This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. There's been beef between President Donald Trump and Pope Lee. I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of Pope Lee. I don't want to get into a debate with him. The Pope is visiting Africa with a message of peace, but at a time where things feel anything but peaceful. How is he getting his message across to the world's youngest Catholic population? I'm Hannah Gelbart, coming join me on "What in the World", a daily podcast from the BBC World Service. We explain the news in less than 15 minutes, and you can find us wherever you get your BBC podcast. Hello, welcome to Big Boss interview. I'm Fliss Hannah. We've had a couple of bosses on the pod who are on the other side of a grueling turn around. Will Bain is with me, though, as he's been speaking to someone who's returned to the company they founded and is just weeks into that process. Will tell me who you've had on. Yeah, that's right, Fliss. This is John Vincent, one of the three co-founders of Lee on that came in to kind of shake up fast food in the early 2000s, make it a bit better for our waistlines to their minds. Sold out the company in 2021, but as you'll hear throughout the interview, regretted it ever since. Still has that passion for the company. I want to now, as it's fallen on hard times and into administration, bring it out of it, administration, and hopefully open a new chapter in it so we talk about that. And the challenges of doing that, whether that wave that Lee on road of greener, healthier eating is still there from its customers. What the challenge of weight loss jabs might be to the wider food industry, particularly fast food, healthy or not. And we're also going to hear a little bit of that as passion for music as well. Well, let's hear it then. Here is Will's interview with Leon Founder and Returning CEO, John Vincent. John Vincent, co-founder and the chief executive of Leon. Thanks so much for being with us on the big boss interview. Well, thank you. Right at the top, John, of my notes here. I've got Remind John to control how many times he's going to make Oliar produce a play the bleep button during this interview. You're a man who doesn't make your language normally. I'm not proud of it. I did read, there was a Sunday Times article, I was like, "Oh my goodness, do I swear? Do I swear that much?" Well, there we go. I think I do, but it's not good, is it? It's not good. Is it stress? Is it a stress reliever? Is it passion? I don't know. I don't know. Look, I did, this might be totally wrong, but I saw some research that said that people who swear more and more are intelligent. I'm more honest. I don't know. I literally don't know whether that's true. I tell you what happened when I was about 11. My mum, I grabbed an infield, and I went to this state prime school called Chaseide. And my mum sent me to Elecution Lessons because I see thought I spoke so badly. And then they said, "Well, we kind of teach "Elecution through drama." And then for the first three weeks we did mine. And I think she was like, "I'm not really spending my money very well here. "Am I trying to get my son to speak better through mine." So now you get to swear at an RP accent? I feel really bad swearing, but I do. I do. I do, mainly on the bleeping plane. Yes, yes. I didn't know how you guys don't do it. I mean, you must have a filter. A subconscious filter. I was gonna say, don't know what it is. Well, sorry. All right, take us back to the very start, John. The idea for Leon, where did it come from? Why did you think there's a gap here and I want to fill in? Well, I mean, I was working at a company called, "You're like this, Bane." So you didn't start it, but a guy called Bill Bane did actually. I was working with my friend, a guy who is actually, you know, those strangers are coming on, to the BBC talking about food, a guy called Henry Dimblebee. And we used to think, you know, it's lovely what we do. It's good, but we don't want to be here for the next 10, 20 years. What are we gonna do that is actually something which aligns to our values, which something we can have some fun with. And actually what happened is we both sat down at lunch and we said, well, you know, let's write down 10 ideas each of what we wanted to do. And we were, the one that completely coated, essentially, was on both of our lists, was reinvent fast food. And then instead of being intelligent and saying, well, let's look at the other, the others on that list. Let's, let's do that. You know, we do a lot of strategies. It's like, oh, look, that's a coincidence. It's on our list. Let's do that. And look, the reason that both of us were thinking about the same thing is, you know, I loved McDonald's as a kid. So I shouldn't say, I loved fast food as a kid. I remember me and Andrew Green at the end of each term, we treat ourselves to sitting on those little plastic, some people may or may not remember this. The little plastic slidey seats that meant that you, you know, you'd slid off so you couldn't stay for very long. And me and Andrew Green, and Andrew and I would go at the end of each term and have McDonald's. And quite frankly, I got into the habit of the early 20s of really eating a lot of fast food, but then realizing that it wasn't, I wasn't managing to keep my athletics, my athletics shape, I'm sure we say. So in the end, I thought, you know what, there's nothing in the word fast and there's nothing in the word food that means that it can't be nutritious and it can't be flavorful. It can't be full of nature and it can't be good for the planet. So that was really a sort of turning point. Now, at the same time, there were books like Fast Food Nation, there was a, I think, Morgan Spurlock was his name, he did something called Super Size Me. So there was a sort of growing understanding that perhaps not all calories do the same thing for you. And perhaps we have metabolic issues that come from that. But you guys didn't have sort of backgrounds in nutrition, in food, you weren't chefs, any of the three of you were in. Well, actually, Allegro was a chef, actually, and Henry had trained under a guy called Bruno Lube, as a chef and his mum was a cookery writer. So his mum is called Jocelyn Dimblebe. She was one of these saints, British chefs, so you know, you'd have a saint who is cookbook at the end of the aisle or at the end of the counter. And she did things like marvellous meals with mints. And she knew what Bruno Lube was with. David had sort of popularized that Mediterranean diet in the UK for the first time. So Henry very much did actually come from a sort of foodie, I guess, background. Allegro was a chef she'd worked at something that we were called the Tabanacl with the idea of serving the best food for the most people. So it was about democratizing good food, which was a very important strand of what we were trying to do. And I had really, you know, don't criticize me for this now, but I started studying nutrition. So I started working at the Institute of Optum and Nutrition, a guy called Patrick Holford, read a lot of his books and realized that there was really quite a lot that wasn't in the mainstream. Right, so how does it go from that then? Being on your list and you guys having this sort of interest in it and an idea kind of there to an actual, okay, we're going to do this and this is how we're going to do it. We knew that the key thing was rooting something in a location and in a site. And we trotted along to a property agent and we said, can you find us a site? And he said, what's your idea? And we were like, well, it's like if God did fast food and he's like, okay, how about this one? The Canary Street. And we're like, yeah, that's a great location. We were thinking of like-- - So Soho basically-- - Yeah, London. - We knew we wanted to be right in the middle of the competition. We knew we wanted to test it. We knew not run away to a town where there wasn't competition. And so there was a Starbucks, there was a prayer opposite. And it's a very difficult, if anyone knows that site, it's very difficult site. And we almost didn't do it because the configuration almost didn't work. We raised a little bit of money from friends and family and put some money in from ourselves that we'd saved. I think I put about 25,000 pounds in that I had saved in the previous sort of four years. Henry did the same. And then we had what could only be described as an incredibly stressful 12 months. I remember, and Henry was almost not being able to breathe with the stress of doing it. If we used to have to walk down Carnaby Street, there was some ballards. And if we had a problem, we would walk from Carnaby Street, all the way down Carnaby Street, round the ballards and back. And typically by the time we got back, we'd have half solved the problem. But I remember thinking, how can it be so difficult to breathe? This is something I've done for years. Problems like what? Well, it might be, I mean, we're so, we were four weeks delayed because the extraction didn't work. And blessing, there were two, there were two rather well-built builders called John. And at the same time, the CCTV was going in. This is a true story. Because the CCTV went in and we kept delaying the opening, the rumor went round the team that they were part of a reality TV show. Because they were like, when are we going to open this restaurant? And they were like, look at the cameras. Look at the cameras, the cameras are going in. And then one of the Johns literally got stuck in the extraction and we had to pull him out with his legs. And obviously, it's difficult not to laugh, but we shouldn't laugh, right? We shouldn't laugh because it's funny, but we shouldn't laugh because it's harsh. But it's difficult on that. But we literally had to pull John out with his legs. And so those were the sorts of things that were going on all of the time when you were actually trying to do something practical. And I nearly said, (beep) but that would be swearing. Things happened, things happened all the time. - Can you remember when you finally did open them? What was that like, that feeling? And can you remember the first thing? What was the original menu? What was the first to come and sell it? - It was quite a simple menu. It was tapassi, sorry, mezzai rice and wraps. And it was chicken, I only, chili chicken, lamb, shish, Moroccan meatballs. And you could sort of have them in a wrap or, or with a spoon.
rice all by itself. And then a superfood salad that actually became the superfood salad that everyone seemed to be inspired by. And maybe one soup. That was basically it. And maybe we should go back to that simplicity. I don't know how conscious were you at the time. How much of it was coincidence, like that sort of trend, that real storm of people wanting to eat greener, to know where their stuff had come from, the sourcing of their products was coming right at the moment where you were launching weren't there as well. They were really absent. Were you conscious of that as you were opening? Was it a deliberate strategy or did those two things just kind of coalesce? It's interesting isn't it that the television got invented almost in the same week in two different continents without either people knowing that they were invented the television. There was something in the air sometimes isn't there. You might call it energetically culturally that means that people are feeling that a change is required. It's almost like there's this pressure builds up and then suddenly there's an earthquake because the tipping point is reached that society wants to move on to something. And I think we were just part of that semi consciously part of that movement. And that's why people were shining a light on traditional fast food, which actually hasn't gone away at all. Has it really has not gone away. But there were authors there were nutritionists, there were people who were in that kind of alternative movement really. You know the sort of a need to Rodic people that wanted to do. Founder of the body shop. Yeah, exactly. People that had done cranks. So this kind of good food was in sort of sustainable farming circles or in nutrition circles. There was a coalescing that something needed to change in the mainstream. And so we fast forwarded a little bit. What is it? 15 or 16 years or so. And you decide to sell. Why? I was a minority shareholder. I didn't have balled control anymore. It's often a feature of a business where you have a capital intensive balance sheet where you've had to take on equity in order to grow physically by new restaurants and investing new restaurants. So I had 10 plus about 5% management options. So I felt that Leon wasn't mine. I wasn't I didn't have enough control of his destiny. I had two principal sets of shareholders, both wonderful sets of shareholders. But I would have to go and recommend a strategy to one shareholder or all the other. And I said, for me, it's like a captain of a ship having to recommend to turn left or right to a secret room full of people downstairs in the ship somewhere. And so for me, with my character, I felt that having an alignment of responsibility in freedom where the accountability you have, you also have the freedom to pull the levers to deliver what you're expected to do as a CEO. My character is such that I prefer having balled control of a business rather than having to recommend going to the States or recommend a slightly adjusted to the concept. And even though those investors are absolute brilliant investors, I feel that it is actually often healthier for there to be a greater alignment of control and power in a business and authority aligned with the responsibilities that you have to deliver outcomes. That's just where I worked. Separately, we've been affected by COVID. We were offered an amount of money that made sense, I think, for the shareholders. And I felt it was my responsibility given I was a minority to recommend that we do that deal. So I felt I had that responsibility. It's still some moment, isn't it, though, to the business that named off you, named off you really far from me. Yeah, after my father, definitely. I mean, it was emotional and it's probably what, clearly what led me to come back. I had to almost not go to a Leon, because it was sometimes a bit painful. So I almost thought, if Leon expands, I'm not going to have to emigrate. But yes, I think it was painful emotionally. Painful because you didn't like what was happening straight away or painful just because you weren't part of it. It was painful because I felt that the life that I had after Leon lacked that community and the camaraderie that I really enjoyed at Leon. There was a great, there's a, we know, don't we, the people that really live the longest aren't necessarily the ones that have a mega three fatty acid or even medium chain triglycerides. They're the ones that have purpose and the ones that have community, positive community and relationships and having purpose with those people is really what drives longevity because it drives human satisfaction and it drives psychological, physiological, spiritual, emotional health. And so I think I missed that. I was at home. I was playing a little bit too much online chess and my rating was that it was stalling. And I was doing projects, but none of them had that kind of camaraderie that I felt at Leon with 2,000 people, a part of that journey. I guess given that you're back, this is slightly obvious question, was you regret going then? Do you know what? I didn't because of the structure of me being a minority. I felt that I needed to do something where I had board control. So I knew it was a regret, but it wasn't a regret that I made the wrong decision. It was a regret that there were some downsides to having to make that decision. It brings us to today, doesn't it? You come back at a pretty sticky time. It's a sticky time for lots of reasons, isn't it? I mean, sticky time for the government, for the country, sticky time for the industry, sticky time for Leon. Yeah. But coming back to a business. Not good sticky. No, exactly. It's heading into administration. Why? I mean, why? Why not just wave a goodbye and come up with a different idea or sort of fee-nix it into something else? I mean, I remember someone once said, a guy called Michael Markovitz said to me, "The sign of a good brand is one that people would miss if it wasn't there." And there was so much, speaking to people, it was clear, there was so much residual goodwill for the brand and that people wanted it to be good again. When you say that, what do you think it's lost and what are you trying to bring back in there? I think it's lost. I can explain how this is manifested, but I think it's lost Hutzbar leadership and confidence. And that is manifested in a lack of clarity about what it wants the menu to be. It leads to less warm, less intimate, smaller welcomes in the restaurants. And it leads to, I think, a lack of fundamental purpose because what's happened really is, I think, I know people talk about this Alice in Wonderland in version that we seem to be living in, where values are in the wrong order. For me, Leon, and this is no criticism of the people that bought it because what happened was that Moss and Zubi is supported. And then Leon became an aster business. Those businesses are typically run for money. And my really strong belief, validates, I think, by the Leon experience, is that when you run a business for money, certainly a business like Leon, you end up making less money. If you focus on soul or the doubt, which I can come back to or laugh what everyone would call it, purpose, then purpose, then product, then business model, then people, then customer and then economics, the economics become good. Particularly, what does that look like and what you do then? So number one, I need to reassert a purpose that becomes a real purpose because if you, if you have a pretend purpose, like businesses do, the businesses that are fundamentally about money, they meet at some golf club and have a management meeting and they create a fake purpose, right? If that purpose is becomes a real purpose, in our case, we do want to make it easy for everyone to eat, to bracket and live well, then that starts to drive everything that we do. It drives when we encourage people to eat, what we encourage them to eat, the different types of, you know, keto friendly, are you fruit, Mrs. Fruit and Fiber, are you someone that just wants, you know, a decent balanced diet full of good fats and gut health, it starts to drive everything that you do if you are truly purpose driven. And you say that about purpose, I mean, and ideas and values, are those people still out there because it does feel like, doesn't it, the bat, you know, we started talking about that to me that you caught a moment. Yeah. Now, in everything, not just in food, but in, you know, ESG is a tool to dirty word, a political football, isn't it right across business now? Are those people still there? The short answer is, as long as there's one of them, I will serve them. The longer answer is, when I bought it back, when we did the administration, we had a flurry of emails from people, I could not believe the number of emails that we were getting from people saying, please, I loved Leon. I loved what it stood for. I loved what it did for me. Please bring it back to what it is. So I don't have sitting here, the data that says they represent 30, 40, 50 percent of total. What I do know is that, you know, I received 800 emails to my personal inbox when we bought it back from people who were so excited. Some of those emailers, those commenters, they're going to be disappointed aren't they? You were talking to the Guardian before Christmas saying Leon should be niche, not on every high street. You're going to shrink quite considerably, presumably. Yeah. So my thinking is that I need three channels. I would, by the way, I would love to have more restaurants. What's stopping us having more restaurants is the 36P.
in the pound of every pound that goes to the government that we take and the negative 10p that goes to us. So if the government changes, it's incredibly toxic, tax regime that's impacting our industry. Is this business rates you're talking about? Or are you talking about all the risk things? Everything. I mean, so, so we, you go to a supermarket you buy something, you don't pay VAT, you go to Leon and you sit in Leon, you pay 20% VAT. So that's, that's, that's the first thing. The second thing is that you have business rates that were 4% of sales and then now 8 to 10% of sales. You have national insurance that's now gone up an extra 3% of sales. In our industry, you only ever made 3% profit after depreciation and after head office costs. So if your business rates go from 4 to 8 or 10 and the national insurance is added to 3, everyone starts losing money. So the only people that are going to survive are those selling crap food, crap isn't the swear word, is it? Anyway, my mum used to say it was crap food that's not very good quality because that's the only way that these restaurants are going to be able to survive. So I, I will only have a, as many restaurants as I can have, given the fact that this is not a market. We are still fundamentally sorry to say in a kind of feudal structure where most of, most of London is owned by five entities. It's not the market that is making something like Leon difficult. It is the incredibly high upward only rents where the legislation is entirely driven by the landlords and the 36p in every pound that goes to the government. And that is, so that's not the market. If the market was left to its own devices and, you know, property was went up and down like every other asset class does in the world. Gold isn't upward only, wheat isn't upward only, no other asset classes is upward only. The only reason is it suits the landlords and there is almost no other industry in which 36p in every pound goes to the government. It's insane. And I know the chance of the checker that initially way back put them up. I don't think they did any analysis of the industry to even understand what they were doing. I don't think they do that work. I've never seen any evidence that they do that work. Does this new look Leon look like just a city based, just a London based Leon though? The good news is we have a great partnership with Road Chef. So for transport, for service stations, you're actually going to see that expand. So when people are on the go, you're going to see that. You're going to see that more airports through our franchise partners HMS host. You're going to see me want to initially concentrate in London because it just makes sense for training. I can do it all in person. If someone doesn't turn up for work, I can move someone over. I can focus my media on London. So initially it's going to be London plus service stations plus train stations plus airports. But I will take quite a big cut from you as well. That will charge you a lot. They do. They do. It's something like 30 or 32% goes to the airport. So literally your margins can be 2% of sales. So what's the point being that marketing? It will. The point in airports is that the, the percent, even though it's a small percentage, airports tend to be quite high revenue. So that that 2% just about makes it worthwhile because you might be doing two or three times the revenue in that airport that you might in a high street location. So in absolute terms that 2% is worth the same as a 6% on the high street if that makes sense. So yes. So what's the sense then if you've got a kind of rough number in your head of the total number of stores that you have? I think that what well can I just say one thing? Well, I think probably is about 100, right? 200 to 200. However, Leon is not, it might be my thinking is not just a restaurant business. We have to recognise the fact that we have a growing and healthy grocery business. And I do want to do a direct to consumer business where we're taking our food and we're sending it to people's house. So like meal kits or I would say almost more like finished meals rather than just kits. I think something that you can literally just heat and have three minutes later, ten minutes later if it's in another rather than a whole, oh look, a tiny healthy, ready meal almost like a rival. Exactly. And almost like it's come, no, it will have come straight from my kitchens. And the idea is that I can stock up for the week. I can for my family, I can have, you know, instead of, instead of you batch cooking, Leon will batch cook for you. So we will give you a, you know, a beautiful chicken lemon and olive to jean, a lamb and a rhubarb, caress, some sort of lovely meal that you can have, you know, if you're knackered, which most people are all the time, you know, you can have ready in five minutes. So that's a sort of idea. I want to direct out this rattle through some trends in a moment with you as well. But just one last one then on the administration moment, suppliers, whether you're suppliers, set all to all of that. None of the suppliers are compromised. They knew that we were going to go into administration. They're very supportive. None of them are going to be compromised financially in any way. They're all going to be fully paid. So suppliers are very happy. And you mentioned landlords, what about them as well? Landlords probably less happy, although we're working with most of the landlords and a lot of the landlords are incredibly supportive. I was speaking to the landlord of I can't be street one the other day. He said, I completely understand it makes complete sense what you've done. I'm really pleasantly surprised, almost shocked by the amount of support that we have had for the administration, even from many landlords. There are probably a couple where we've exited where they would have liked to have kept us, but I'm sure those landlords will find a concept or brand, a company, a restaurant that suits that location. So the support for the administration has been incredibly strong. That's interesting, a trend that's changed in the time of you coming back and that's changed a lot in retail as well as in it's not just for food as well. So that's clearly one challenge ahead for the food industry, full stop. The emergence of fat jabs, particularly for the Monjaro's, the Wagoves, particularly for someone that's kind of healthy and there's a sort of Greg's talking about this the other day saying it was putting it down to its customers, not coming in for sausage rolls. If your customer is your core customer, I would have a guess, probably more health conscious already than no classic Greg's customer right. Is that a challenge? How much of that is a challenge? Do you see that as something that could, I don't know, take your customers away from you? It's fun enough, my wife Katie, she said six months ago, so if you did do Leon, I think there's a big opportunity for you to cater for the fat jab. Is that what we call them? What do we call them these days? I'm not waiting on that. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I did it first. I'm sorry, sorry, we call them that. Wait, lost jabs, whatever they call them. And I think there is an opportunity for any brand, I mean, I think Mark's suspensions have responded to it quite well already. I think there's definitely an opportunity for Leon type food, which he's often typically made with good fats, not bad fats, low sugar, not high sugar, lots of great, flavored with herbs and spices. We're actually seeing that the type of food that we enjoy eating at Leon and we used to enjoy serving and we increasingly enjoy serving now is actually the sort of food that people on weight loss jabs want to eat. So I'm, for example, you're direct to consume yourself. Would it make you think about, I don't know, the portions of this? Yes, is in that, for example. Yes, it definitely, definitely. I think that's right. And we need to understand, we need to, I'm sure it's developing. I think that one of the challenges with weight loss jabs is that people, an friend of mine is a, does gastric bypass and he, all the, he was, he was an imperial, and a lot of the data that initially that weight loss jabs were based on were trying to mimic some of the metabolic results of a gastric bypass. And he says that his view is very strongly that we have a problem with people not being able to make enough muscle with these weight loss jabs. And so things like, can we help people get enough protein and help their body maintain their muscle mass is just as important as calories, I think. That's, well, there's some of us, we have a nutritional and scientific advisory panel and that's what they're advising us that we might need to support people on protein, not just on fats and calories. Does it throw down a pricing challenge, though, because even though people are having their appetite suppressed, presumably still if a small portion of your, your product turns up, still at a higher price, they still, their brain still goes, their brain is still working right and goes, well, that's a bit of a ripoff, that's half a size it was. Well, I, you know, it's a great question. I think, I think people are increasingly realizing that it's, well, not everybody, some people are realizing that they do want to spend their money on, on good ingredients. And I think, unfortunately, we are seeing a bifurcation, we are seeing some people who are spending more of their money on food and they actually enjoy spending, an comfortable spending a bit more proportion. And of course, we have a whole bunch of people who are financially so stretched that, for which that isn't possible. I do think we need to basically make sure that everybody is cater for. So the Brazilian black bean, I do deliberately develop because legumes are pot is a good way of giving people nutrition, flavor and protein without actually having to go to the kind of prices of red meat, for example. So I think we,
do have to, as a brand, realise and remember we were always about the best food for the most people. We were not about posh food, posh fast food for posh people. That was never our intention. In fact, Allegra, she was very clear as were we. Her mission was the best food for the most people. So I think we mustn't be an elite London brand, even though strategically at the moment London and organisation, London is a good place to embed ourselves. You leading that then. In terms of the other former members of the team, any of them coming back? Henry, Allegra? Henry is doing a really great job of helping the government on the National Food Strategy and has his own company called Bramble, which is a consultancy and a private intellectual VC firm to support good food businesses around, I think both obesity and farming under the environment. He's doing well. He's doing really well. So I don't think he has time to come back to Leon. I also think that sometimes in a real turn around situation, it's good to have one pilot or one captain and I think Henry and I both acknowledge that. Allegra may well come back and I texted her yesterday and she said in an interview the other day, something like, I'm not back but I'm not coming back or something like that. So you're looking at him sweating? I think we're both keen actually for Allegra to participate. She came to a tasting that we did the other day. She bought some of her food and innovation. There were about 30 chefs that we had working on that day. Allegra very sweetly came along and showed us her wares in a beautiful way. So it was great that it would be a boost right, wouldn't it? To the next chapters? I think it would be great to have Allegra involved. Which is absolutely, do you have any metal? Allegra. Allegra is when it comes down to A for the next hurricane, they should definitely use Allegra when it comes round to the start of the alphabet again. Allegra is the most powerful hurricane with the most incredible potential energy and it would be incredible to have that energy applied Leon again and it already is in the background. But yeah, I mean, Henry, the other thing is I think right now Leon probably needs one decision maker. I doesn't need a committee at the moment. It needs me to listen intently to lots of views. But I think he probably needs one decision maker at the moment. So if you've not got your sort of former co-pilot to go for those walks around the ballads with anymore? Yes. How are you? Relaxing. We've got wind of a bit of your music. We've seen a couple of your music videos recently. I think the radiation is that passion. Oh, I love it. It's a fantastic dance. You're sort of version of the Macarena and Wall of the World. Oh, my God. I didn't even learn that very well. Did I? So do you know what? I absolutely love music. I'm very, very lucky that the guy I do it with is a guy called Dave Calhoun. He's Rick Wakeman's guitarist. He played Brian May in Bohemian Rhapsody. He's Brian May's favorite guitarist. And here and I write music. The good news is I'm slightly more on the lyrics side. But he does allow me to try and sing bad melodies over his brilliant riffs. But he clearly is the main sort of musical talent. He credits me with adding value because I don't know anything about music. Sometimes I'm like, why can't we do that? He's like, yes, suppose we could do that. So yeah, so it's return of the human. I absolutely love it. It was definitely in the four years I wasn't involved in Leon, one of the things I spent a lot of my time on. And I don't know whether anyone has tried writing music. Probably A.I.s is probably not bad either. But as whilst humans are still better than A.I. writing music, it's a fun thing to do. I'd recommend it to anybody, even if you don't play an instrument to give it a go. Here's my go at my audition for the Radio One Break for sure. Here's a bit of John. I always want to be somewhere that I'm not. Somewhere I am not. It's like I'm sitting in the sun and you are sitting in the shade. I'm feeling far too hot, the anxious. But you are cool and unafraid. I tend to get things mixed up. Quite a lot. They say this is the challenge when you have ADHD. It's got a bit of my skin at the street there, isn't it? You know what? Someone did say that. I probably know where near was cool as them. But ADHD, a big part of your life and it's well. It turns out that it is. It's looking back on it. It is. Given the number of projects that I do or my tendency to never switch off. I went once, someone said I think you should get tested or diagnosed or to see what you've got ADHD and I turned up and I was like, excuse me, is this so and so and so in 10 minutes late? I was dropping bags and as I went in, the psychiatrist held the door open with his finger. Let me go in and said, I think we've done our diagnosis, haven't we? It turns out looking back on it. It probably has been a factor of my life. But what they do is they sit there and make you feel better. They say, "Oh, you know Leonardo da Vinci probably had ADHD." And you're like, "Oh, yes, yes. Oh, that's me, that is, yeah." Just like Leonardo da Vinci. So, look, I think it can be, it can be called high functioning sometimes, but I know it has an effect on my behaviour. It has an effect on my sometimes I can be a bit, I can be a bit reactive. I can probably be a bit stressed sometimes. And I think that it comes from that character type that was subsequently more formally diagnosed by the psychiatrist as ADHD. And did that insight then help you as you come back to Leedley on in this next kind of chapter? I hugely. And I think we also do something called the Enneagram, which I would really highly recommend to people and the two combined, knowing my Enneagram number, which is the challenger, where my biggest fear is being controlled by others, or controlled or harmed by others. And I can, it means I can either be Nelson Mandela or Saddam Hussein. And knowing how my ADHD can sometimes sort of put me in danger of being more Saddam Hussein and less Nelson Mandela, it's a real toolkit for me knowing, I just think I need half a day off, because I've been working so intensely. You know, last night, for example, again, up at three o'clock in the morning, didn't sleep till, oh, didn't actually sleep again, because I had to come here and do some training this morning. Knowing when I just need to take half a day off, because I've been so intense, is a real useful tool piece of toolkit, piece of knowledge, knowing how my ADHD brain works. And I would just encourage anyone to do the Enneagram. So this is a personality test. Yeah, it's a brilliant, it's a wonderful and very, very powerful way of understanding what mask we put on in order for our true self to feel comfortable relating to the outside world. And it's what I might, you might call that ego self. It's the biggest fears that we have. We just don't know ourselves as human beings enough. If we did, the world would be much more loving, much more peaceful. Round us out here, then, with a pair of those, a fear and a hope for what Leon looks like now. What's the thing that does keep you up and how are you going to overcome it and what does success kind of look like now? So my fear is that society has changed so much versus the 2004 era where Leon was created. My fear is that young people don't want to talk to humans. They just want to order on a screen or on a phone. My fear is that people, the quality of people post Brexit and post COVID that want to work in our industry is compromised, which means that I'm forced to go to a more tech solution, which I don't want to do. And my fear is that more and more restaurant chains are going to fall over and disappear because of the government policies on tax. And my hope is that I can prove that it is possible to build a business based on soul, love, harmony and balance, where purpose is a real thing, not a veneer, and where I can truly create the Earth's favourite fast food, which is food that springs from the soil, a restaurant that truly spring from their community, and a culture that springs from the heart. So that is my hope that I can demonstrate and achieve that. John Vincent, founder, CEO of Leon. Thanks so much for speaking to us. Thank you. Thanks to John Vincent for his time and for yours of course as well. 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