like that a lot? Not really. He was working pretty much all the time.

Russ Cook
So he ran two marathons, one when he was 31, when he was 40. But he used to take me out on runs when I was quite young. And, you know, he wouldn't really say anything, but it was more just me seeing it that I think was important for me. That's how he operated, you know? What about affection?

Yeah. No, my dad's. My dad, all my mom aren't very affectionate people. I don't think I've ever seen them, like, even kiss maybe once or twice when I was young. But, like, you know, that I love using.

I love using. Stuff like, this wasn't words that got thrown around in our family.

Not that they didn't meet. Don't know. They didn't mean it. I just think that, like, our family's a bit stiff like that. Not all families have the tools.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Maybe they didn't get them from their parents. No, I think that's exactly it, you know? And I think when, as I've got older and I've understood, like, where they've come from and their parents and their upbringings, and it's, like, makes sense, but.

Steven Bartlett
It didn't make sense. Didn't make sense at the time. It's hard when you're young. I found it really hard to make sense of a lot of things. I was one of them.

Russ Cook
I had a lot of questions, hard to find the answers, but I kept digging. What kind of questions did you have? I guess it was more stuff. Like, I was finding it hard to find my way in the world, and especially when I got to teenage years, and I'd be like, how do I do this. How do I, you know, how do I build a career?

How do I make money? How do I do all of these things? How do I navigate friendships and relationships? All these kind of complex. How do I find meaning in my life?

Not that I was directly asking those questions, but those kind of things I'm prodding at that age. And I think, you know, from my parents, it was quite hard to find those answers just because I think they all struggled with communicating like that. You know, when you were 1314 years old, do you think you're different from your peers? Do you feel like you're different in any way or isolated in any way from other people? I looked at people, and I was like.

Like teachers, for example, any kind of authority figures in my life, and if I sensed that they weren't very happy in their lives or they were a bit miserable, I would kind of discard a lot of what they were trying to tell me. I found a lot at that age had a lot of people trying to tell me what to do or, you know, do this, do that, behave like this. And I was like, if I do what you say, then I'm going to end up like you. And I don't. I don't want that.

So I'm doing my own thing. And I think that kind of started a journey of trying to find my own answers and stumbling across a lot of different things to try and find that. Do you think your mum and dad were happy? No.

I kind of feel bad for saying I want to do them a service when I'm talking about them, because I do respect them a lot now, especially I'm old now I'm older, and I understand things, but I don't think at the time, I think they've had their struggles, like a lot of us have our struggles, you know? Mm hmm.

Yeah. I asked the question because I even look at my own life, and I think whatever the source of my parents and happiness was, I think as kids, we sometimes our relationship with whatever's making our parents unhappy often has a big impact on us. And I sit here a lot with comedians and stuff, and I remember Jimmy Carr. I think it was Jimmy Carr said to me, he goes, listen, when you sit down with a comedian, Steve, you don't need to ask the comedian if they're depressed. You need to ask them which one of their parents were depressed, because the reason for their behavior will be, at some level a desire to please or make one of their parents smile for a change.

Steven Bartlett
You know what I mean? And I wondered that with your early upbringing, because I got to speak to your family and I got to speak to people around you. And the picture that was emerging was that home wasn't the happiest place and it wasn't the most loving, connected, cuddly, perfect, rosy, smiley, idyllic environment to say the least. I'd agree with that. And, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it wasn't for the lack of trying.

Russ Cook
Yeah, but it's like you said, they didn't have the tools. And, you know, ultimately, that is what kind of pushed me to go and try and find my own things, which it's worked out for the best. And when you say pushed you to go find your own things, 1617 years old, you move out. Why? Well, things had got quite bad with family stuff.

I was. I was a piece of shit, to be honest with you. Very rebellious, very disrespectful. Didn't listen to anything that they were saying and very intent on doing my own thing. And I think that kind of took a big toll on everyone in the family because I was, you know, I was stressing everyone out.

Steven Bartlett
Why? What were you looking for? I think, like, deep down I was just, like, looking for something more in my life. I was looking at what, you know, the life that the adults around me were living. And I was like, I don't want that.

Russ Cook
I want more than that. I want to go and see. I want to go and live, you know? And, you know, that's kind of when, you know, you've got a kid that's 16, hasn't done anything with his life and he's just kind of disrespecting you, ignoring everything you're saying and doing his own thing. Coming home.

Whenever. Kids aren't born like that, though. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? They're not born acting out and disrespecting people.

Steven Bartlett
So that's why I'm asking about the cause of it. Because, you know, sometimes when you hear kids doing that kind of thing, you kind of think they're trying to. They're acting out to try and get some attention and then they're kind of like rebelling from, you know, authority because they feel, I don't know, disconnected in some way or whatever. I think that's maybe it, you know, like, it's probably part of it. I'm not.

Russ Cook
I'm not exactly sure why, but that's. That's kind of what happened. And I think I was. Had a lot of energy, a lot of motivation. Viciously ambitious, but didn't really know how to apply it, where to apply it to get what I wanted.

And I was looking around me for. I think I was looking around searching for the guidance that would help me, but I wasn't really finding it. So I was just trying to make. I was just basically discarding things that I thought weren't important or opinions that weren't important, that weren't going to get me where I wanted. And I was just looking for.

Looking for it. And, yeah, that's kind of how things started unraveling and ended up moving out. And that induced a quite tasty few years in itself. When you say moved out, do you mean like, organized the removal van and had an apartment you were moving into? What was the day like when you moved out?

It was quite a messy. It was quite messy for a couple of years in there. Like, I remember my parents sent me up to my granddad in Scotland one summer when I was, like, 15. And this was kind of the start of when things were going quite bad. Your parents were doing okay?

My parents were doing okay, yeah. But then. So then. And then I remember one night they moved all my stuff to my other granddad's house and changed the lock on the door. They were like, you're not coming back.

And I kick the door in and bowled in. So it was kind of happening for a while. And then it got to the point where I remember my mum being like, yeah, you need to go. And I was like, cool. It wasn't like a.

Out the door with tail between my legs or anything. It was, I don't need you anyway. See that? At what age? 15.

That was about 17. Okay. Yeah. And then I organized a flat. It was the cheapest flat I could rent in Worthing.

And I was still. I was at college, so I was working about four or five part time jobs, just like, cleaning. I was up on my bike going to waitrose, cleaning toilets in the morning before college and then finished that. And I went into sales at first. You know, when they changed the locks on the door and tell you that you can't come back home.

Yeah. If I asked them at the time why they'd done that, what do you think they would have said? They would have said, like, this guy needs humbling.

He doesn't know anything about the world. He's very arrogant, very disrespectful. And then in hindsight, as. You're totally right. Yeah, totally right.

Steven Bartlett
But you must have empathy for that kid because, you know, you look back as an adult, you can understand the complex range of emotions yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's no. Kids aren't like, they're not born to be like terrors like that. Yeah, well, I get it from, I think now I'm older, I just get it from both sides. Like, it's really difficult.

Russ Cook
It was really difficult for them to manage that like complex kind of personality and it was also really hard for me to express or communicate in a way that was, I was going to get myself listened to. I wasn't doing that. I was just like totally trying to run everyone over, you know. You wanted to be heard. Yeah, I think so.

Steven Bartlett
What does that mean?

Russ Cook
I guess I just wanted someone to like, understand and I just, I think I just wanted the guidance. Like if someone, I wanted guidance but from someone that I, someone that I looked at and was like, I want what they've got, you know, or like they've done life in a way that I want to do life and they could teach me the lessons but I didn't. I was struggling to kind of find that at that age. It reminds me of my conversation with Ashley Walters and from top boy. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
Said pretty much the exact same thing. His father wasn't around and so he was looking for a role model or guidance answers and he couldn't find it. So he ends up joining these gangs and that spirals somewhere else. And it's so interesting that, you know, a young, a young man at your age, that age sort of, you know, 1415, 1617 if they don't have someone there to model themselves on they can descend into different forms of chaos. Yeah.

Russ Cook
Like so much energy, which is in a lot of ways I think a positive thing but just without those guidelines to actually get you somewhere it just kind of becomes chaos. When you moved out then. So you moved out sort of 1617 years old. How was your relationship with your parents from there? Terrible.

Steven Bartlett
Really? Yeah. Didn't speak to them for a long time. Even up until, I would say up until probably the last year is couple of years it's been pretty sure. But you're 27 now.

Russ Cook
Yeah. We're talking about when you were 17. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's moments in there where it's got better and then got worse and got better. But for a while, yeah, it was tough.

Steven Bartlett
When you, you know, at 17 years old they change the locks, you move out. I'm sure your response was hardest, geezer. Cause it always is, right? Like you said, fuck it, I don't care, I'll figure it out. But at some deeper level I think we're all bullshitting.

Ourselves if we say that, it doesn't have an impact, because I can relate. I remember the call to my mom at 18 and telling her I was leaving university. And I remember what she said to me. I can't repeat what she said because it's so vicious. Really?

Yeah, it's like you. It's so vicious. One of the things she said to me, but it was harder. Skis are exterior. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then at some deeper level on certain days. Oh, yeah. You know, certainly it catch me in the eyes. Oh, 100%, man. Like.

Russ Cook
And I think the hardest geezer. Kind of like, that aggressive approach to it is just like a way of coping with it every now and again. You know, like, the emotions would roll out. And I'm not denying that for a second. I remember seeing.

I moved out, and then I think I saw my dad, maybe. I can't remember how long after. It was a good few months, maybe a year or so. And it just made me cry just seeing him. So, like, the emotions were always there, but to kind of get through it, it was like, right, you know, fuck everyone.

Steven Bartlett
Why did you cry when you saw him? Just. Cause I think, like, there's always a part of me that understands that my parents. There's no one else in the world that loves me like my parents do. And, like, no matter what they do or, like, how badly I felt, I'd been wronged, which I wasn't really.

Russ Cook
They were just trying their best. I always knew that, you know, whatever happens, these are two people actually care about me the most. And I think that just makes, like, when things aren't going well, that makes you emotional. Cause it's like, these are the people. I'm supposed to be closer with things real bad right now, so.

Steven Bartlett
You're so right. I think so many people are probably in that situation right now where they. They love that person, but they don't know how to build the bridge. Both people. Yeah.

And it takes two to build the bridge. It really does. They can't build it. I can't build it. So we love each other, but we're fucking up war.

Russ Cook
Yeah. I think, like, a big part of that for me in building that bridge was actually my girlfriend when I was away. Cause she went over and she went round their house and spoke to him loads. And she's. Cause even before I left, like, I went around to see both my parents before I left.

But it was the first time I see them in, like, maybe like a year and a half, two years. Really? You haven't seen your parents? Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Before I left for Africa, we'd spoken. Me and my girlfriend spoke a lot about these kind of things and how, like, important we want family to be. And she, I felt like, at a loss making that step. I just didn't really know how to do it, what to say, blah, blah, blah. But she kind of, over this year, has really, like, done a lot in that sense.

Steven Bartlett
People might think this is sexist, but I do think women have more tools. 100%. 100%. My girlfriend's the same. If my girlfriend.

Me and my mum sometimes don't speak for prolonged periods of time and my girlfriend, like, insists upon it and dragged me down to Plymouth and was like, we're going to see her. Yeah. Oh, mate, I couldn't agree more. Especially with me and my girlfriend's dynamic anyway. Like, that's really.

Russ Cook
She's. I look at her like a wizard in that sense. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, but she's got that under control, which is amazing. So you're 17 years old, you've moved out, you're on your own. What's the plan?

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so I remember I had this flat in Worthing. It was the cheapest flat available on Rightmove, 450 quid a month, which is more than I could afford. But I was like, right, let's do it.

Was working a bunch of different jobs, trying to finish college, kind of scraped through and then I. I actually was watching this. This is so cringe, but it's funny, I was like one of them lads that watched Wolf of Wall street and was like, this is it for me. This is the game. I'm going to become a millionaire doing sales stuff.

So I went and got a few sales jobs, made some actually not bad money for my age, but really didn't enjoy it and, you know, ended up with that kind of lack of guidance. I ended up just doing the things that felt to me like the most fun or the most, like they would bring in my naivety. They would bring me the most meaningful experiences at the time, which ended up being. Going out a lot with the boys and drinking and gambling and that's kind of what my life was for the next kind of two, three years after that. Were you.

Steven Bartlett
Were you addicted to gambling? Because I was reading through your story and speaking to some of your friends and they told me that there was some instances where you basically lost everything you had and had to borrow money off your misses at the time. Yeah. It's embarrassing to even talk about, like, I remember I didn't have much money, but I'd done one night on roulette. I'd done about two.

Russ Cook
I think it was over two grand on online roulette. Just sitting there on my phone late at night, just tapping away. And that was kind of everything I had at the time, plus the overdraft, plus all the rest of it. And I had to. I was too embarrassed to say anything, so I told my missus, like, I think I just made up some bullshit lies about what this x, y, z, and said, I need to borrow money for rent and stuff this month.

There was a moment there where I was like, okay, this really needs to stop. And I just went on every single gambling website I could find and did the self ban thing. Never gambled since. And the alcohol? Yeah, I mean, I think the alcohol stuff was just like, binge drinking culture.

I wouldn't say, like, I was an alcoholic or anything like this. That was just the only way I could really the only thing I looked forward to. I'd hate my job, so I'd hate work all throughout the week, but I'd be like, all right, Saturday with the boys, or Saturday drinking this, whatever. Going out here was, like, the thing that I look forward to, that was the only thing I was really living for. Was there part of you throughout that period of your life, when you're working in sales, you're gambling too much, you're drinking too much?

Steven Bartlett
I heard you were overweight at the time as well. Was there a part of you that sort of a voice inside your head that was saying, like, come on, Russ, like, this isn't it? Yeah, definitely. I was so miserable, man. So, so miserable at that time.

Russ Cook
Really struggled. I remember I would, like, wake up throughout the week just, like, crying, just so miserable.

Yeah. You'D wake up through the week. Crying, just like I'd wake up supposed to go to work. I'd just be, like, so upset. Just be, like, the worst.

So miserable. Couldn't just fathom. I was like, why is. Why is life this? Why does it suck this much?

You know? I really had no.

Felt like I was kind of trapped. Lack of connection, I think, was a big part of that. You had people around you, though, but you just. I didn't. I mean, I had, like, a few.

Few of my boys, but I wasn't speaking to my family toward this time.

Well, I guess I was just doing a lot of things that would make you miserable. Like, I had no control over my finances because I was pissing away everything I earned on roulette, the only things I look forward to was going out and getting pissed, which would make me feel like shit as well. And then I would go to work and hate it. Working every day, so it doesn't take a genius work out. That's gonna be a pretty mistful existence, you know?

Steven Bartlett
And you didn't have family around, you didn't have. Yeah. Didn't have, like, many deep connections. So how old were you at that point in your life? So that would be like 18, 19, 17, 18, 19, 20, maybe just about.

So if you had to give me a word to summarize your sort of mental health throughout that period, what would you. How would you describe your mental health? Toilet. Yeah. Bad.

Russ Cook
Pretty bad. Was there a worse day that you can recall?

Yeah, I mean. I mean, like, I do remember. Just.

Steven Bartlett
If you don't want to talk about it. Yeah. You go at your own pace. You tell me what you're comfortable talking about.

Russ Cook
I mean, I remember days, like I said, I'd wake up crying, speak to my boss. I remember even one day with my boss speaking to someone on the phone, just bursting into tears, crying. And I think what was hard is I didn't understand anything. I didn't understand why, you know what I mean? I didn't have the tools to really make any sense of the situation.

Cause now I'm seven, eight, nine years older, I can look back and go, yeah, well, that's what happens when you gamble loads and you piss all your money away and you drink loads. You don't have anything in your life that's gonna bring you any meaning or fulfillment. It's obvious. But at the time, I didn't know that. So that kind of sense of helplessness was a really big weight on me, and it just felt like I was now gonna be able to shift it.

I think that was the most difficult thing. I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna get out of this. You had dark thoughts. Yeah, the most dark thoughts. Pretty.

Yeah, pretty much.

Steven Bartlett
That season of your life. I've heard you kind of describe it as a rock bottom moment. And it's interesting because there's so many people that are somewhere along that journey where they're struggling. They've got that sense of helplessness that you've described, and they're searching for answers. And I think, in some respects, thinking about some people I've spoken to recently, they.

They've kind of given up believing that they can solve this because it's gone on for too long. Yeah. And as you said they don't even know what's causing it. They just feel it. They feel it intensely.

I've got a couple of friends that are really going through that at the moment. And I wonder. I always wonder to myself, like, how does someone get from that moment their, like, personal rock bottom? What does it take to get them starting the climb? Because that's why.

That's why I'm asking these questions. I see it in your story. I see you going further and further and further and further and further and further down. Yeah. Reaching this rock bottom moment.

And then in that rock bottom moment, you have some of the, I think, the darkest thoughts anyone can have, and then something causes you to make a decision. Yeah, I think there's a few different things that went into that melting pot. I think, actually, a massive thing was, like, things like listening to podcasts. I remember listening to, like, Joe Rogan a lot back in the day, and I remember the Jordan Peterson. There was a Jordan Peterson episode aged.

Russ Cook
I know it's our classic thing, but that really kind of hit me, and that's what I like. I love listening to him now, and I know he's a bit controversial these days, and people have x, y, z say about him, but for me, like, just having that was, like, my guidance in a lot of ways. And I think so blessed to have been born in this generation where the guidance can come through all of these online resources. Whereas before, you know, like, 2030 years ago, maybe that would never have come for me, and maybe 20 years later, I'd still be in the same spot. So, like, incredibly grateful for that.

But then. Can I ask a question on that? Yeah, go on. In that moment when you're 19 years old. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
You're searching for. Do your parents know what you're going through? No, I don't think so. Do you think today they know what you were going through in that? Probably not.

Russ Cook
No, probably not. I reckon, like, I don't know. Reckon my mom's really for bad. They don't know the ins and outs. What are the ins and outs that they don't know?

Well, just like the day to day, you know, and I. And I'll get. I'm quite like. I keep a lot of things to myself a lot of time anyway, so, like, no one really know. There's a real cost to that in there.

There is, yeah. I guess there is this, you know, these things. I always think with these things, keeping them to yourself doesn't mean that they stay inside. It means they express themselves in other ways. Mm hmm, yeah.

Smart. Whether I sit with a lot of people. So I come to learn about myself, but I've come to, one of the things I've definitely come to learn is that keeping it in doesn't actually keep it in, it just comes out in other ways. Makes it like a pressure chamber and you get your little escapes. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
Someone will say something, you go fuck up.

Or some people expresses themselves in pornography addictions or gambling addictions. They're trying to find other ways to ease the burden of having to hold on to that, all that stuff, or. Run in the length Africa.

So they had no idea? No. If you could go back and have a word with him when he's woke up on that morning, when you're at your rock bottom and he's crying and he doesn't want to go to work, and he's thinking about dark, you know, dark thoughts, if you could go back and just have a telephone conversation with him now, what would you, what would you say to him? Oh.

Russ Cook
I guess I do, I do have empathy for that guy. I think the thing, the thing that I needed to hear, which was the most, which actually got me to, forced me into action, was like, I need to take responsibility for my situation here. So, like, that version of me at 1819 was very much one that looked at my outside world and blamed everyone else for my problems. Like, oh, it's because my parents did this, or my boss did this, and all of these other things, and I didn't need anyone else to come in and say, oh, it's not your fault, blah, blah, blah, blah. I needed someone to go, that's the fucking world, mate.

Get used to, like, do something about it or don't, up to you. So that's probably the message that I would give. Maybe I'd deliver it in a nice little empathetic way, but ultimately, you know, no one was going to come and save me, had to be me. And you talk about this, I was reading different sort of seasons of your life, and there's this one moment where you're in a nightclub and it seems like you have a bit of, I don't know whether you were on something or you were, seems like you had a little bit of a dance floor epiphany moment at, in the morning. Yeah.

So I think it'd been leading up to this, because I would, I'd been, I've been finding life really difficult for a while, and I was doing all these different things, trying to find something that I could put my energy into, that would give me something positive in return. And, yeah, I remember being in the arch in Brighton and just being like, I need to sort my life out here. What am I doing? Proper one of them, like, bit pissed, look in the mirror moments, going f, you know, and then ran home about 1112 miles. Took me ages.

I was so unfit. Sorry, you ran home from the nightclub? Ran home from the nightclub. Why? I don't know, really.

It was a bit forrest gumpy in the way. It was just like, I just felt like running kind of vibes. At what time? Sorry? Like, 03:00 a.m.

Something like this. You ran 12 miles at 03:00 a.m. Yeah, it took me ages. Drunk? Yeah, yeah, totally off it, yeah.

Steven Bartlett
Sleeping on the side of the road. Yeah. Took a little power nap in Shoreham on the pavement. But, yeah, I mean, so I ran that marathon. Well, I ran that little bit.

Russ Cook
And then a mate of mine that I'd been mates with for a long time had just started getting into running properly, and he'd signed up for a half marine, and he said to me, like, come and run it. Like, let's do it. I'll train with you, blah, blah, blah. And I think that was the moment where I was like, oh, this might be something that I can do. I'm out of ideas here, you know, I need something.

So I literally, just, on a win, was like, fine, let's do it. Signed up, and then he took me out training.

We did the half marathon, then a few weeks later, we signed up, did the full marathon. And that process was, like, a huge relief for me. It just. It made me really, like, it hammered in the sense that if I do something positive, it will pay itself back to me, you know, like, that accountability of, like, go and do something good. Here we go.

And you can see the improvements coming week by week by week. And I think that's why I love running so much, because that's it in its simplest form. It's like, you go out, run, it's really shit. But then you keep going. You keep going, and now a month later, you can run a half marathon, or two months later, you can now run a marathon.

And it was that process of going from someone that I like, I couldn't even run around the block, and then I could run a marathon, and I was like, shit, this is this. I got something here. This is how we progress. That's really the word, innit? Progress.

Steven Bartlett
That feeling of progress, like, you'd learn, because that becomes a metaphor for life. Like, I set out to do something and I got better at it. I progressed. Yeah. And I accomplished something.

Russ Cook
Yeah. That's a pretty strong, transferable idea for the rest of your life, for everyone's life to learn that lesson. Exactly. That's kind of what happened for me. I managed to save up some money off the back of ran these marathons and then it's like, stopped drinking as much.

I wasn't gambling anymore and saved up a bit of money for the first time. And then a few months later I decided, right, just been off all these cleaning jobs, I'm gonna go and travel the world with my few grand that I'd managed to save up. And where did you go? Around the world? Travelling.

Did a bit in Europe, then went over to Africa, got to Kenya, did some. I was really into my own at this point, so I was training really hard every day. It was like my living and breathing. It went to the training camp, this village called ay ten, which is like home to some of the best long distance runners ever. Kipchoge's from there, all this kind of stuff.

Just trained with them, got my arse whipped up pretty good and that just. I met an italian guy who'd been cycling around the world for six years, super inspired by his story, how he was living, what he was doing, and decided, like, I wanted, I want to do, I want to try and do something like that. And I was, I was pretty good at running by now. So then I first kind of conceived the idea of running from Istanbul to London and that was the next. I was like, all right, that's what we're going for.

Steven Bartlett
I don't think many people know that you did all this stuff before Africa. No, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think they do. I don't think people. I was speaking to my mates, I was like, brother, do you know?

He, like, ran. He was the first person to run from Asia to London. And people were like, no, you just know that you ran Africa and then all these other things you did beforehand. But 22 years old, you become the first person to run from Asia to London because you ran from Istanbul to London. You completed 71 marathons in 66 days through eleven countries and you had no team with you.

You basically just did it by yourself and your phone was dying and all that stuff. When you told your family and other people that you were going to run from Asia to London at 22 years old, what was their response? Because that would be the first big. Most of them were like, yeah, you're like, you're gonna, you're gonna die or, like, that's not gonna happen. I remember pretty much everyone being like that.

Russ Cook
I could probably count on one hand the amount of people actually thought I was gonna do that. What did your parents think? Can't actually remember. I don't know if I was speaking to them very much at this time. Oh, really?

Yeah. I remember my little brother was the only one that was like, yeah, he's the only one. I remember being like, yeah, he's deaf, he's gonna do it. What was that like, you know. Cause you're on your own.

Steven Bartlett
It's different to the Africa run, but this time you're on your own for that whole journey across Asia to Europe. Yeah. What's that like? It was an amazing adventure, man. It really was.

Russ Cook
It was tough, though. Like, really tough being by myself the whole time. I would literally run a marathon at a little bag with a hammock and toothbrush, toothpaste, phone. I just find a couple of trees at the end of the day, sling the hammock up and go again the next day. So, yeah.

Steven Bartlett
Did you not need, like, friends or something?

Russ Cook
Like, why? Why? I think the.

A lot of people said this to me at the start. They're like, well, you're gonna need this. You're gonna need that. I was like, yeah, but why, actually? Why?

Why can't you just sleep in a hammock every day and then go and run them out of a marathon? Did you speak? Were you speaking to anybody back home around that time? Not really. You must look at that objectively and go, that is not normal behaviour.

Steven Bartlett
And then from that, I ask, so what is it that's abnormal about you? Because you're performing unnormal behavior. It's super inspiring, but it's not normal. It's not typical. That's a good question, man.

Russ Cook
I'm not really sure. Yeah, it wasn't normal.

Yeah, I guess it definitely wasn't normal. I love that you're just figuring that out now.

I think. You know, I met this italian guy, and he'd been cycling around the world for six years, and he showed me a setup. He had nothing on him, really. He had, like. He had basically nothing, but he just had a coffee kettle.

That was the only thing he really cared about. So meeting these kind of people just made me realize, like, what is normal? Who even cares about normal? I don't care. I just, like, this is normal.

This guy's cycling around six years. Why not? He seems like he's had a pretty good adventure. I want a bit of that. In Africa, specifically, Kenya.

Steven Bartlett
I've been there. Certain parts of Kenya can really teach you that you don't need much. That's your primal. Exactly. I think it was just a different way of looking.

Russ Cook
That's what the. I mean, it is the classic traveling. Like, oh, go travel and find yourself, blah, blah, blah. But it does, you know, sometimes meeting these people from doing the craziest stuff and from different cultures will just make you look at things in a different way. You know, even I found that coming back to London now, and it's like, all of you, I'm back into the mode of like, oh, you need to go get a flat and you need to go and live somewhere, and blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, hold on a minute, like, I don't need. Why do I need to do any of this? You know? You must realize upon returning to the UK how much people are kind of programmed. Yeah, yeah.

And I just. I guess the age of London one was the first time I was just like, let's give it a go. What's the worst gonna happen? And at the end of that run, your father joins you.

Yeah. So I remember my dad. My dad came up to London and saw me. He said that he was proud of me. And I remember that hitting because, like, he didn't say it often, but when he says it, you know, it's probably.

I can imagine your dad being similar, like, the kind of thing where, you know, he means it when he says it. And I think that's, like, one of the most powerful things a dad can say to their son. Like, proud of you, son. Even makes me emotional just saying it, like, thinking about. I'm like, wow.

So, yeah, that was nice. And he ran the last day with you. He ran, like, the last five k, I think. Yeah, I lost five k. And I was actually joined for the last couple days by the mate that got me into running in the first place, which is really cool as well.

Steven Bartlett
Interestingly, there was no followers, there was no YouTube views, there was no headlines, there was no BBC articles. There was nothing. Yeah, most people don't even know it happened. Yeah. Frankly, because you went on your own and you didn't do all the social media stuff.

Russ Cook
Yeah. You then get back to the UK to much different fanfare than you got back to this time. You go back to your parents house a couple of days in, everyone's looking around going, yeah, what's that? Like, a couple of days in? Yeah, I mean, I remember my body being in a pretty bad way after that.

I couldn't even walk. Like, I was really struggling, body was really hurting and got back into the country. I was skinned because I'd done all my dough on this aged London run. And then my dad was like, I remember dad's like, what are you doing, you lazy? Like, get a job or something.

So I was like, oh, fuck. All right. And then when it got. How did you feel when you heard that?

It was hard at the time. I just, I was, I was, I was really struggling because I just been away for a whole, you know, for about a year or something, done this big thing, finally finished, and then I was like, oh, that's reality slapping me in the face again. But, yeah. Were you pissed off? Yeah, I was, yeah.

Steven Bartlett
When he told you to get a job? Yeah. I was fuming, yeah. Why? Because I was.

Russ Cook
I was just mentally just absolutely done in and physically done in. And then he'd like, just been like, oh, I'm so proud of you. I remember being like, oh, I'm so proud of you. You've achieved more in your life already than I ever have, blah, blah, blah. And it really felt like, oh, I made a bit of a breakthrough there.

Steven Bartlett
What do you mean breakthrough? Just like, I felt like he respected me more. He'd actually seen that I was capable of doing something that he thought was good. You hadn't felt that before? Not in that way.

Russ Cook
Not in that way. What did you think that he thought of you growing up when you were sort of 19 years old and you're. Gambling and doing like, probably just disappointed.

Yeah, disappointed. Bit of a loser. You eventually end up burying yourself alive. Which is fucking bizarre. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
That's a ton of events I didn't see coming in your story. So you do this run at 22 years old. There's sort of a two year gap between then and when you bury yourself alive. What are you doing for those two years? So I was just working bits and pieces here and there, really back to normality, pretty much.

Russ Cook
Like, I finished the Aegis London run. And in my head from then, I was like, I would really love to make this kind of thing a career somehow. Don't know how I'm going to do it, but I would love to be able to do that. And then that kind of started like a three or four year process of working out okay. You know, if we make content, then maybe brands will sponsor that and then I can go and do adventures with that money.

But that, it took a long time to kind of put those pieces of the puzzle together. That was never the really what I was thinking of when I did Istanbul to London. I chucked a few photos up on Instagram, just really for my boys to see. Be like, I'm out here in Serbia, camping or whatever.

But, yeah, then, you know, did the age line of run, figured out if we make some content and that's how we're gonna do it. Buried myself alive, pulled a car for a marathon. Then the Africa planning started happening. You buried yourself alive. You asked your parents if you could bury yourself in the garden.

Steven Bartlett
They told you to f off.

Russ Cook
Yeah, yeah, I remember that now. Yeah. You buried yourself a life for seven days in underground. You basically just dug a hole in a tin can and jumped in the tin can, and then they. They buried you there.

Steven Bartlett
And then eventually, the plans, as you say, you pulled the car as well, which is crazy. Do you know when I actually found out all this stuff, which shocked me was, I don't know, a week or so into your run in Africa, I saw you pop up on my feed, and then, as you know, I clicked on your profile, and then I clicked on the DM box. Yeah. And you sent me a DM. Yeah.

And the DM you sent me was in May the fifth, I think it was 2022, so it was a long time ago. It was more than two years ago now. And paraphrasing, because I know you speculative. On it, I bet you get these kind of DM's all the time. Yeah, I missed it.

I didn't see it, so I didn't. I didn't. I didn't see it at all. But it's funny. It's funny because I actually replied to you exactly one year to the day.

Russ Cook
Really? When you sent me a message, or I replied to you on May the fifth as well, but you emailed me on May 5, 2022, and in that message, you said some nice things, and then you said, you'll probably get a lot of these DM's, but let me explain why this one is special and exciting. Oh, this is your sales background. Now, I've removed some parts because I. No, no, no.

Steven Bartlett
Just, you know, I'm an endurance athlete. In 2019, I was the first person to run from Asia to London. In 2020, I pulled a car for a marathon in record time. In 2021, I got buried alive with nothing but water, and I live streamed it for an entire week. And in 2022, I'm starting a mission to become the first person to ever run the full length of Africa.

You sent me that DM two years ago, hoping that I could assist you in some way with the Africa. And when I saw that, the most shocking part was that you'd done all of these other things and I'd never, ever heard about any of them. Yeah, yeah. And then in that message, you explained to me, because it was a very, like, long message and you really. It was really thorough message, you explained that this time would be different, people would actually know because you'd figured out content.

Russ Cook
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've got some good people around you and you'd spent almost two to three years thinking about this Africa run before you even. You set off going. Yeah. Why Africa?

Steven Bartlett
Why was that the plan? Well, I knew that Africa hadn't been done before and it's one of the few things left that hadn't been done. So that was probably one of the big reasons. Also, like, Africa's not very travelling. Not many people, tourists.

Russ Cook
Not many tourists go there. And I thought it would be like the best adventure ever. So that's why I decided to do it. So you were going to run from the bottom of Africa to the top? Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
How long did you think it was going to take? I thought it would take 240 days. That was my goal. I was going to do 360 marathons in 240 days. It didn't quite work out.

How long did it take in total? In the end, it took 352 days. Long time. But there's lots of hurdles along the way. Before you set off, I think it was four to five months before you set off, maybe six months.

You meet a young lady called Emily Bell. Ah, yeah, yeah. Wow. What a girl. What a woman.

Was it six months before or something? No, I met her. We first met at one of our mutual friend's birthday party. Yeah. And I said to my friend, like, why have you never introduced me to her?

Russ Cook
She's beautiful. And then, then that started, like a three month process of me trying to convince her to go on a date. Good luck. It took a while, but we got there eventually. Got there eventually.

We had a secret Santa going and I think one of my friends did me a solid and kind of like, rigged the secret Santa. So I got her. Oh, nice. And then I got her tickets to go to Comedia Comedy club in Brighton. Got her two tickets and I was like, well, you could take me.

And then, yes, when we first started dating belt, this Africa thing was already in the works, so it was quite complicated. But then before I left, we were like, right, let's do it. And we kind of, like, we spoke on the phone every day and, mate, I was one of these people. If you'd asked me two years ago, could that have ever worked, like 14 months away we spent from each other? I'd be like, nah, that's never gonna work.

Never gonna work. But I think we, we spoke pretty much every day for hours whilst I was running, if I had signal. And the kind of stuff that we got to speak about and really go through in depth on is the kind of stuff that I think in a lot of relationships would just get swept away in the rigmarole of the day to day life. So I'm actually super grateful for that time and really proud of her and us for, like, navigating that kind of weird situation. Knowing your childhood and knowing the early model of relationships that you experienced with this mother and this father didn't seem like they always had the best time.

Steven Bartlett
Little bit distant. The affection wasn't there. When you go into a relationship, there must be a part of your subconscious that still has that model of relationships front of mind. So you must be in some respects, like I am, to be fair, or at least like I was until I was about 27, 28 when I had my first relationship. I had my first relationship at your age.

An avoidant. Ah, yeah, yeah. Cause you hadn't learned. You didn't have the tools to be affectionate and to be open. Totally avoidant.

Russ Cook
Still am a bit. But. But when you met her. Yeah. You hadn't done had those deep conversations.

Nah, I think it's credit to her more than me. She kind of bring that out. I didn't have the tools to go to do any of that stuff, to be honest. You know, she's just, I think sometimes, like, I don't know, I just think we fit really well. Like, together.

What I can do well, she can't. What she can do well, I can't. Like, it works. It's so interesting because we got to have a conversation with Emily. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
And the way she described you sounded very, very much like me. It's nice. Funny, because I've actually listened. I remember messaging you, actually, about it. I think I listened to, you'd had a podcast with some relationship person, Esther Perel.

I remember. And, yeah, like, the way you were talking about it, I was like, this is like, this is hitting over. And we both, we do that a lot. Sometimes we listen to podcasts and talk about it and do this. I do this.

I'm gonna play this. Oh, God, this is gonna be awkward for you. But listen, it's, it's word for word. Me. Yeah.

Russ Cook
I think he, he's not the easiest to support and hasn't been the whole time I've known him, because he doesn't accept support very. Like, he's got so much better at it. But I'm a very, like, nurturing. I want to help. I want to make his life easier.

What can I do? How can I support you and my. I think we have different support. Looks different for me and for him, so support for me looks like a hug or, like a chat or something. That's, you know, it's different for everyone, but for him, support looks like space.

Steven Bartlett
That's textbook me. Yeah. Support is leave me alone. It's. My love language is just acts of service, and leave me alone.

That's really what it's about here we're talking about, you have different love languages. And she goes on to explain that this is much because of the way that your early years, you were used to independence. Yeah. God, she's smart. Let me just.

Russ Cook
He's not used to having somebody there, like, who he respects, like, caring about him, so it's definitely been hard. And he has, like, changed in a. He's changed so much since I first met him, but when I first met him, I was not thinking, oh, I could actually seriously date you. Yeah. No, I remember those days.

Steven Bartlett
You've changed. Mm hmm. You've changed. How have you changed? Wow.

Russ Cook
How have I changed? All this sort of intimacy related relationship, love related stuff. Have you changed? I think I've definitely become more willing to accept somehow. I do still struggle with that, but I've definitely tried to do that more.

I think, for me, it was like, I really cared about Emily, so I really wanted to be the best that I could for her as well. And I just think, like, the level of desire to make that happen was, like, really high. So I've just. I think before, I wasn't very willing to compromise on a lot of stuff. I was like, ah, I'm doing my thing.

You either fit in or you don't see it later, whatever. Whereas with Emily, it reminds me of me. With Emily, I was like, oh. Like, she's special. I really want to make this work, and I'm.

I'm gonna have to. There's. It's actually a benefit to me if I can compromise, because she. That kind of having that connection will also bring a lot to my life, and I need. And I need to.

I need it. She kind of got over the fence. She got over the wall of the castle and managed to invade and change you from inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you didn't want to let anyone over the fuck?

Nah. Is that how it's been for you as well, then, or 100%? Yeah. I met a person who I cared about so much. Yeah, it's exactly what you said, that I was finally willing to compromise on things before then.

Steven Bartlett
It was like, as you say, my way or the highway. Like, don't get in the way of my dreams. You're either on the bus or you're off it. But not like, I'm willing to go in a different direction in some areas of my life here. And I think that's good news for a lot of people that are avoidance, because it offers us all hope that, you know, we'll meet someone and they'll be worth it, and they'll help to rewire some of the evidence we have from our earliest years about what relationships are and aren't and the freedom they make us compromise and all of those things.

She sounds like a really wonderful person. She is, man. She's great. She's the best. I love her.

Russ Cook
To fit. They always say you strengthen a relationship by going through something difficult together. And that's exactly what happened as you ran the length of Africa. The really remarkable thing was I was reading about your preparation for this trip. And to say the least, Russ, you were ill prepared.

Steven Bartlett
You landed in South Africa with ten k, which is 4% of the money that you would need to make it the whole way. I mean, there's so many other things here you knew that you couldn't get through. I think it was Angola, Algeria. Algeria? You knew you couldn't get through Algeria because they don't issue visas if you're not in the country.

Russ Cook
They denied our visa already. Yeah. And they don't issue visas when you're not in the country. We'd already left, so. So you.

Steven Bartlett
So fuck. I'll figure it out when we get there, pretty much. What is that mentality? Because there's so many people that need everything figured out and all the answers, and to feel that psychological feeling of, I'm ready. You don't seem to give a fuck.

Russ Cook
Frankly, I don't think I was afforded the luxury of being able to, you know, wait, really? We were running out of money. It was. It was now and ever, you know, make it work with what you've got or don't do it, basically. And I was like, I think we could do it.

Steven Bartlett
Where did this ten k come from? Well, we actually got fifty k to start with from an investor that he was a mate of a mate. I've managed to persuade to give us some money to get things going. What was in it for him? He.

Russ Cook
He's got a percentage of, like, everything we make off the back end, so he's done all right. It was a risky. Risky one. That's hell of a. Yeah, risky one for sure.

I think he. It was more like a. He just wanted to see it happen, you know. He was fellow worthing boy, year younger than me, made a bunch of money in crypto and. Yeah, so he fronted the first bit of money to get us going and 50k was more than enough to get us going.

But what ended up happening is that the mission got delayed more and more. We had some people involved at the start, that kind of long story. They kind of said that these things were going to happen, blah, blah, blah, brands were going to happen. All of this stuff they were trying to make happen, none of it ended up coming to fruition. Did they take money?

They didn't take any money, no. But we ended up burning through a lot of the money before we were supposed to be on start line with like fifty K, and we ended up. Months rolled by, we wasted money on XYZ. Ideas didn't come. So basically it got to a point where I kind of got rid of all these people, start line, ten grand.

I was like, if we don't get funding within, you know, if we don't get any kind of sponsorship within the first month, this is game over because we've run out of money. Said to all my team, gonna have to delay your wages, et cetera. Just really tightened up. And then I got a message from some, some bloke from Dragons Den. Like, two weeks in?

Steven Bartlett
Yeah. No, so, mate, I mean, I don't know, this is another thing that people probably don't know, that you're like such a massive part of the story. Like, you know, when. When you messaged? I remember being in South Africa, I think it was about ten days, two weeks in or something like this.

Russ Cook
Got a message from you. There was like, oh, like, just seeing what you're doing, something like this. Love it. Like, if you need any help, let me know. And I was like, mate, you should see.

I rang Emily up. I was like, you're never gonna believe who just messaged me. Like, it was crazy, you know, obviously, cure got sorted out, perfect head got sorted out, two unbelievable sponsors. And it kind of changed the whole mission, man. Like, I can't even put into words how grateful I am that you messaged me.

That's. It was. That was like, you know, sometimes when you have like, a moment where you're like, wow. Like, that's. Like, that.

You were that moment for me. Really? Yeah. Yeah, but you did that. I.

No, I. You did it. No, but, like. No, you did. I'll tell you why you did that, because two things.

Steven Bartlett
The first thing is, you had messaged me a year earlier, and I just had totally missed it. Yeah, but the second thing is you went and did something. So you planted a seed there. Then you went and did something so awesome that the world brought it to my attention. And when the world brought it to my attention, I looked at what you were doing.

I think you were roughly two weeks in, and I just thought it was awesome. I thought you were a cool guy, and I could play out how this mission goes in my head, and I thought, this is really fucking cool. I'm an investor in. I'm a part owner in various companies, and there was two companies that I am very close to. Perfect, Ted and Hull, who I felt were just perfect because.

No pun intended. Because perfect. Like an energy drink company that I met on Dragon's Den, you need energy, and they're all about positive energy. And the founders are very much like you. And then, obviously, Huel, on the nutrition side of things, I thought they were perfect for you as well.

And I messaged both of them, and they were both down instantly. I just sent WhatsApp. So I said, there's this guy. He's running the length of Africa. He's so cool.

He's really. He's, like, gonna do it. And both brands were, like, down. In one message, I messaged both the founders on WhatsApp, and they were like, we're in. So.

And you had done that. You had, because you had messaged me. Most people, I say this because sometimes people can see things, like, pivotal moments in their journey as luck. But I think it's important to highlight that you planted a seed a year earlier when you literally sent me, like, three pages in a deal. Yeah, I guess I'll describe it like I was knocking on the door, but I needed someone to open it.

Russ Cook
You opened it. So it's kind of a jewel thing there, I think. You planted a lot of seeds. Yeah, yeah, I was knocking on a few doors. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
And I'm sure there's lots of messages you sent that were never replied to. Yeah. So I'm really glad that I saw it. I'm really glad. But I saw it because you were doing something awesome, and it just popped up in my feed one day, and I went down a rabbit hole and I was like, this is fucking cool.

This guy is cool. It'd be dope to be, you know, to do anything we can to see him see this through. So that that gives you a little nudge forward. Those two incredible brands. You get going on the mission, you run into a bunch of health issues.

I mean, it went around the Internet for a while. I think at this time you've got, I don't know, you didn't have many followers at the time. You had 20, 30, 40,000 followers. Yeah, it kind of grew. It grew a lot quite quickly.

Russ Cook
Early doors, but we started the mission with, I think, 20K on Insta, six k on Twitter, ten k on YouTube. And you start pissing blood by, like, day 30. Is there a part of you at day 30 when you're running through Africa and you're pissing blood and you go, I ain't gonna be able to do this? Nah, I knew it was bad. You're running out of money.

Yeah. A couple weeks before then you start pissing blood. For most people, either one of those things would be, okay, let's get a flight. Well, I just. I knew that, you know, it was a bad situation, but it would probably end eventually and then carry on going.

Steven Bartlett
You get robbed in South Africa, which is the first sort of minor robbery incident. Thieves approach you, they try and take your stuff, think you give them a lift home. Yeah, that was two. Two guys came up to me whilst I was running at night. One came in front of me, one came behind me, and I kind of instantly knew this was a bit shaky.

Russ Cook
And I just went a bit mad, just, like, weighed up the situation, just started acting a bit crazy. Started, like, beating my chest and shouting and stuff to try and put them off. Cause I could. I got the feeling like, okay, they're gonna. This is an attempt, but they haven't gone straight in with the robbery.

They're kind of feeling it out. So I was, like, trying to give them enough of a reason to think that I'm crazy enough that it's just not worth it. Kind of worked. Sorry. You started beating your chest?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started beating my chest. I started shouting. I was they. Because they just joined.

I was mid run and they joined me running like, one in front, one in. They were running it like they. I think they. It was a situation where they were trying to feel me out, you know, like, should we rob this guy? This kind of thing?

Steven Bartlett
Yeah. And I just thought, if I can put them off enough. So can you describe to me what you. I literally beat in my chest. Yeah.

Russ Cook
I was just like, we're running, like, just go home. Totally. A bit. Just to make them think, like, oh, this guy's bit, you know, he's a bit off it. Maybe we just get the next one.

Steven Bartlett
Did you learn that somewhere, or was that like, a plan you had? No, that was just purely, like, you rap differently to different situations. Like, we've been robbed at gunpoint where there's a gun in my face, and I'm not going to start beating my chest because I don't want a bullet in my head. But then there's other times where you think, like, you're kind of looking at them going, he's actually a bit nervous to rob me, so if I can put him off enough, then he's just not going to bother, which was that, that situation. So what happens then?

You start beating your chest, acting like a lunatic. Start beating my chest. And I can see it. The one got the run, the guy running behind me ended up dropping off. So then it was just the guy in front of me.

Russ Cook
He was quite a small guy anyway. And I was like, I don't recognize about it. And then you tell him you're the hardest geezer. And then we ended up speaking a little bit, and he was like, oh, my friend was gonna rob you, but we're not hit, but he's gone. We're not gonna rob you.

And I was like, oh, your friend. Was gonna rob me, was he? Yeah, like, nice. And then, you know, I actually ended up speaking to him and he was just saying, like, he's just. He needs some money to, like, feed his family and stuff.

He was living in a township next to the road, which was, like, pretty bad conditions. And I was like, look, mate, my boy's gonna come pick me up in a couple minutes. Like, we'll give you some food. And he was like, all right, sweet. You fed the robber?

Yeah. So then the boys came, and then we ended up giving them a lift back.

Steven Bartlett
What a nice story. Yeah, it's gonna be a movie one day, that this whole thing's gonna be a movie. You get to Angola, and then you get robbed at gunpoint. Yeah. Robbed at gunpoint in Angola.

Russ Cook
That was day 50. Yeah, I mean, they were a bit more successful that time. They got a lot of our stuff. What happened? So I ran thirty k.

I was on a lunch break. We sat in the van. Me, Jared, Harry, my support team, and we were just chatting shit like usual. Two, three guys pull up on a motorbike. Two of them get off come up the side of the van, crack the door open, gun in all of our faces.

Started speaking Portuguese. Then they took a bunch of stuff. Yeah, that was a nightmare, to be honest. They got passports, money, cameras, drone phones. Was long.

Steven Bartlett
Have you processed this stuff? I don't know. I don't think so, man. Like that. The thing is, is these things happen.

Russ Cook
You're on the road again the next day, so, you know. Cause you say it such a casual, sort of blase way, but if someone had a gun pointed at them, most people would be in therapy trying to resolve the sort of complex set of psychological implications that causes. And when I asked you the question, I could see your demeanor changes a little bit because it's not as blase as you sometimes make out, is it? I don't know, man. I guess it just is what it is.

I haven't really. I don't know if I've deeped it that much at this point. You know, we're over it. Nothing bad happened in the end. I mean, we got robbed, but no one died.

Steven Bartlett
You lost the cash, you had the equipment and your passports, which is probably the most annoying thing of all these things. Yeah. That cost us, like, at least two or three weeks in terms of going to get visas and things. Day 50, you get to day 100 and you're day 102. When I say day 102, does it bring back any memories?

Russ Cook
A couple. Couple. Congo, Congo, DRC. Yeah. That was one hell of an experience.

Steven Bartlett
That you described this as probably the hardest part of the whole trip. Probably the hardest part of my whole life, really. You've not talked about this much in detail either, for some reason. So we made a YouTube series online which kind of followed the whole thing. It's the only YouTube video that I didn't release because it was quite.

Russ Cook
I mean, it was quite. It's a difficult one at the time as well, because it was the hardest time for us as a team. And we. There was a lot of arguments, a lot of fallouts around that. And I didn't think that the video that we made was really what told the story, how I wanted it to be told, what happened.

So. Yeah, you're emotional about this. Yeah. I mean, it.

Yeah, that whole thing was. Was mad. So we got to DRC, I think day hundred. We got to DRC. It was hostile from the start.

We'd been warned loads about it, about the country. It's one of the poorest countries in the world. It's quite known for corruption. And we've been sent the videos of the craziest things happening there. And I think we were all a bit apprehensive.

Steven Bartlett
You've been sent what kind of videos? The craziest, like, people getting shot, chopped up, all kinds of stuff.

Russ Cook
Yeah, it was. It definitely. I mean, I don't know how much I can really. What I would say about DRC is that we spent a few days there. My experience was very subjective.

It's a massive country. Loads of people, loads of great people. But my personal experience of the small amount of time I spent there was a bit rough. But, yeah, I mean, we landed in the country, crossed the border. It was a very chaotic border town.

We had people from the get go very. Not very happy to see us at all, shouting at me whilst I was running, trying to, like, exploit us for money, officials, all this kind of stuff, trying to get money out of us. And we'd heard about all of this from people traveling, so we kind of half knew what we were rolling into. But it was. It really created a kind of atmosphere that was difficult.

Challenging, yeah. I mean, the day before, day 102, we had a guy come up to. Guy came up to me with a rock, spikes in the rock, and he was like, I'm gonna, like, smash your head in with this. I mean, he was speaking French, so I don't really get it, but Harry spoke French, so he's basically threatening us with this big spiky rock he had in his hand, saying, like, give me free quid, the equivalent of three quid, where I'm gonna, like, start smashing you all up. And so we.

I gave, I think gave him a quid in the end because I'm not getting my head smashed in over three quid. But also I didn't want to, like, get word around that there was a bunch of people just throwing money around to anyone that would threaten them. So, yeah, I mean, woke up day 102, I was running 100k that day, and I felt very anxious from the get go, really, like, really finding it difficult. Already ran, left my left, the boys, in the morning, like I normally do, ran 20k, then ran another 20k start. We took a turn off onto a dirt road.

So the boys had planned this route, took. Went down this dirt road, then the van, basically, this port van, couldn't get to me. So the boys sent a guy on a motorbike, and so I'm running along this dirt park and this guy on a motorbike keeps trying to stop me. And I was so, like, scatty already that I was. I didn't want to stop for he was trying to get me to stop, and I was like, nah, I'd had it the day before.

People trying to stop me on motorbikes. And it was all a bit. Didn't. Didn't feel great. Like I was.

I was quite anxious about the whole thing. Anyway, eventually I did stop. He gave me a note that basically said, like, the boys can't get round to where we were going to meet, but they're going to go to this other place and meet there. And it's about 20k through the jungle. No roads that, barely even a path.

I was just kind of like, whacking my way through bushes to get to this meeting point where I was going to try and find the boys, run out of water, phones got no signal, and I'm going through these, these bushes, stumbling to this village. And I think because of the experience that I already had in the first couple days at DRC, I was very much like, I just want to get my head down and get through these places as quickly as possible with less fuss as possible. So I'm running through this village and, like, people shouting at me and stuff, and I'm like, okay, this is happening all the time now. Like, just carry on going, carry on going. But I think I upset quite a lot of the village by doing that.

And then the chief of the village comes over and then, you know, before you know it, I'm, like, surrounded by half the village. They're all, like, very upset. They don't get what I'm. They don't get who I am, what I'm doing, why I'm there. And they start trying to say that I need to give them money.

I didn't have anything on me. So then, like, the chief of the village kind of got some people away and he got two blokes, took me out into the bush with machetes. And I was bricking it.

Yeah, I was absolutely bricking it, thinking, like, my mind's totally racing at this point. I'm like, what is going on here? Why. Why am I going out to the bush? Like, this doesn't make any sense.

Like, is this a shakedown? Like, what is the worst happening? Don't know. And then got out into the bush. I basically emptied all my bags, had some biscuits, gave them the biscuits, and then just darted.

And then I was just like, right beeline for this meeting spot. And mine's totally frazzled at this point. I've got. I'm hearing motorbikes coming, I'm hearing people. I'm jumping in bushes, like, totally just at kind of off it here, kind of get through this jungle bit, get to this meeting spot.

The boys aren't there now I'm really like, oh, this is bad because I'm about 50 something k in, I'm dehydrated, I've got no water, I've got no signal and I don't know where the boys are, I don't know how to get to them and I'm in the middle of the jungle and I know that there's like, I've upset a lot of people in the local area and I've just run away from them all and like, ah, like, this is bad, this is bad news. Anyway, I figured out that the tarmac, the last nine bit of tarmac was, I think, about 15 or 20k away. And I was like, I reckon I can just about make it there. And if I make it there, then that, that makes sense that the boys, that's the last bit they could get to. So had you just sprinted away from the guys with the machetes?

Pretty much, yeah, yeah. Like it was, they walked me out into the bush and I didn't really, I didn't know what was happening, but I was just so like, this is bad. I gave him biscuits and just died. And then like, I've, I've ran off and I can just hear loads of like commotion going on and I'm just running through this jungle. It's all quite, yeah, I mean, it's all quite mad.

I'm like, adrenaline going through the roof. I was like, yeah. Were you scared? Yeah, I was petrified, man. I was absolutely petrified.

I think what didn't help is that I didn't understand any of the languages, like local lingala, the local language. I didn't know any French either, which would have helped.

And I didn't understand, I didn't have very good understanding of the culture or anything. So I think if I went through it again, a lot of these things would have been rationalized in my mind easier, but because I was so unaware of the situation and I'd had all of these horror stories built up in my head and the first couple of days in DRC was quite rough and I was just like, in this spot where it didn't take much for me to kind of just assume the worst of everything, so it really just got me into a place where I was like quite sky.

But, yeah, I mean, I find this, I see the bit of tarmac, I'm like, right, let's head there. It's about you know, 2 hours away, I could probably make it there. And as I'm going there, I'm going down this dirt path, another two blokes on a motorbike pull up and you know, I was like this, I just don't want anybody part of this. They're trying to stop me, you know, mine's totally gone. And they, they were trying to, I think they were trying to communicate to me like, oh, we're gonna take you to your friends, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm thinking about, I'm like, are these guys, who are these guys sent from? Are they sent from this village or that village? Is there like a bush telegraph of there's a white guy running around here, he's upset, like, go and get him kind of thing. So I'm like, nah, not doing it. Blah blah blah, thinking, you know, the boys, they send a note with the driver if it's from them.

And these guys had no note. And I was like getting later and later I was like, I've got no water, I've got no signal, I've got nowhere of nowhere. The boys are, they're probably no further than ten or 20k away. So if I'm, if I get on this bike and I'm on the bike for longer than half an hour or an hour, then I know there's bad news. So I just thought, fuck it, get on the bike.

Steven Bartlett
How long were those two men on the bike following you and asking you to get on the bike? A while. Like probably we probably about 20 minutes.

Russ Cook
So yeah, got on the bike, half an hour went by then now went by. I start like kicking off, I'm getting off the bike, I'm having a go at them. But like the language barrier is just with no one understands a word anyone's saying. And then, yeah, ended up spending 7 hours on that motorbike going into the jungle, which was like terrible. 7 hours.

7 hours? Yeah. What goes through your mind in those 7 hours? I thought, well, I assumed after about an hour and a half that I was like, okay, well, I am getting kidnapped then. Like we're, this is it, you know?

And then I was thinking rationally, I was like, had such limited knowledge about DRc or any of this kind of stuff. I was like, they're probably just gonna, they'd probably just want money. But then you also start thinking, well, maybe they're just gonna kill you. And the stories that I'd heard about DRC and that wasn't the craziest thing, you know, like people get stabbed for fiverr literally like a couple of quid. People get stabbed, people get killed for a watch.

So I was really trying to, I was really trying to be rational about the situation, but just like very, quite, quite emotional as well. And then, I mean, for the last few hours I was just like, you know what God has for me, he has for me, you know, whatever it is, it is and that's fine. And I was just trying to be like, you know, it's out of my hands.

But it was very scary. I was like so nervous, like just shaking. They took me to this village in the jungle late at night, no electricity, it's like wooden little shacks with tin corrugated roofs and stuff and got me off the bike, took me into this little hut, then loads of the men of the village came into the hut. They were all arguing about money and this kind of stuff. And then the second chief of the village walks in and says to me, like, you speak to me in English very slowly.

And he understood a few words and I said to him, like, this is big mistake, you know, like, call my friend. He speaks French and like, and then he can come and like, we've got money and we can sort it out. And then they spoke on the phone. And then basically we agreed like the boys would come, we got the money and then it took the boys like I think about 36, 48 hours to get there because it was so rural. There was no roads going there, it was all dirt paths.

They tried to rent, some motorbikes got scammed. Then they, then they ended up trying to borrow the police, a police chiefs, four x four, who also scammed us. So ba yeah, so then, I mean, the boys got there eventually. We gave everyone some money and then I was free to go.

Steven Bartlett
I was just looking as you were talking about how fast 7 hours is. And for people in the UK, 7 hours is London to Edinburgh. Yeah, it's not in DRC. So if I go from London to Edinburgh on a car, that's 7 hours, just to give people an idea of like how long that is on the back of a motorbike with strange men going through the middle. We're literally going through the jungle.

Russ Cook
So it's like literally tiny paths that are going up and down through rivers, through, over mountains for 7 hours. 7 hours. Yeah. I was like gripping on this. I was absolutely done in by the end of it.

Steven Bartlett
And you got to that village, they wanted money. Did they explain anything? Did they say anything to you about who they were? And I think, I think they were. I think they were actually just they were more scared about who I was and why I was there and all the rest of it.

Russ Cook
And the. I mean, after the. After the phone call with the team, things seemed quite settled. Like they were pretty all right with me. And they.

I think they, you know, it was. I was. I was just in a state of, like, totally, totally whacked. What do you mean? Just exhausted, but like, petrified.

And I was just very nervous around everything. Twitchy, you know? Yeah. Have you suffered with anxiety? I don't know.

I think. I don't think so. But, like, I do, obviously, I'm human. I do know what anxiety feels like and I do get it sometimes, but I was. I was anxious then, for sure.

Steven Bartlett
You're speaking to Emily back home, your partner, throughout the journey, on most days, but for this period of time, sounds like you were out of communication with her. And she seems like she was very, very worried about you. She was? Yeah. In fact, she told us on a research call that she thought you had died.

Russ Cook
Yeah, I mean, I thought I was gonna die as well. Did you actually. Yeah. Genuinely thought you were gonna die? Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
And how did you. How do you sort of rationalize that thought? How do you deal with that thought when you. And what comes to mind? Like, what are you thinking if you really believe, you know, I think I'm gonna die here.

Russ Cook
Like, I mean, it's different. I guess it's different for me. I was just like, you know, if this is the way that God wants it, then I guess it is. That's it, you know, and there's more for me elsewhere. That's how I was.

That's how I was trying to make sense of it in my brain. Were you thinking about people back home?

Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about.

I was thinking about like, ah, all the things that I wish I had the chance to repair that I haven't, like, relationship with my parents.

I was thinking about all the things that, you know, I wanted to do with my life that I wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking about what it would do to, you know, everyone that got myself killed in the Congo for just trying to run the neck of Africa.

I felt stupid because I was like, you know, this was, these were like mistakes that have been made that were like, quite. Should have been quite easily preventable that we didn't do. And, you know, that's openly my responsibility as well, so it was. Yeah, it was a hard few hours. Thinking about things that you should have repaired with your parents.

Steven Bartlett
It's interesting in moments like that people always talk about how they have a. A retrospective, like, clarity on their life and their priorities that most of us will never understand because we've never been in a situation where we've genuinely believed there was a chance that we weren't going to make it out. When you say you were thinking about how you should have repaired relationships with your parents, what do you mean? I don't know. I guess it's like you said, it was a moment of clarity where I was like, I've probably wasted a lot of years there holding on to things that weren't necessary, you know, for bullshit reasons and, like, life's too short for that.

What you been holding on to? Like, resentment and pride and, you know, not trying to understand or, like, avoiding things and not trying to connect with people that love me and these kind of things.

You think these are your last hours. You've obviously got a person there in your life who has loved you and has shown you a different way to connect and to be and to intimacy. And although all of those things, which is Emily. Are you thinking about Emily in those moments as well? Yeah, I was.

Russ Cook
Yeah. I mean, I was thinking of all the things that we talked about, like, our future together and everything that we wanted to build and, like, having kids together and all these things that just felt like they were just.

And how, like. Just felt like I was letting her down and, you know, I wasn't, like, delivering the things that I. No, I was gonna run the length half, and we're gonna do. It's gonna. Everything's gonna be all right.

Like, don't worry about, you know, all of these dangers. No, it's gonna be fine, babe. And, yeah, I knew how much. How hard that was, that time was for her as well.

Guess, I mean, especially. I'm in the thick of it. You know, I'm in the thick of it. She's, like, at home. Just think about it all the time.

There was a few moments like that when we didn't have signal and things.

Steven Bartlett
Your boys eventually find you. Mm hmm. They pay off the. The guys in that village, and they let you go. Mm hmm.

Doesn't really stop there, though, does it? Because there's so much now to process and to figure out and to kind of. That was, I think, the hardest point for us as a team of the mission was, like, the aftermath of that. It was very difficult because I think we were all struggling. Everyone was right at their limit, and probably because that no one had any spare energy to think about anyone else in that situation.

Russ Cook
It was all like, well, I'm struggling. That's it. You know? And, yeah, I mean, there was a good few arguments. People don't really know about this moment.

Steven Bartlett
No, because people like me that just watch from YouTube and from social media, we just think, oh, they're all getting on. It's all final. He's pissing blood again. Ha ha, funny. But when I did those research calls and spoke to members of your team and spoke to people around you and even members of the team that were out there with you, this was really a.

A falling out amongst the team that no one in the public ever got to see. It's difficult to talk about because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus or paint anyone in a bad, like, bad light. We were all ultimately just trying our best. I think, for me, what I recognized that I did wrong in that situation was I set us up in a bad way. Like, I'd hired so heavily on content side because I knew that, you know, we started with no money.

Russ Cook
We had to get content out there to get brands to sponsor us. That I basically recruited three people that were almost entirely there for content reasons. Being able to make YouTube videos, take photos, record documentary, this kind of thing, I completely blindsided the logistics and element and, like, having knowledge of Africa and all of this kind of stuff, I just thought, that's a luxury we can't afford right now. Because of that, I ended up asking a support team that were mostly their content to basically be like, african logistics experts. And that's put them in a position.

It's obviously going to be really difficult. So, yeah, I mean, the whole situation could have been avoided with different planning. I recognized that. And I thought off the back of that, I was like, right, I'm gonna get a four x four because the van can't travel up any of these dirt roads. And I'm gonna hire two new people, one of which is gonna be, like, a proper logistics guy that's gonna get us through all these tough situations.

Steven Bartlett
A team member actually departed around this time as well. Yeah, that was a difficult one. We actually. We had a big argument. Me and Harry had a big argument on just after this Congo thing.

Russ Cook
We were traveling back through these villages. He'd obviously had a rough time as well. He'd been scammed for motorbikes, had these dealings with the police chief, and as we were coming back, he was buying, like, fags and alcohol and stuff in all these little tiny, remote villages. And I had an issue with it because we're going through some of the poorest places in the world, there's kids running around with, like, malnourished bellies, can't even feed themselves. And, you know, as Europeans, if we bowl through these villages, drinking and smoking, blah, blah, blah, then it's giving off the sign that we got a lot of money to spare and that's why we're getting scammed so much for extortionate amounts of money.

So I had an issue with it and I told him, and I probably didn't say it in a way that was how good leadership would say it, you know? So we had a big argument about that. I've obviously just been in this rural village for a couple days. I'm already. I'm tightly strong already.

So is he. And then we get back to the other. The other boys. These guys had no idea what just happened and they were all struggling themselves, so they were very much. Everyone was just concentrating on themselves and they were all kind of like.

Everyone was a bit pissed off of each other. And then we had a meeting and I just blew up, just blew up, started shouting, everyone throwing chairs about. Completely lost my call, which is obviously not the way to act. And, yeah, I mean, it was awkward. It was awkward.

Few days after that, I just went straight back to running, wanting to get out of DLC as quickly as possible. It was. Everyone was in eggshells. We got to Kobinda, which is an angolan exclave, and then I said to. I was like, Harry, you're going on holiday.

And I said to the other boys, you'll all be going on holiday at some point. I think at that point I'd realized that for me, I'm running every day. My body's very stressed. I'm very stressed in general. I'm managing a lot of things and I can't have the people around me also being at the edge of what they can do, because then it just leaves me in a totally fucked spot.

So I tried to kind of put some reorganize, reshuffle things so that wouldn't happen by sending everyone. Holiday hired Gus, hired Jamie, another editor, to take some workload off Stan, because the geezer was working like 18 hours a day trying to get two YouTube videos out a week whilst recording and producing it. I was like, right, we need to change something there. Gus, ex para from dutch military, he'd cycled up and down Africa by himself. Absolute beast of a bloke.

I was like, he's coming in, he's going to do our logistics. And one of the best recruits we've ever made. So that's kind of how the aftermath happened. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. What is in the diary of a CEO cup?

Steven Bartlett
This cup that sits in front of me when I interview these people, sometimes for 3 hours and sometimes three people a day. The answer is this. Perfect Ted. I invested in the company on Dragon's Den, and since then they've gone from an idea to the fastest growing energy drink in the UK. It is a matcha energy drink and it is absolutely delicious.

But that's not why I choose to drink it on this podcast. The reason I choose to drink it is because it gives me what I call all day energy. I don't get the same crashes that I used to get with other energy drinks. If you're in the middle of a conversation, or you're in the middle of a talk on stage or in the boardroom, the last thing you want to do is have a crash. You don't want jitters, and you need focus.

And that is why they now sponsor this podcast. Not only is it delicious, but it gives me a significant competitive advantage. If you haven't tried it, go down to a Tesco, go to a waitrose, or go online and use the code diary ten at checkout and you'll get 10% off. And when you do try it, let me know how you get on. But it's not a smooth sailing.

You are always one decision away from taking your business to the next level. And a decision that's helped me to transform my business is moving over to Netsuite, who I'm excited to say are a sponsor of this podcast. If you don't know already, Netsuite is the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, hr into one platform and one source of truth. It's reduced it costs because it lives in the cloud, so you can access it from anywhere. And the cost of managing and running multiple systems because it's in one unified business management suite.

My team and I don't have to worry about tasks being manual and clunky, and it means that I can be more efficient and to focus on more important things like bringing you the best episodes and guests on this show. So I become one of the 37,000 companies that have already made the move over to Netsuite. Netsuite has extended its one of a kind, flexible financing program for a few more weeks. So head to netsweek.com bartlett for a free product tour. Back to the episode.

I mean, as you continue on, you have all of these issues, you have a bunch more health issues. Your back starts to give out. I think around day 205 and 206, you completely stopped because you had back issues. The back was probably the worst injury. It's not even healed still, but basically my back starts seizing up and I would get, like, shooting nerve pains coming down my leg, and it would just totally, totally jar.

Russ Cook
I wouldn't be able to move or. Yeah, I mean, God knows what happened there. I mean, there's a chance that you've done permanent damage to your back, probably, yeah. I mean, I ran the marathon on Sunday, and it was still going a bit. So did you have to stop?

No, but it's basically been on and off, on and off. Very painful for the last kind of, well, whenever that was day 205 since then. Emily said around that time, that sort of 200 day mark, you were like, you were pretty done. What does she mean by that? When she was pretty done?

I was in a lot of pain, like, every day, so I really just wanted it to be over at that point. And I still had, like, five months to go. You still have five months to go? Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
Was that. I've heard you answer this question before, but what? Well, what day was the closest to quitting? The closest where you thought, you know what? Maybe the thought.

Russ Cook
The only time I ever really had the thought was in the Congo. Really? On the motorbike? Yeah. Like, that was the only time I actually ever actually thought, like, why am I doing this?

This is stupid, you know? Like, what, am I gonna get myself killed of this? And it was a fleeting thought came in, and then I thought, I ain't got a fucking choice. I gotta do it now. Anyway, December time, which is day two for one, you're in.

Steven Bartlett
I think, the Ivory coast. Mm hmm. And the Ivory coast think you're a spy. They took you to the local police station because they thought you were a spy. Yeah, they were very confused.

Did they tell you that they thought you were a spy or did you just kind of piece that together? Yeah, it was more piecing that together. They were very confused about who I was, why I was there while I was running in the middle of the night. And, yeah, they made sure they did all their checks for me so that I wasn't any suspect individual. January comes around, the new year.

How'd you celebrate Christmas out there and all that stuff? It was back to basics kind of Christmas. We had chickens on the fire. I got a bit pissed. Miss the family.

Russ Cook
Christmas would have been a bit of a weird one for my family anyway, but, yeah, like, I mean, it was business as usual. I think it was pretty much focused on the job and had a couple drinks and that was that one a. Day shortly after that, that really. I think things took a bit of a turn in terms of publicity, was when you reached Algeria and you had the issues with your visa, because Algeria, as we said, as a country that doesn't grant visas unless you're in your home country currently. And so you were advised by the FCO not to travel there, I believe.

I can't remember. A lot of people advised us not to travel there. And the algerian authorities were saying absolutely no to you, to you getting a visa. So you decided to start an online campaign to try and, like. It's such an interesting thing because very few people would have a country say, we're not going to give you a visa.

Steven Bartlett
You cannot come into our country, and you decide that the way to overcome that is with some tweets. Yeah, it was a bold strategy. We were strategizing for a couple weeks before that. Right. We are backs against the wall here.

Russ Cook
What are we going to do? And we kind of. Gus and Stan had. Were putting together these kind of plans to get residency in Mauritania and then potentially, you know, do all of these little things to try and somehow get a visa. And just got to a point where I said, like, boys, let's just Hail Mary.

It just gets. Just blast it on socials, because it's going to take someone right at the top to say yes, you know, swing for defenses. And that's what happened. You launched this kind of online campaign, led predominantly by Twitter, to get someone in Algeria, someone high up or a politician in the UK to speak to Algeria. The campaign goes pretty viral.

Steven Bartlett
Everyone's posting it in the UK. So much so that even Elon Musk tweeted at one point, which is mad, basically saying that this is what this platform's for, what he loves about the platform. That was sick. And then Algeria tweet you, basically saying, we'll give you a visa on the spot, which is mad. Isn't that mad?

Russ Cook
Actually mad when you think about where. You came from, you've got Elon Musk tweeting and they're like, algeria's Twitter account tweeting at you going, come on in, we're going to change our laws so that you can come through here. And Elon Musk's tweeting. It's just mad. It was mad.

It was absolutely crazy. And then you get through, you get your visa, you're able to enter Algeria. The Sahara desert was another big challenge for you. Get to day 313. The truck breaks down in the Sahara desert, 250 km away from the nearest road.

Steven Bartlett
What I found so interesting about this little chapter in the story was that when we spoke to Stan, who was part of your team on the research call, he says that you weren't really concerned because everyone just assumed that everything would be fine. We'd been through much worse. Stan said that the resilience they had built up was accumulative, and gradually they became less and less concerned about setbacks. And I read that and it was really inspiring to me because it says something about life. We all have these subjective setbacks that we can fall into a dark hole thinking the end.

And it could just be like Jenny at work sat in our seat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas you're in the Sahara desert and your truck is broken down 250 km from the nearest road. The repair team can't fix it, and you guys just shrug. It'll be fine.

Russ Cook
Barely even thought about it, mate. Can't lie. Really? Yeah, yeah. I remember just thinking, ah, that's a minor, we'll figure that out.

Steven Bartlett
Because you had so much evidence that you guys had been able to figure out so many other things. Yeah. And I think, like, by the end as well, like, the team was so, it was slick, like, the way everyone was operating with. Everyone knew what they had to do. No one needed, you know, no one needed telling.

Russ Cook
We all just got on with our jobs and the amount of output for four people was crazy. That really is what resilience is. People always ask, like, how do you become more resilient? But it seems to. Your story taught me that.

Steven Bartlett
It's like, go through some difficult shit together and come out the other end and you'll have evidence. Yeah. And even if you go through some difficult shit and it doesn't work out, then you got a few lessons in there, right? So at least you survived, right? Yeah, that's a lesson.

And then you get to the final leg of the trip and all of the people around you tell me that there was a noticeable increase in your sort of happiness and demeanor when you could start to see the finish line. Definitely in your mind, you get so, what, two weeks out and the social media interest goes pretty fucking crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even like mainstream media kind of picks up, I think, the last few days. Last few days?

Russ Cook
Yeah. The whole of the UK only had one thing to talk about, really. Yeah, I'm sure it was, you know, very much the case in other parts of the world. I saw news reports in America and other parts of the world, but it felt like back here in the UK. The UK was just talking about one thing, really.

Steven Bartlett
It was following you. You know, this. Surely your girlfriend and stuff must have told you. It was fucking pandemonium. It's every social.

You know, I'd go on social media, and anyone that I knew was. Was posting about you running that last leg, driving money to those charities that mean a whole lot to you as you come into that last leg, that last day. Crowds of people, like, hundreds of people flew out there. It's nuts. Absolutely nuts.

And they're running with you, a lot of them. I heard from some of your team, I think it was Stan that was saying to me, a lot of people flew out there, but they were keeling over and, like, collapsing on the side of the road because I don't think they anticipated that. This isn't London, mate. It was so funny. Like, Tunisia at that time wasn't even that hot coming from the UK.

Russ Cook
Everyone's just absolutely cooked. And you come into that, that last day, and your dad is there as well. Yeah, yeah. It was emotional day, man. My dad came and ran.

He could only bang a two or three k out these days, but he came and ran and put his arm around me and that, and it was special. Your relationship with him started to pick up. Mm hmm. As you got closer to the finish line, it seems. Yeah, I've heard that from a few people.

Yeah. Throughout the whole mission, really, I think. But Emily's definitely a big part of helping that. What was it like to see him? And where did you see him?

Steven Bartlett
Was it on the last day? On the last day, yeah, we ran a little bit. Couple tears, just like, what are the tears for? I don't know. Like, I guess it was like a signal that it was like, this is actually over now, you know, like, my dad's here and, like, you know, everything.

Russ Cook
Everything that I've been through, but also, like, everything he'd been through, everything his dad's been through, felt like. It just felt like a moment, you know? He was proud of you. Very, very proud of you. Very, very proud of you.

Steven Bartlett
We got to speak to him on the phone, and hearing how proud of you he was was one of the most moving things I actually. Of this whole experience of speaking to your friends and family, hearing just how proud your father is of you is. It moved me when I heard it. I actually am.

Russ Cook
I couldn't believe it's my son, you know, crossing the line, and it was sort of like, not real sort of thing, you know, it's. Hey, you know, but it took a. While to seek it now, really. And he went on to say, I couldn't be more proud of my son.

Yeah, it's nice. It's powerful. When your dad says that, innit? Always. Always.

Steven Bartlett
You crossed the line. How does that feel?

Russ Cook
Ah, yeah. I mean, that finish line, honestly felt like a fucking mystical thing that was never coming for the longest amount of time. So the fact that it finally came was just like, wow, it's finally over, you know, like, we actually did it, so, yeah, very grateful. It's quite complex emotions. I can see it in your face.

Yeah. What are those emotions? I guess it's just, like, grateful that it all worked out, you know? And, like, all the hard work paid off and all the hard times paid off. Your girlfriend said that you, um.

Steven Bartlett
You walked over to the edge of the water when you reached the northernmost point of Africa and you saluted.

And to her, that salute meant more than just a sort of random token gesture. It was a salute in many respects. To say, you know, there's certain chapters closed in my life now, and there's certain things that I've. I've proven, I think maybe the right word there is proven.

Russ Cook
Yeah, I think so, hopefully. What have you proven? Oh, I guess I'm capable. You know, I can do it. Your mum was there as well.

The whole gang, the whole team. Was that the best feeling of the whole journey, that end moment with your family, was. Because I heard you describe that. The start was amazing the first day. And in that moment, I imagine it's overwhelming for so many reasons.

Steven Bartlett
It's so much. The process, so overwhelming, man. People are there and screaming and the cameras and the sky news are running alongside you. It's like. It looked batshit crazy.

I was watching. It was. It was totally mad. I think the finish line was one of them things that was just so overwhelmed. Like, I don't know if you had it.

Russ Cook
Like, when there's so much going on and it's so overwhelming, you kind of, like. It almost feels like an out of. Body experience and you're someone that's, like, lived most of their life in relative isolation. Yeah. You like being alone?

Yeah. Emily told me this. She goes, I think he's happiest when he's. When no one's there. Yeah.

I do like being alone. I do like it. Interesting. Still is, like, you get back to the UK and you've been running this crazy. You've done this crazy thing for more than a year, right.

It was 300, 352 days. I was out there for 14 months. 14 months. You get back to the UK, you land, the weather's different. Obviously, society is completely different.

Yeah. Now everybody knows who you are here, so wherever you go, someone's got hardest geezer. You can't have a fucking picture, lad. Like, how is that? Still think I'm kind of working out at the moment.

Don't really know. It's definitely different. But everyone's so nice and I think, like, the.

Like, the stories of people, they come up to me and they're like, you know, Adam, I was running the marathon on Sunday, and people like, you're the reason I'm here and stuff. I'm like, that's kind of mad, but that's sick as well, you know? So.

Steven Bartlett
Are you feeling overwhelmed? Yeah, definitely. How do you know? Because I'm trying to distance myself from everyone and everything at the moment. Really?

Russ Cook
Yeah, yeah. Just. I think my social batteries run out quite quick, and once that happens, I'm just like, well, I need to be alone immediately. Done. Can't speak.

Steven Bartlett
And you getting all these emails now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just like, well, I think there's a lot of things happening as well that I'm not. That I don't know how to handle properly. Like, emails and all these other things.

You don't have management. You don't have anyone, an agent, nothing. I kind of need a moment to work out what I actually want to do, I think. But it's fine. Like, I'm not running ultramarines and Sara desert anymore.

Russ Cook
I can't. Like, it's all right. You know when you were running that marathon, you ran the London marathon, like. Like, two days ago or something? Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
That's a very public place to be. Yeah. I didn't quite anticipate. Anticipate that. Oh, yeah.

I had some people that saw you down there and they were a little bit concerned. Really? Yeah. Because you looked a little bit overwhelmed. Yeah, I was a little bit.

There's just a lot of people grabbing at you and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, people are nice, so, like, they only had nice things to say to me. It was just, like, so much, like, stimulation. You know what I mean?

Russ Cook
I was like, I'm not used to this. I find it fascinating. So you're at the very top of this mountain in terms of publicity and attention, and everyone's screaming and grabbing at you and wants you for stuff. You've just done this incredible adrenaline inducing feet running the length of Africa. There's all of these chemicals in your body, the adrenaline, the endorphins, all that stuff that comes from endurance sports.

Yeah. And then done. Done, zero. Like, stop. Yeah, how's that?

My body needed it. Yeah, it's absolutely, you know, bashed in, but it's also. It was. It's been quite difficult to. I had the, like, such a solid routine.

Every day for a year was like, get up, run, break, eat, run, do the same, you know, every single day. And now the schedule is like, wildly different. It's like, okay, wake up, interview here or go and do this and then this and, you know, meet this person, chat to that person. And I'm kind of missing that, that routine of exercising all the time. Kind of want to start that back up again pretty soon.

Maybe, maybe not 60 or seventy k a day, but, like, I need. I actually need that, you know? So how's your mental health?

I think. I think it's fine. I just need to get. I just need to get a few things sorted, like, I haven't got a place to live yet or I don't really. I don't know the immediate next steps, like career wise, what I'm going to do.

And a lot of things have changed, obviously. So it's just working out a lot of all of this stuff. But I think when there's that many uncertainties in your life, it's always going to create a certain level of, like, mental challenges. So I just need to figure them out and then I'll be all right. You know.

Steven Bartlett
You must get bored of people asking you what's next. Cause this is what everyone asks when everyone does it, when anyone does anything interesting. What's next? They want to know the next challenge. I have got a lot of ideas.

Russ Cook
I think, like, one of the big things that I would be really, what I would really love to do is in some way be part of, like, documenting other people's journeys when they go on. You know, they're starting from somewhere and they've got this big thing that they want to do and just like, either helping them or being like, in some way do it.

So I'd really love to try and do more of that the last year as well. One of the things I struggled with is it.

It was so much, everything was geared towards basically helping me run, and I've had enough of that. You know, all of my support team were there basically to facilitate me running as far as I can every day. And it would be nice to do things for other people more than just everyone doing things for me. That's an interesting thought. You've had enough of that.

Steven Bartlett
Enough of it being about you. Yeah. It's interesting, Russ, because you're someone that, quite clearly, through your story, once likes being alone and, like, low key, under the radar, do their own thing, spend time in my own head. And then exactly that, doing exactly that in you, running the length of Africa, being alone out there in the Sahara desert alone, has built this massive fucking audience. Yeah.

And all these people watching you that are now, like, very much compromising in some respects. Obviously, there's so much privilege and stuff that comes with it, but they're compromising the very thing that you loved the most, which is you running from London to Asia alone. Asia to London alone on your own with the hammock. It's never quite gonna be the same, if you know what I'm saying. You can't even walk down the street in London.

You're like a really distinctive notice, recognizable guy as well, because the ginger beard and stuff. Yeah. Well, I think it will, like, it will die down, like, eventually. So I think it's gonna be all right. It's just different.

Russ Cook
Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it's just different. Just different. New set of problems, I guess. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett
To manage and stuff. Yeah. You did all of this, you know, to have the experience. You inspired all these people along the way. And obviously central to this was the running charity.

They do incredible work for people kind of like yourself that are in that situation where you're looking for guidance, you're looking for a sense of purpose and meaning, et cetera, et cetera. How much? How much? What was the goal? Fundraising goal?

Yeah. What's your fundraising goal? A million. A million? Yeah.

And what you want at the moment? When I checked yesterday, I think it was 970. I'm not exactly sure what it is now. You've been down to see the work that this charity do, have you? I've worked with the charity for, like, years, you know, I used to, before I left, I was the adventure guide.

Russ Cook
So I take people, take groups of people up climbing mountains or out into nature, and we do stuff. I did stuff with fundraisers who were raising money for the charity. I mean, I did the age London run for the running charity as well. So I've been involved for four or five years. Well, I have to say, russ, you inspired millions of people.

Steven Bartlett
You don't know this, but, like, when I'm in the gym. Yeah. And I start thinking about quitting. The whole time we were in Africa, I was like, fucking Russ is running three marathons today. What the hell am I doing thinking about quitting?

And it was this thought in the back of my head that helped me over and over again when I was in difficult moments, when I'm in the gym, when I'm thinking about quitting, when I'm thinking about not even doing the workout, and I'm like, that guy's gonna be up today running another 20. Well, 60k or 100k. Yeah. So it was even, like, this motivational force for me in my life. And I'm really, really appreciative of that.

But I also know, because I've seen the messages and I've seen the DM's, that for many people out there that are Russ at 19, that don't know the path forward, that don't have guidance, that don't have something to aim at, you've given them a blueprint for how to turn your life around. And you've given 19 year old Russ, all the 19 year old russes out there, a blueprint for how to turn your life around. And you've given them evidence that it's possible. And people in that situation as you are, they don't always believe it's possible. You described the hopelessness and the helplessness of that situation.

That's exactly what you've done. And also, you've raised a shit ton of money. Now, your goal was to raise a million pounds, which is a ridiculous amount of money.

So before we sat down, I made a few phone calls. You know, I'm an investor in a few companies, and I'm on the board of a few companies. So I called Julian Hearn at Huel and I said, listen, wouldn't it be great if he could get behind this and make sure he hit that target now. There you go. Wow.

They've donated the remainder of the cash to you for your fundraising. So you've hit the million pounds. And we wanted to say a huge well done and congratulations on behalf of all of us here at Darvish. Thank you very much, man.

Is Emily here? There she is. Coming in.

Oh, sweet. Thank you so much. Nah, man. Thank you. Absolutely incredible.

And I know the team at perfect Zed here, they've. Could you chuck me this Daiquiri thing on here? This one here? Again, I'm an investor in this company, and we have a partnership together. They produced the hardest energy, which is a limited edition strawberry daiquiri flavored perfect Ted, which will be on sale.

And I think the proceeds, much of the proceeds of this will be donated towards this campaign as well. It begs the question, why strawberry daiquiri? For some people that don't know why strawberry Daiquiri? I don't even know. It just ended up becoming a thing that I was saying towards throughout the mission.

Russ Cook
I'd be like, get me to tunisian beach for a strawberry daiquiri. And it was in my head. And then we finally got it done, eh? And they're here as well. So we'll include the link to buy this in the description below.

Steven Bartlett
So anyone that wants to celebrate your incredible achievement with us will be able to do so. We do have a last tradition on this podcast. It's not usually how they end, but where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. Cypher's a good one. There's two questions.

Interestingly, I'm going to ask you both questions because they're both applicable. Okay, so first question is, if there was a movie about your life, which I'm sure there will be, who would you want to play you? Ron Weasley.

Okay, and question number two, what place do you feel the most comfortable in and why? One of the things that I just love doing the most is mid run, going to Tesco, getting some snacks, and just sitting outside Tesco on the pavement eating my snacks. It's my favorite place ever. Love doing that. Very relatable as always, Russ.

Thank you so much. Honestly, everything I said then about the inspiration you've given me is completely true. And I know that there's so many people out there that feel the same way. And you've made me want to aim higher in some of the things that I do in my life and pursue bigger challenges and really push myself to the limits. Because, as you've proven in your life, all of the good things are on the other side of some form of discomfort.

The purpose, the meaning, the connection, as you've proven. And like so many people at the moment in society are suffering with their mental health, with a lack of sort of a sense of meaninglessness. And you're this, like, this shining example for all of us, this north star of this first step we have to take to go on that incredible journey. So thank you so much. Russ, mate, thanks for everything you've done, man.

Russ Cook
Honestly, I can't thank you enough. You made it happen as well. So amazing.

Steven Bartlett
You are always one decision away from taking your business to the next level, and a decision that's helped me to transform my business is moving over to Netsuite who I'm excited to say, are a sponsor of this podcast. If you don't know already, Netsuite is the number one cloud financial system, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, hr into one platform and one source of truth. It's reduced it costs because it lives in the cloud, so you can access it from anywhere, and the cost of managing and running multiple systems because it's in one unified business management suite. My team and I don't have to worry about tasks being manual and clunky, and it means that I can be more efficient and to focus on more important things like bringing you the best episodes and guests on this show. So I become one of the 37,000 companies that have already made the move over to Netsuite.

Netsuite has extended its one of a kind, flexible financing program for a few more weeks, so head to Netsweek.com Bartlett for a free product tour. Back to the episode.

Russ Cook (Hardest Geezer): I Haven't Told The Whole Truth About Africa!, They Took Me Into The Jungle To Kill Me!

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1. Beginnings

2. Into the Jungle

3. Challenges and Triumphs

4. Reflections

5. Looking Forward

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript