Jake Humphrey has revealed that losing his grandmother to suicide when he was a teenager changed his stance on mental health. The 44-year-old former BT Sport presenter was chatting to WalesOnline ahead of High Performance Live, a recording of the High Performance Podcast at the Wales Millennium Centre on Sunday, June 25.
In the podcast Jake, along with psychologist Professor Damien Hughes, explores how you can improve your mindset - something the former children’s TV star says he finds “easy” to open up about. “I've probably always been happy to share,” Jake said. “I’ve always been an emotional person.”
He added: “I came from a house where people were happy to share and happy to talk. I lost my grandma to suicide when I was only a teenager and I think that without knowing it, that was probably the moment where I realised what happens if you don't talk or don't tell people how you really feel. I guess I decided from that moment to never to be in that place where if I was feeling really bad, I wouldn't talk to anyone.” For more showbiz and television stories get our newsletter here.
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Jake recalled how, in his twenties, he had some mental health “challenges” of his own. “The biggest thing that actually helped me was talking,” he said before describing how he resorted to therapy during that time.
Speaking about the High Performance Podcast’s beginnings, Jake said that it was something he “always” wanted to do and now he has more free time, he plans to give it his undivided attention. Earlier this month, he left BT Sport after working there for 10 years - something he said he feels a “small part of sadness” about.
“I worked with amazing people and hosting live sports is a big buzz, so I'll miss the buzz and I'll miss the people,” he said when discussing his time working for the channel. “There's also that sense that I couldn't have done any more than I did. “There's a definite part of me that feels that when you do the same thing again and again and again for a long period of time, something inside you goes to sleep and you almost don't even notice it. So along with the sort of sadness of leaving, there is a real excitement about being reawakened and finding out what the next challenge is.”
Jake, who is one of the co-founders of award-winning production company Whisper, added of the High Performance Podcast: “It's grown bigger and more impactful than I ever could have imagined. We've just hit 50 million downloads. We've got a team now of 11 full-time people and we’re producing more content than ever before. We are launching the High Performance app in the next few weeks as well, which is going to need a bit of my focus and I'm really excited about people having it on their phones."
The podcast, itself, launched just before the start of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. As to why he wanted to do it, Jake said: “When I first failed at school and had struggles when I was a teenager, someone bought me a book by Susan Jeffers called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I guess that was the first time I realised about this concept of high agency and the control that you can have on your own life. I read that book and thought loads of the things that I'd believed until that point were not actually true. Society just told me they were true. I could actually go and do some incredible things. Until that point, I thought that fear was the moment that you stopped trying to do incredible things. I always had this mindset of wanting, from that moment, to just push myself and challenge myself and try stuff, so I did and I believe that's what led me to working on television.
“I really wanted to share those messages with people but it felt like I wasn't really in a space where I could. I guess I wasn't competent enough in my twenties or my thirties. Plus I was really busy trying to create that TV career. And then when Covid came around, I just had a conversation with Damien Hughes, who came to watch a Norwich City match and speak to the team. I got a chance to meet him and it sparked something in me."
Since then, the High Performance Podcast has attracted huge guests including sports stars, musicians and TV personalities. Jake recalled how his “most surreal” moment since starting the podcast was when he interviewed Matthew McConaughey in his house. “My wife was so excited, she'd just come out of the shower and it was about 10 o'clock at night. She was crouched on the floor listening to every word. I guess that was the moment where I thought, how on earth has High Performance got to the point where we're talking to Matthew McConaughey?”
When asked which guest has been his favourite, Jake said: “I guess I would probably say the conversation with Jonny Wilkinson, the former rugby player about his mindset and how he lives his life now. It was a conversation you just don’t think you’ll have with him.”
Speaking about the response to the podcast, Jake added: “We get incredible messages from people, incredible stories and actually, we just sit in a room and have a conversation and hope it helps people. To see the value that it carries and to see the impact it's having on people's lives, that's energy for the High Performance team. That just makes us all feel incredible.”
A lifelong career in the media has meant that Jake faced trolling online in the past and, he admits, that he initially found it “difficult”. He explained: “At the beginning, I felt a sense of injustice and I felt that people weren't understanding me. But I think I've become quite immune to it now. I certainly still don't like it but I think I’ve also realised that a lot of the things that people put on social media, it's actually not about me at all, it's about them. It's either their own anger or their own frustration or their own disappointment. I think every opinion is someone holding up a mirror, so it reflects a lot about how they feel about the world. All I can do is just try and do the best that I can.
“Empathy is what we need more of in life. Empathy is what requires us to try and understand other people. I guess the people that send those messages to me, if I lived their life, I probably would send the same messages as well. That's my empathy with them. I understand that people are entitled to their opinion and they can share it as much as they like and there's very little I can do about that. The only thing that I'm in control of is how I react to their opinion. If High Performance has taught me one thing, it's that my reaction is far more important than the thing that actually happens.”
Discussing High Performance’s upcoming Cardiff show, Jake assured people that they should expect more than a ‘podcast on the stage’. He added: “It's a proper theatre show where we're drawing out the very best guests to join us. We've got live music, we've got incredible special guests on stage, including, especially for Cardiff and only for this show, Sam Warburton. He's going to be sharing some of the moments about his life that people don't know.
“Again, we're all about peeling back the layers on this podcast. People may well think they know everything there is to know about Sam but there’s an awful lot you don't know and that's what we'll be talking about on stage. There's also an exclusive chance for the audience to ask questions to Sam as well, which I think would be really cool.”
Tickets for High Performance Live are available now from the Wales Millennium Centre’s website here. Read more celebrity interviews below:
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