Transcript:
Heston: Let’s talk about ADHD Central, I think this is it.
Henry: Heston, thank you so much for doing this and you are an absolute inspiration to many but especially to those in the ADHD community in particular for those who get diagnosed later in life. We know of people who go to their GP and get refused assessments because they’ve managed to hold down a job or got a qualification. And when you got assessed, you had 3 Michelin stars and even more that your pioneering restaurant the Fat Duck have been voted best on with the planet.
Heston: And an OBE.
Henry: We are getting there, don’t worry. Many with ADHD will talk about, their love of diversions being a blessing in the interest it creates and a curse in that it is away from what they meant to do. Your questioning attitude has led you to mix science and creativity, that meant you seared fish with liquid nitrogen before sautéing it and invented triple-cooked chips. You created –
Heston: Umbrella spring chocolate as well, dwarfs are sliding down the liquid nitrogen chocolate fountain and sending potatoes to space – apparently.
Henry: I’ve..no words! You’ve created the science concept of food pairing. The science of the different flavors that go together that led you serving white chocolate and caviar as well as bacon and egg ice cream. You’ve got honorary degrees from Reading, Bristol, and London. You’re a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the first Chef ever. You’re an OBE awarded by our dear Late Queen in 2006. In 2016, you were granted a personal coat of arms and chose the wonderful motto of “Question Everything”. I think people know you’re amazing but many don’t know your journey. That you left school with one A level but a love of cooking. That you persuaded Raymond Blanc at La Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons to give you a trial based on nothing but your enthusiasm and after a week you were offered an apprenticeship, the doorway to fine dining opened to you, and you walked away. Spending 10 years working a range of non-chef day jobs, building your cooking skills and knowledge at night, learning at home on your own, a personal apprenticeship of skills and experimentation. Running to share with your wife, your near-perfect three crème brûlée recipes, the three final ones you’d worked up to, waking her up and then realizing it was 2 AM. Selling your home to buy the rundown pub in Bray that became the Fat Duck. To have posh locals come up to you and say, we’ve had 3 owners in 5 years. We’ve closed them down, and we’ll close you down too. Putting such effort and hours in that the exhaustion had you trying to light a brûlée torch under the hot tap and crashed asleep on dirty restaurant linen. You are the absolute evidence that you can have ADHD and achieve extraordinary things and that is inspirational and not only that, you did it without knowing you had ADHD, getting a diagnosis later.
Heston: Self-diagnosis.
Henry: Okay, and then I think you’ve had a formal one later at Harley Street.
Heston: What it means, I was questioning myself … when you say question everything, question mark, question everything and everything so question the whole universe and everything in the universe. I have a sweaty head, well I had a very sweaty head.
Henry: Oh, before we’re about to go, I’d like to ask you this question, and I feel like I’m a terrible interviewer. You’re definitely supposed to wait for the other person to speak.
Heston: Maybe this is a leitmotif for ADHD interview structures.
Henry: Honestly and also like your interviewer shouldn’t have a preference for butting in, that’s definitely nothing like a characteristically he’s supposed to have. Anyway right, I’m going to get to my first question if it kills me. So, let’s start with the first question – What the f***, how the f***ing f*** did you achieve that while having ADHD? You’re extraordinary. Okay, now let’s ask that a bit more formally. People really want to know your ADHD story, can you tell us your ADHD story from when you first had an inkling that you had ADHD and now?
Heston: I was going to ask if you is it okay to swear but actually it’s okay for ADHD so f***ing hell I can say whatever the f****ing c***ing word I want to say and as opposed to sending an email saying, I hope this email finds you well in these terribly horrible pandemic circumstances and I hope you’re well regard best wishes, blah, blah. No, swear words can be really wonderful so there’s my preface and yes, my journey to ADHD actually came through food and I’m going to try and do noun attack, noun attack which helps just like joining dots. So, childhood and I’ve reversed back to almost birth because of my memory. Grew up in London, 70s shit food in Britain, olive oil was only available in Pharmacies for blocked ears, you could buy in a supermarket, one type of pasta – spaghetti blue packets. Cornwall holiday and then 15 or so went to France with parents and sister and went to a three michelin star restaurant. Dad did well. He had a leasing business. But we lived in a basement flat, one windowed basement flat in a very expensive road but it was basically the caretakers flat off Hyde Park and so this contrast of I never ate an oyster, I didn’t know what a lobster was and caviar didn’t exist in my mind. Michelin stars, they didn’t exist. I knew nothing about any of this world. It was fish and chips for me, and my mum’s cooking which was like… am I enjoying coronation chicken and the avocado stone in the glass jar, that never really did anything but it was you know it was a sign of hope I suppose, and then we go to France. Instead of Cornwall, we go to France. and we drive down to the South and Camargue. On the way, my Dad read about this restaurant called L’Oustau de Baumanière, there’s something very special about this place. So, I’m sitting at this restaurant outside… I was smaller and I was looking up and they were pouring sauces into souffles and carving legs of lamb at the table and the noise of the crickets and the sunset. I remember the feet crunching on the gravel. The smell of the lavender, the running water and the chink of the glasses and soft sound of the work, the language around me or the tonality of voice. It’s like I kind of looked up because I was smaller then. I looked up but fell down a rabbit hole at the same time and that fell down a rabbit hole. I thought it was cooking. Well, I fell down something and thought this went into my blood, under my skin, in my veins and I didn’t have …. well, we always have a choice … I didn’t have the choice, it was something I discovered which every human being can do. The more we try different things, as opposed to telling ourselves we’ve got to go for a f****** walk in the woods, or I’ve got the best dentist or yoga teacher or I’m going to eat Walter’s f****** spirulina and don’t eat sugar and don’t smoke. Try, try, try, try, try, try, try… and if something presses your button, triggers your fantasy or whatever, if it happens then okay I’ll have another go, another go, another go, another go … and you might end up to a point where you think I’m not really liking this anymore then it’s okay to change. In the Hinds Head, pub in Bray, over the fireplace, 300 odd years old, in gold leaf …there’s a sentence which is so powerful. I’ve walked past it thousands of times but it took me a long time to actually digest it. Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered, no one was there. When a belief becomes stronger than a fear, we need fear. This fear is like being diagnosed with ADHD. It has the potential to celebrate and grow or the potential to succumb or surrender to it. We’re the superstars that will be the last people to be replaced by computers. There’s my ramble.
Henry: That’s a wonderful ramble and that quote is seriously important. When did you first hear about ADHD?
Heston: He said to me, “I think you might have ADHD”. And I said, “I haven’t told this to anybody, publicly or to anyone. But he said that you might have ADHD. I thought, how can I have ADHD when I focus so much. Because with ADHD you’re forgetful, forgetful, forgetful. How can I have ADHD when I focus so much on what I’ve done? He said it’s classic ADHD. If you find something that you love or connect with, you’re hyper-focused. Otherwise, you’re just not interested. There’s too many other things to do. So, it’s like a trombone zoom, you zoom in and hyper-focus. You find the trigger, the little fire then you’re off and running. If you try and fit in to do what everyone else does, then you kind of imprison yourself. So, I then went through my doctor and said I would like to see if I’ve got ADHD. I went to this recommended doctor in Harley Street and the multiple-test questionnaire. Tick these boxes and I think 20 is the tipping point. I was like something like between 58 and 70 …somewhere between there which I think is one of the highest recorded and subsequently I thought, “Oh I’ve got ADHD. Then I started to research about it. I had brain scans and various brain scans of the activity business in my brain. So, I looked into that and I tested myself, I tested my brain, I tested my body from the medical perspective and my diagnosis was magical for me because it started to make sense of who I am, as opposed to who I’m not and I then felt less judged by others and the ability to be able (and it wasn’t overnight) to consider the potential that I’m actually a pretty f****** magical human being, like everyone has their potential. So, that ADHD diagnosis, as you said to me, like this was really profound when you said this, when last time we met in London. The diagnosis is the potential for superhero, or doom and gloom. The diagnosis, the response to the diagnosis . So I think that the diagnosis of the ADHD category is really, really potentially magnificent.
Henry: What was it when you first got that diagnosis, that formal diagnosis of you’ve got ADHD? How did that make you feel?
Heston: I wasn’t sure. I mean it took me a while to research. They gave me Adderall and the doctor said to me. It’s like, he said your serotonin levels are so high, they’re so high. Imagine if you’re in your house and the roof opens and somebody throws all your favourite food for the week down and you catch as much of it as you can and the rest of it falls through the gutter or floor. You’ve got this, you’ve got this, and you eat it all in a day or two days then for the next week you’ve got nothing and that’s what happens with the serotonin and the hormones. We’re all wired differently. So, my normality is the opposite from a lot of people’s normality, it’s not better or worse. So, that’s why they gave Ritalin and Adderall
and all these things, where the taking instead of cocaine to actually relax, seems really weird but the doctor said to me, your serotonin levels, when you don’t take any, your serotonin levels are off the roof. Over the years what I’ve discovered is and it’s taken a while there’s many other things I can do. I just do things that I love doing and celebrate the beauty of my imagination.
Henry: You’ve used exercise hugely.
Heston: Massively used exercise, I mean four hours a day. I had the world situp record. A 100 times a week running, do 5000 sit-ups a day, I would it was just relentless, relentless.
Henry: See, something you told me that you did a big amount of exercise in the morning before a lunch service and then another big amount in the afternoon.
Heston: Yes, sometimes three times a day. So I would do maybe an hour to two hours in the morning then lunchtime I do another hour and then in the evening, I’ll do another hour but I was…
Henry: And then that’s still working so people with ADHD and use exercise to help get calm their brain to focus on what they need to do, do you feel like you were doing that?
Heston: Yes, on reflection yes. And even now, you know, in my ripe old age.
Henry: So, I wanted to ask this because it has kind of blown my mind, you talked about when at the start of the Fat Duck, you did all the finances you would order everything.
Heston: Every week, but I did it not on computer, paper. I had printed sheets, I did all the invoices, the order sheets, there was a system. Let’s say you order a box of wine. So in the office which has a plywood sort of surface with the prints on it, I would then write the theme, put the order in for the wine company, on paper. You would go through a fat source bar I think it was. And then they would come back and confirm the order. So, with that confirmation when the delivery arrives at the door, they would have a delivery note with the piece of paper that I ordered. I would match the piece of paper with a delivery note. I would check the bottles, they would sign it so that was done and then that would go and wait for the invoice. To me, that’s really frigging clear. Now, oh my God…
Henry: But what I think is particularly interesting like is that you what you created was a visual system that had a simplicity to it and I think a lot of ADHD people are like if they can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Like having a very visual system that allows them to.
Heston: If you’re with somebody and then their idea of tidying up is just to move all the objects to another place, holy shit. At least I can think where did I put that when it’s someone else moves it, it’s tidying up. What do you mean tidying up? It’s f***ing hiding. I’m going to hide it. I’m going to put up there. I was in the other room. It’s like the scissors, oh they’re at the end of the f******* garden and arrrrggghhh. This is here, just keep the f******* place then I can be afloat. Oh no, it’s over there, it’s in that cupboard and then they might say where’s the bloody bar oh over there. Well where is over there, where’s over there. It’s in the top drawer of the left next to the so-and-so I get that it’s over there, what the hell.
Henry: I am printing up like… I love I know I slightly summarize that other people tidying things is them hiding things… like I love it. It’s something I wanted to ask like ADHD and the intensity of life. A number of people talk about the hyper-focus of ADHD but leading to burnout, how do you avoid burnouts?
Heston: That’s a f****ing interesting question and nobody has asked me that. I don’t know and at the same time embracing the fact that I don’t know, is another opportunity to learn and question more about myself. I do know that of all the bones are broken and all the health checks I’ve had – the brain scans, I’ve had my liver, my lungs, my heart, my blood pressure, my cholesterol levels, my MRI tested, I’ve got pages of this so I’ve not shied away from looking at myself and it seems to me that and you could say I think I have a relatively extreme level of physical pain threshold.
Henry: That I want to share with you some of what Michael Phelps’s story and this is from his mum and completely honestly, the incident it slightly made me cry, Like it did make me cry when I first read it.
Heston: I’ve had dinner with Michael.
Henry: Oh, have you? Oh, wow okay.
Heston: Yes, we’ve touched on this.
Henry: So, teachers complained Michael couldn’t stay quiet at quiet time, Michael couldn’t sit at circle time. Michael didn’t keep his hands to himself, Michael was giggling and laughing and nudging kids for attention and his kindergarten said Michael can’t sit still, can’t be quiet, can’t focus but elementary your son will never be able to focus on anything. Age 9 diagnosed with ADHD. Age 10 Phelps’ family are a swimming family, his older sister Whitney at 15 was ranked first in the country for 200-meter butterfly and though her career was cut short by back injury. By 10, Michael was ranked nationally at his age group and Mrs. Phelps watched the boy who couldn’t sit still at school, sit for four hours at a meet, waiting to swim his five minutes worth of races.
Heston: Yes, achieved, achieved, achieved, achieved, achieved, achieved, achieved, and it also drove him on. But at the same time then people are going to find something else to criticize him about something else.
Henry: Is that the most successful Olympian of the modern age?
Heston: Yes, same thing. I have a look at myself I did not realize that I was trying to prove to the world that I was not mentally handicapped or whatever the branding is and people. I’m concerned about Heston, I’m concerned about Heston … really? So, I try harder and harder and what happened I didn’t realize this so I realizing now or that I put fuel, not only into codependency from the outside in but I put fuel into my own drive so there’s this interesting payoff. Now, and it’s easy and would be understandable for people to listen to me saying this and say well it’s okay for you Heston, you’re a celebrity, best chef, best burger, best world record, doctorate, doctorate, Royal Society, OBE, coat of arms bloody, bloody blah, it’s okay for you to say that. But in fact, these are just titles – it’s like a CV and how many people with ADHD when they’re diagnosed as ADHD with a problem, you could argue that maybe actually that adversity gives the opportunity to achieve but also it gives the opportunity to want to commit suicide, to go into over consume things that the consummation of sugar or alcohol or drugs or cigarettes or shopping or whatever you want to call it, there’s this want and need theory which makes sense to me, if you need something to keep something at bay then that’s something that you keep at bay is going to inflame and come out sideways and we all do that, all of us do that sometimes. If you do something because you actually want to do it then that’s different and there’s always a payoff between the two and it’s very complex but if ADHD is automatically considered from the moment you can listen, that you are a problem to society and you don’t fit into the world and you can’t sit still. Like Ken Robinson’s talk, there are people that have to move to think and it’s like looking away, there’s times when I have a conversation I look away and then …look at me … look at me what the f****** look at mean, f******* look at you. I’m engaged so much I want to look at a flat surface that doesn’t move, it doesn’t have a pattern, I can just listen to you without distraction. But why do you think that by looking at you I’m listening or why do you think that if I get up and walk around, I’m ignoring you because I’m not sitting and listening, people that have to move to think or benefit from moving to think at times.
Henry: Do you still feel that you have to like the you said just now that you’ve driven by a need to prove yourself. Do you still feel the need that because that’s still burning in you despite everything extraordinary things you’ve achieved?
Heston: No, but I think there is something about a human a living thing which could be a plant, a basil leaf, it could be a cloud, it could be a dog, it could be of feeling connected. And some of that is wanting to give pleasure to others and vice versa reflective. Wanting to feel part of a community, wanted to feel connected. So, that want and need thing, I realized how much I did it before but also I benefited from it and I’ve never felt more fulfilled using a word in my life than now.
Henry: That’s wonderful, it’s very real. Where, we all want to be. On the Michael Phelps story, the author finished with the moral of the story which offers hope for parents of the story which offers hope for parents of any child with a challenge like ADHD. Too many adults looked at Mrs. Phelps’s boy and saw what he couldn’t do. This week, the world will tune into the Olympics to see what he can do. When you hear that like what would you say to a parent who’s just been told that their kid has ADHD?
Heston: ADHD are letters and they’re words. The language can be a beautiful thing in a song, in a fairy tale, in a story, in a metaphor. But when we grow up learning words, we then categorize our emotions by words, and we internally categorize
them by words and language and that finger-pointing takes away from the loving potential of celebrating ourselves as unique sacred imaginative beings.
Henry: I have a favourite, a favourite question which I always try and ask. What impact of your ADHD has made you saddest and what impact of your ADHD has made you happiest?
Heston: I’ll slightly reword that question because I can.
Henry: Yes, you can. I didn’t know you were going into politics.
Heston: Ok, I’m saying this to you and to people listening. I only said it Melanie a couple of nights ago. I had moments and not too long ago that it’s like the Queen song, Bohemian Rhapsody. I don’t want to die but sometimes, I wish I’d never been born at all. So, I’ve had moments where I’ve looked out the window and I think I know it’s beautiful out there but I’m like imprisoned in something I have to accomplish. I’ve lost my compass and if there was a gun, if I had a gun, I might have used it just to finish. That’s not the same as wanting a rope or not. It would be a simple thing to do if it was there. I don’t know. But I remember lying on the sofa I was lost. I was so lost, I looked back a bit now . Eeverywhere I looked. Enough was never enough. Enough was never enough. Where’d I go, what do I do? And when I look back at that, it is also a precious memory to say I’m not only am I still here, but my life has never been so precious as it is now. And having that feeling, so that’s the sort of answer to your question rather than moments is how I felt with myself and I got lost, I was lost. It wasn’t… I want to kill myself. I just thought I can’t, I can’t go anywhere. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to go. No compass, no direction because everywhere I turned, everything I did, still people thought well there must be something wrong with Heston and then they’re thinking well I’ve got all these awards and my CV is ridiculous, I’ve achieved, achieved, it’s never enough but that was because when I started to take responsibility for my feelings, so nobody makes anyone feel angry, happy, sad. They can do, but if we have that perspective, then we then blame and point fingers. Let’s say religion has the potential for being positive and all sorts of things positive, negative. We think that if we’re a good citizen on this planet and we go to school and we get our degrees and we get the money and we have our pension, we have a family, we have a house and we have bricks and mortar, we do this, we do that and we eat wilted spirulina, we go for a walk in the woods and we meditate with a good dentist and all that stuff. We’re going to be a good citizen because at the end of our life, we’re then going to go to some place called heaven. Now, what about embracing the possibility, that we’re actually living in our own heaven and we’re just f****** it up without being aware.
Henry: I do sometimes think about how people live in their own heavens or hells in earth and I see how much mental health can define that for people and as well as many other things but like it’s I just I do reflect on it. And I’m sorry that you felt how you felt.
Heston: Yes, but thank you for that but now, that’s precious. That memory and then to be able to share it. Now, I’ve never said that to anybody like that and I’m starting to cry. But my tears, they’re not sad, getting that out now has been …not an easy thing. I wasn’t aware that I was harbouring that as much as I was, realizing it, getting it out; I wouldn’t change that for the world because I am still here, and I’m just f****** beginning, and it’s wonderful. There is a diversity let’s say and I faced
it and I earned my reward… thanks to me. I’m not only still standing but you know I’m fighting fit and every minute the amount of moments and blessing in my day where I think oh my God, how beautiful is life, how beautiful but maybe having not gone through those moments and then how much work did I do to follow my belief and be in this position where my life has never felt this precious and felt this potential and felt this fulfilled and whatever word you want to call it. And so, you know, I’m in a position I think to be able to understand what it feels like to be in their position. And that also gives me another superhero stroke. Oh, I give myself another superhero’s stroke. So it’s really cool. I mean it’s really, really cool.
Henry: That’s really cool it’s important, it’s an important thing and I think where you’re at now is wonderful right. And I’m so genuinely so pleased to hear it even if I can’t really say it. I think that was sadness. That was sad. Can you think of an impact of ADHD that’s made you happy?
Heston: Oh, shitloads, shitloads dot joining. The creativity, imagination and finding connections that other people, lots of people don’t seem to find and it could be an umbrella with dog hair, some sweet corn, a cushion and my left foot for example. Oh got an idea for that and these things are here, just join the dots. Instead of joining the dots in a linear away, you join them in a non-linear way so maybe the connection between music or sound and smell. And now it’s gone ballistically berserk to the point where there’s times where okay I’ve got to just bring it back Heston. Focus, focus, although I don’t want to. Focus on a linear time meeting and whatever but meanwhile I’ll see an object have a thought, have a memory see another object randomly and then put them together and come up with a new concept. And that is so precious, I would not change that for anything.
Henry: And talking about those thoughts you know. That challenge of bringing things together if we talked about time and keeping to it and the distractions and you talked about your ADHD. You said, “I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s made me realize things about my behaviour, take my lateness, I don’t like being late. I don’t sit there going I don’t need to go yet.What happens is I go, we have to leave and let’s get my phone or hang on let me set an email, start typing one, that’s another it’s the deal, oh my God, I need my duffel coat, go to upstairs then I come down, whole lot of things. I can’t remember what I went up for. I found a watch that I lost a year ago and that’s how it happens. Now, you’re also the person who can bring
together a collection of ingredients all prepared and cooked individually and brought together perfectly timed and perfectly cooked to one singular moment of gastronomic perfection on the plate. To do that perfection again and again and again but also be the person who gets lost looking for his duffle coat. How do you explain being both of those people and how does it feel being both of those people?
Heston: I don’t know. When I want to do it and I’m in flow then down to the milliseconds, I can tell how much time. Then there’s other moments when I try and do it and I feel guilty and Idon’t want to do it. So, I can flip from one to the other but it when I try and force into the other thing then it becomes more frustrating.
Henry: When you talk about those times those being those two different people, it looks like it looks to me is it like when you’re cooking you are in flow, you are in hyper-focus and that is you using your ADHD to be extraordinary and the getting the duffel coat is that when you’re not in flow, it’s the other side of ADHD?
Heston: Yes, and what I do is I put objects in places where the object was like a to-do list. So I’ll move it into another place and I’ll put it there and Melanie will know. So she won’t move it because I try to put it there for a reason and if she thinks it might move, she’ll ask me, she says shall I put this over here, great,. That makes absolute sense to me. And in the kitchen, it’s like my limbs are like an octopus. Things move out my body and drawers open and shut. But if something’s out of place it’s like throwing a twig in a bicycle wheel and then the same incredible flow goes into total and utter chaos. Being able to laugh at oneself in toe curling ways. That laughter is absolutely magical and I’ve done enough things in my life that I think it would be a criminal offence not to take the piss out of me. To recall memories that I’ve forgotten about that my toes curl, oh I cannot believe. And I thought it was so normal at the time. Laughter is possibly in terms of words and emotions and triggers on the vagus nerve and stuff. Genuine laughter . Everything else stops and being able to laugh at yourself instead of burying stuff,. You laugh at it, take something that you might be negative and take the piss out of it, laugh at it then it becomes something completely. You then turn something into something precious and that could be, you know, where people think oh, I just this is, you know, I’ve got to live with this, isn’t my life miserable, if you laugh at it and you can share it with other people that also understand a bit as opposed to the, oh I’m so sad about that. I’m so.. laugh at it and share those experiences. That I think is really, really precious over the most important.
Henry: And we’ve had some of those moments today but the one that I had laughter stopping everything was when you said tidying it up is other people hiding things. I nearly fell off my chair.
Heston: Yes, from their perspective, they’re tidying up and they’re actually creating misery. They’re creating a whole planet of frustration and chaos and then after that they go why are you late, we really need to leave now. Well, I’m trying to find this.
Henry: You’d be wonderful to overstay and be the name for the thing you’ve got to go to. This has been incredible and important and really, thank you.