Running the Line

Questioning Respect, Titles and Pedestals with The Hardest Geezer

Just over a year ago a man called Russell Cook, also known as The Hardest Geezer, ran through Namibia on his way to becoming the first person to run the length of Africa along the western side of the continent rather than the traditional Cape-to-Cairo routes.

I got to meet and talk to Russ, and I found him to be a very humble man who had managed to use running to turn his life around, having gone from someone who struggled with mental health issues, gambling and excessive drinking to someone determined to inspire as many people as possible to “use their time to do something worthwhile and live a fulfilled life”. I was especially impressed by the fact that he did not seem to be interested in the fame the run would bring him, but rather in the amount of good he could achieve. And he did, raising more than £1 million for Water Aid, which strives to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in Africa, and The Running Charity, which uses running to boost the mental health and long-term resilience of young people experiencing homelessness.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a social media post by Russ about what a privilege it was to get to run with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a man who just days before had said that the United Kingdom was suffering from a “sick note culture” and that the “everyday challenges and worries of life” were being “over-medicalised” in a policy speech that drew the ire of not only the centre-left opposition but mental health campaigners and medical specialists of all sorts. Clinical psychologist and lecturer Jay Watts even went as far as to say that the UK government’s “specific targeting of mental health claimants will have damaging and potentially deadly consequences”.

This column is in no way meant as a criticism of Russ, nor to detract from what he has achieved. His post just got me thinking about how we put certain people on a pedestal and seem to grant them a level of respect they may not have earned, and which we would not necessarily give them were it not for their title or profession. Be it politicians, actors, musicians, or even business leaders, we are very often happy to overlook – or ignore for as long as it suits us – their slights and failures, or sometimes even claim that they cannot be held to the same standards as the rest of us just because of their status or position.

(this) got me thinking about how we put certain people on a pedestal and seem to grant them a level of respect they may not have earned, and which we would not necessarily give them were it not for their title or profession.

I fully subscribe to the notion that you cannot truly judge someone’s response, decisions or actions until you have been in the same situation they find themselves in. A university lecturer once explained to us that the idea that you have set principles you will never break, for example, “I’d never kill someone”, is fallacious, because until you find yourself in a situation where you might realistically need to test your principles, you cannot be sure how you would react or respond. To use the earlier example: imagine having to decide whether or not to kill someone to save the lives of your family. I also understand that sometimes there are other factors at play in making decisions like the one Russ took to go for a run with the Prime Minister. But (and again, this is in no way a judgement of his decision nor me saying that he should subscribe to my thoughts or opinions) I would like to think that, had I been given the opportunity to go for a run with Rishi Sunak, I would have stuck to my principles and turned him down.

Like many, I also grew up being told that one should respect one’s elders and those in authority, and I believe in treating every person I meet with a healthy level of courtesy, but I most certainly do not believe that there are certain ranks or classes of people who should be respected and deferred to as a matter of fact. My own small (and mostly hollow) victory is that in my previous dealings with government ministers I point-blank refused to bow to the convention of addressing them as “honourable” – it was not because I did not believe they were worthy of the term, but rather that I objected to the idea that someone should be addressed in a way I had no way of knowing whether they deserved or not simply because they held a certain title.

Perhaps people in positions of power would start conducting themselves in a way more deserving of respect if we did not just grant it to them automatically…

Until next month, enjoy your journey.

David Bishop