BBC Radio 2 Interview with Johnnie Walker

24th February 2003: (Transcript)

Johnnie: "So you had a tough time at school did you Robert?"

Rob: "A very tough time yeah."

Johnnie: "Starting at what age?"

Rob: "First of all when I was five, for about a year and then no problems at all until I was 12, until my family moved to a different town. I had to go to a new school and start again, that was incredibly daunting to me and I was very nice to all the people because I needed to make friends. A lot of the bullies took advantage, saw they could get away with bullying me and it sort of carried on from there and spiralled downwards."

Johnnie: "Why is it do you think they picked on you?"

Rob: "I think when it happens to you, if you're being bullied at the moment you're probably asking yourself why. You know, why me? I think the only answer why is because they can, because bullies get away with it, because you let them get away with it."

Johnnie: "But I wonder why they choose someone apart from anybody else. When you were twelve and you started at the new school then you're the new kid and they had a go at you for wearing a jumper or something in school did they?"

Rob: "Yeah, the minute I walked into that classroom I was under the spotlight, I realise now, I didn't at the time. In the first half an hour of being in that new class the first bully had 'tested the water.' Bullies are very clever at selecting the victims they pick on, they don't want someone that's going to fight back they want someone that's going to give them what they want. They're very clever at gaining reassurance; my main point is that bullies are not strong people. It's not a strong person who needs to pick on others to feel good, but what they do is test the water with little comments about you. With me it was the clothes I was wearing or the bike I was riding and when I didn't answer back or just looked at my desk and tried to ignore it they realised they'd got what they want and so they just went further from there."

Johnnie: "What happened to you when you were five though? You used the excuse 'I'm desperate to go to the toilet and then you went and saw the teacher and reported it basically. So you were hoping she would come on your side but she had an opposite reaction."

Rob: "That's right. I think that happens in a lot of cases. This is going back to the 80's; perhaps it's changed at schools now. But there was a phrase, which I'm sure you've heard-'stop telling tales.' And that's what I was told so from then on I didn't really bother asking for help. The thing about bullying Is that it becomes normal to you when it's consistent over a certain period of time and you can actually start to think that it's all your fault and that you deserve it, you self esteem takes a battering. You know, so you stop asking for help. You don't even consider it because you think you deserve it."

Johnnie: "Could you talk to your mum and dad about it?"

Rob: "Not really. The main obstacle I think for anybody who's being bullied is that they may feel ashamed about it, as if there's something wrong with them, as if they deserve it and that's what you need to get over. I felt very ashamed about what I was allowing people to do to me and full of anger really. I became very shy and moody, withdrawn. I went from being very outgoing and confident to that."

Johnnie: "It's interesting that you know, you've developed an understanding of the bully and why they do it. And its not just boys, because girls bully other girls don't they?"

Rob: "That's right, my own sister, who's younger than me. She went to the same schools as me in this new town and she had the same problems with the girls there."

Johnnie: "So in a way you feel that they're feeling a bit insecure and In order to bolster themselves up they do it by putting somebody else down?"

Rob: "I think that's right. Just the fact that if you're a victim you don'tanswer back and you let them get away with it. And so they just carry on doing it until you get to the point where you say 'this is not acceptable, I'm not going to take this anymore. I'm not going to let anybody do this to me anymore."

Johnnie: "You say you don't have too much experience of what goes on in schools now. But I get the feeling; I don't know if I'm right or wrong, that we have too much sympathy with the bully now. It's right to have understanding about it, but the same as in other areas of society we seem to forget the victim and all our sympathy goes toward the perpetrator"

Rob: "I think that's true. With the book I did try to understand the bullies a little bit but the main premise of the book is to be reassuring to the victim but challenging at the same time. I want to make people understand what bullying is, that's the first step to solving it-know what you're up against. But I think there is too much sympathy towards bullies and my own view is that I want to help victims because I think there will always be bullies in the world, in the workplace, at home, at school. Wherever there's always going to be people who do it. My aim is to try and help reduce the number of victims so there's less people for these bullies to pick on."

Johnnie: "Ok a couple of texts have come in. 'my daughter who's four was being bullied on the bus. After a letter to school the boys got told off, she now has a bus buddy to look after her' Now is that the best way of dealing with it, it's obviously worked in the short term"

Rob: "It sounds very successful. Another point about it though is that bullying will happen to you in cycles. Like it did with me, first when I was five and then when I was twelve because I was always throughout that period the sort of person that a bully could single out and pick on. What I needed to do and what I've done is really think about all the things I was afraid of that were stopping me from living a happy life and standing up to people and confronting all my fears and realising why people were able to get away with it. So I sort of built up my confidence to the point where I outgrew the bullies so they couldn't pick on me and that's what I think people need to do. It's great to ask for help, it's very courageous to ask for help and that's a very successful example obviously. But you do need to build up your own confidence to the point where you're not being bullied anymore; otherwise it will go in cycles. It will happen to you throughout your life whenever somebody wants to pick on you."

Johnnie: "Slippery Sid, who's a friend of this program who's a trucker says 'glad to hear you're doing a piece on bullying. I was a victim myself in the 1970's it affects me now even aged 43. Bullies need taking down.' So I guess he means taking down a peg or two. But you talk about, in a way the best way is for the victim to try and help his or herself."

Rob: "That's right. I think self-help is the best help really. You need to confront what you're afraid of; with me I was very afraid of fighting. It was quite a rough school, the one I went too and all the kids spoke in something like a different language and all the words began with the letters F and C. I wasn't prepared for it at all, there were a lot of fights and I had no confidence in being able to protect myself in that sort of way and that stopped me from speaking up for myself. And I got angrier and angrier and angrier and just kept it all bottled up inside and became very depressed. So I pretty much helped myself out of that by confronting my fears. What I did was get into boxing, I did a lot of boxing sparring and got my confidence up that way. I'd become very shy and was unable to talk to people. I had a rough time, not having any girlfriends in my teen years and stuff like that because I was just paralysed with fear at speaking to people. So I got a job in a call centre, one of the first things I did, which was speaking to people 40 hours a week live over the telephone. I built my confidence up gradually step by step to the point where I'm now much more confident than I ever was."

Johnnie: "So the bully tries to find somebody who is maybe lacking a little bit in self confidence?"

Rob: "I think so, as I said they are very clever and devious in who they do pick on"

Johnnie: "But that's maybe not fair in a way that last question. Maybe it's just people who are a bit more sensitive or most likely to be affected by it? Not somebody who's thick skinned and not likely to care so much"

Rob: "Yeah, or somebody who's got something to say back to them. I didn't really have anything to say back at the time."

Johnnie: "But not everybody can go boxing or learn judo. Sometimes the bully might be physically much stronger."

Rob: "It's a very personal thing, every situation is different and demands a different answer. Personally my fear was fighting so to confront that fear was right for me. But if your fear is 'I can't do anything about this because I'll get into trouble at school' or 'if I tell the teacher they might think I'm a wimp' whatever your fear is, I advise people to write it down. Sit down with a piece of paper and write it down, sit down with a piece of paper and work why you're letting this happen to you. What are you afraid of? Get it all down on paper and start to confront it and ask for help"

Johnnie: "Got some texts coming in 'I was bullied at school it has made me very self conscious' this is Pete in Brighton. 'Now I find I am easily bullied at work' So it obviously doesn't end with school then?”

Rob: "No, as I said you can go on being bullied throughout your whole life"

Johnnie: "He says 'what can I do?'

Rob: "I think first of all he needs to think about what it is about him that stops him speaking up for himself, you know what is he worried about? Really be honest with yourself and break it down, you know 'why am I letting people bully me?' And when you've been honest and got the answer out on the paper it looks a lot less scary and you can start to confront it and break down your fear. And as you break down your fear you get more and more confident and you just become more outgoing and you shouldn't have too many problems if you can speak up for yourself."

Johnnie: "Have you ever thought about doing a self assertiveness course? I mean it's not aggressive but it's standing up for yourself basically."

Rob: "Well I never did anything like that myself but as I became very shy, especially in social situations I started to force myself into those situations where I was very uncomfortable and wasn't sure what to say to people and sort of weathered the storm and gradually over time, it was quite a process, it took me a couple of years, I got my confidence back up again"

Johnnie: "You certainly seem to have plenty of confidence now. When the bullying was really bad when you were a teenager, presumably you'd try and take days off school or pretend to be ill, anything not to have to go to school?"

Rob: "Absolutely, I mean there were certain days, certain lessons where I knew there would be people waiting for me that I didn't particularly want to see or be sat in a class with. So I'd either pretend to be ill in the morning and con my mum into letting me have the day off or I'd come home at lunch before that lesson. I did a lot of that. Or, there was actually, at the back of my school there was a golf course and I was a golfer so I used to play a lot of golf."

Johnnie: "That's one useful thing to do.....do you still play?"

Rob: "I do yeah"

Johnnie: "So what would you say to parents who suspect that their son or daughters being bullied?"

Rob: "Well there are a lot of signs to look out for, just basic personality changes in your child. As I said I was very outgoing and confident, I was in all the sports teams at school, I was very happy, had a lot of friends and the then over time I became a very angry young man and very shy, wouldn't speak to people. I lost interest in everything, I quit the school rugby team, and I quit the school football team...”

Johnnie: "But hold on a second. It sounds to me as if you were at a period where you were doing well, which kind of goes against the theories we've been talking about doesn't it?"

Rob: "Well my problem was that the sports teams were where all the bullies were and I was spending most of my time with them. So they would criticise me for my mistakes, or blame me when the team lost. You know, you spend a lot of time on buses going to and from games don't you? And In changing rooms, that's where it would happen and that's what affected my self esteem more than anything."

Johnnie: "So if parents have spotted some warning signs, what do they then try and do? Get their child to talk about it?"

Rob: "I think so, I think that's the best option. If anyone's listening now who's being bullied at school I say go and tell someone, right now go and tell someone what is happening to you. Bullying goes on in what I call a 'secret society' at school. It's like a relationship between a bully and the victim and the only reason they have a relationship is because at the moment they can't communicate that they don't want this relationship to continue. So what you need to do is get it out into the open, don't let it be kept a secret. A lot of the bullies used to threaten me and say if you tell anyone about this you'll get worse treatment. Particularly the incident when I was five, the bully who was picking on me then, his dad was a police officer, he told me he'd get me in trouble with the police. One day he sent his mum into school, went up to the teacher and accused me of bullying him. So you can see how devious these people can be. But the first solution is to get it out into the open, don't be ashamed of being bullied. You haven't done anything wrong at all, it's the bullies who need to be ashamed of themselves."

Johnnie: "So what's the best way of making them feel that way? What's the best way of dealing with a bully do you think?"

Rob: "It's difficult because it's sort of a learned behaviour. Somewhere along the line these bullies have learned that acting that way gets them what they want. It might be that they want respect from their peers, or they just want to be noticed or they just don't know how to behave any other way. Like I said the main thing to do is to help the victims first of all."

Johnnie: "A couple of people have emailed us here. 'We need to talk about this, this is something else. Bullying has blighted my whole life, when I was going to school I was picked on for being a nice bloke. I would turn the other cheek as my dad always said I should and that I'd be in trouble if I started any fights. The problem continued and I felt I couldn't discuss it with anybody, it all got bottled up. Even when I stood up to them it didn't help, I became a nasty person. To cut a long story short I developed a depression and it affected me to such an extent that I did contemplate suicide. I still get angry about it today.' And you do hear about young people taking their own lives because of bullying."

Rob: "Unfortunately yes you do."

Johnnie: "Which is terribly sad isn't it?"

Rob: "Yes. I think the best thing to do is confront it straightaway. If you think of bullying as being like a fire, it can start small like the spark of a lighter and then build into this big inferno. If you think about what a fireman does with a fire, he puts it out straightaway. And that's what you need to do with bullying. Once you understand the problem you're facing and understand how bullies operate you can spot it straightaway and put a stop to it. Problems do develop if its consistent over a period of years, that'swhen the problems can really start."

Johnnie: "So you've written a book about it and you want to make a short film about it to try and help people."

Rob: "I have written a short film on the subject of bullying and it includes a lot of things that happened to me personally. I'd love to get that on the TV or the cinema screen at some point, I'd love to do that"

Johnnie: "So it's interesting it seems to be a big passion of yours now to prevent other people going through what you did."

Rob: "Well I've just learned that life is too short to live a bullied existence it really is. There's too many other great things to be doing out there, you know pursuing your interests. Rather than letting your life be made a misery by these people who aren't really anything at all. They're nothing, when you're being bullied you think of them as invincible and so powerful but they're not. Once you start to confront your fears you can turn your life round in a very short time"

Johnnie: "Well, all power to you"

Rob: "Thank you."

Johnnie: "And you're doing very well, keep going. Thanks for being our guest."

Rob: "Thank you. Thanks for having me on"

END OF INTERVIEW.