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Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
Rugby union referee, widely regarded as the best, known for being openly gay in a sport marinated in machismo.
Eight records
The Green, Green Grass of Home
When I go away all over the world, and I spend a lot of time away from home during the year, you know, something like last year, one hundred and eighty nights of the year away somewhere in the world, somewhere sleeping in a hotel somewhere, a lot of the time on your own. And I always like putting on, you know, something that reminds me of home, and the green, green grass of home.
Moravauriti is the Welsh name of the song. It's the Welsh version of How Great Thou Art. I always have a playlist in the change rooms playing on speakers before I referee a game. The last song that I will ever listen to before going out on the field will be How Great Thou Art.
My cousin had taken over a local pub in Kumaur. There'd always be somebody there playing the organ. And they asked me to go up to give a song. I was about nine, ten, eleven years old at the time. I went up and sang this song a little piece and this old guy there, he took his hat around the pub and people would chuck money and then I had about five or six pounds. This is my money a fortune then.
Myfanwy is a very, very famous song in Wales. And every time I'm somewhere, I was out in Paris in a restaurant in the middle of Paris and somebody there recognised me, said, 'Oh, Welsh Nigel, my grandmother's in there, she's having a ninetieth birthday party. This was they were French people. Could you please sing a song?' So I sang them Myfanwy, and they were all clapping and cheering. So, when people asked me to sing a song, this is the song.
I tell people now that I had a girlfriend back then and they wouldn't believe me, but I did. This was the song that was number one. We always had a smooch in the school discos and in the club discos and always had a little snog at the end of the night then of the smooch and that's the Power of Love means so much to me really because it's well yeah, probably the last time I had a girlfriend.
I Need the SongFavourite
It leads perfectly into the song really. My Angen Agan is the Welsh version, it's a Welsh song by Bryn Vaughan, I need the song. The words are in Welsh. If you translate them they say, you know, you turn to the song and the song will get you through it and this song got me through the darkest times of my life.
It's The Sound of Silence by Disturbed and it's on my playlist. It's the last but one song that I listen to now before I go to referee.
The keepsakes
The book
Kenneth Grahame
The first book I ever read and the first book I ever really enjoyed and was Wind in the Willows. Um probably about time I read it again'cause I haven't read it since I was around twelve or thirteen years of age, really.
The luxury
Or cup of tea. And Welsh tea. It's gotta be Welsh tea, bugs. I don't know, there's something about a cup of tea that cures so many ills, isn't there?
In conversation
Presenter asks
How do you balance knowing the laws of the game with the flow of the game?
Learning the laws and knowing the laws of the game and knowing when to blow the whistle, that's the easy job of refereeing. The secret then is knowing when not to blow it. And that is the balance that you need to get right if you want to be a top referee and remain at the top is a feel for the game and empathy of what the players are trying to achieve, but also setting your boundaries out of what is acceptable and what is not. And it's not always easy to get it. Even if you've got the knack of doing that, sometimes in games you let something go that you should have blown and something that you've blown, you think, oh, I should have let that go, and it's not always easy, but that is the challenge. And if you get that right and two positive teams, then you have the ingredients then of having a flowing game.
Presenter asks
How much has your country defined you as a person?
A huge amount, I think. Probably not just my country, but my language, my history, my heritage, my family, and my community that I was brought up in. You know, a lot of people will tell you that life is what you make it. I'm not quite sure I agree with that, because I'm a big believer in that life makes you. The community you were brought up in, the people within the community, your family, your friends, the local rugby club, everything around you, I think, when you're growing up as a young person will have a huge influence on you. And by the time you come to your late teens, early twenties, I think then you've you'll probably become the person that you'll become for the rest of your life.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
This is the BBC.
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
Presenter
For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the rugby union referee Nigel Owens. He is a rare creature, widely regarded as the best ref in the business. He's respected and even liked by players and much admired by fans for the impact he makes on a match's coherence and flow. But it's not just his superb skill in keeping thirty marauding men in check over eighty brutal minutes of play, but also because in a sport marinated in McKismo he has the courage to be openly gay. His happy childhood in a tiny close-knit village in south west Wales came at a price. As a young man he struggled to come to terms with who he was and aged twenty-four was lucky to survive a suicide attempt. He says all that matters is you should be allowed to be yourself and treated with the same respect as everybody and rugby has allowed me and anybody else to be who they are. So welcome, Nigel Owens. I can look you square in the eye and say there is a discernible difference in any match that you are refereeing in and I have watched many of them. The rules of the game are important, clearly, and you know them back to front, but you seem to hold in your mind at all times the flow of the game. So how do you balance those two things? Because you do it differently from most refs.
Nigel Owens
Learning the laws and knowing the laws of the game and knowing when to blow the whistle, that's the easy job of refereeing. The secret then is knowing when not to blow it. And that is the balance that you need to get right if you want to be a top referee and remain at the top is a feel for the gain and empathy of what the players are trying to achieve, but also setting your boundaries out of what is acceptable and what is not. And it's not always easy to get it. Even if you've got the knack of doing that, sometimes in games you let something go that you should have blown and something that you've blown, you oh, I should have let that go, and it's not always easy, but that is the challenge. And if you get that right and two positive teams, then you have the ingredients then of having a flowing game.
Presenter
Is it true that the beginnings of your stellar refereeing career could be attributed to missing a conversion? Very true.
Nigel Owens
Tell me
Nigel Owens
I was sixteen at the time playing against a Scott Cliff with Jones in St Clair's near Camarden, and we hadn't won a game all year. We'd been hammered forty, fifty points nearly every game.
Nigel Owens
My best friend Wayne Thomas, he scored a try underneath the post, and then my other best friend, Craig Monel, was the captain. The score was now twelve all at the end of the game. I was playing full back and I thought this is going to be my moment of glory. You know, I'll take this conversion right in front of the post. I'll be a legend in school.
Nigel Owens
I took the conversion right in front of the post and uh unfortunately it went closer to the to the corner flag than it did between the uprights and uh I was a laughing stock in the school of missing this conversion and John Bynan, the late John Byner, unfortunately, a wonderful guy, a true
Nigel Owens
Rugby community guy, and he said, Nigel, he said he was, he said, For God's sake, he said, Will you go and bloody referee or something? He said.
Nigel Owens
And I said, Well, all right, okay then. And the following week, I went down to help him referee some inter-house games in school and uh
Presenter
And that's how we started. You live, I think, about a mile and a half from where you were born and brought up. Quite a few of your choices today are deeply Welsh in their origins, the choices of your discs. How much has your country defined you as a person?
Nigel Owens
A huge amount, I think. Probably not just my country, but my language, my history, my heritage, my family, and my community that I was brought up in. You know, a lot of people will tell you that that life is what you make it. I'm not quite sure I agree with that, because I'm a big believer in that life makes you. The community you were brought up in, the people within the community, your family, your friends, the local rugby club, everything around you, I think, when you're growing up as a young person will have a huge influence on you. And by the time you come to your late teens, early twenties, I think then you've you'll probably become the person that you'll become for the rest of your life. Tell me about
Presenter
About the first one then. What are we going to hear? What have you chosen?
Nigel Owens
When you go away all over the world, um and I spend a lot of time away from home during the year, you know, something like last year, one hundred and eighty nights of the year away somewhere in the world, somewhere sleeping in a hotel somewhere, a lot of the time on your own. And uh I always like putting on then, you know, something that reminds me of home and, you know, the green, green grass of home.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
The old hometown looks the same.
Speaker 3
As I step down from the train And let him meet me
Speaker 3
Here's my mama and Papa.
Speaker 3
Down the road I look, and there runs Mary.
Speaker 3
Hair of gold and lips like cherries, it's good to touch the green, green grass alone.
Presenter
Not a dry eye in the valleys, Nigel Owens. That was the green, green grass of home, Tom Jones there. Watching and listening to you on the pitch, not just making the right refereeing decisions, you also have a great skill in dealing with the back chat. You're good at the witty one liners. Is is there something of the performer in you?
Nigel Owens
There probably is, I think, because I was on stage at 14 years of age in my local workingmen's club in Munichari doing stand-up comedy because the live entertainment hadn't turned up for that night. I just got some clothes dressed up as him and and and did about forty minutes sort of stand up comedy of pretty much what he was doing. So I was on the stage. Yeah, I was, yeah. But I don't go out in that field thinking, right, I'm gonna say something funny today, or if somebody says this, I'm gonna say that. I just say it as it is and it's probably part of of our upbringing.
Speaker 1
Forty minutes.
Nigel Owens
Growing up as a kid, the old miners and the stories that they had, you know, a lot of it truth, but then a little bit added on to make it sound better. So uh I suppose I've always been a story teller, and that probably comes across on the field really.
Presenter
Now rugby of course a highly physical contact sport and part of the enjoyment is that passions do run high.
Presenter
I mean, you're a fine figure of a man, but when you're standing next to when you're standing next to Fabien Perlouse, all two metres tall of him and a, you know, a hundred and fourteen kilos, and you want to send to the sin bin and he's bearing down upon you, do you ever lose your nerve? Do you ever think that boy's gonna lamp me?
Speaker 1
Thanks to uh
Presenter
Yeah. You don't
Nigel Owens
Don't and probably do you know why? Because the most important value, I think, and ethos of rugby union is its respect, respect from players to officials and and vice versa. When England will play Wales, you'll have supporters sitting next to each other, supporting different teams, yet enjoying each other's company. And not many sports allows that to happen. And thankfully, because of the values of rugby, you know, even when it's six foot eight and a hundred and twenty kilos plus, they do respect you, whether they agree with you, whether they like you or not.
Presenter
And you've got to get in among it as a referee in rugby. Have you ever taken a tumble? Has anybody?
Nigel Owens
But I have you. There's a lovely clip on YouTube, South Africa, New Zealand 2010 in Soccer City in Soweton, South Africa, 95,000 crowd. And I went between the scrum half and the outside half. Jimmy Cohen was playing scrum half for New Zealand, and he decided now, coming out of the mall, that he was going to run towards me, thinking if I run towards the referee, nobody's going to tackle me because they won't tackle the referee. And how wrong he was. J1 Smith tackled me, Schachberger tackled me, and I land up at the bottom of this ruck with all the South African and New Zealand players taking great pleasure in trampling over me. But they stopped immediately and they came to see I was alright and helped me up. And I managed to get through the game. But I'm sure it'll make you giggle and wince, I think, when you look at it.
Presenter
I'm going to be doing that later. For now, though, let me hear your second piece of music, Nigel Lewins. What are we going to hear?
Nigel Owens
Moravauriti is is the Welsh name of the song. It's the Welsh version of How Great Thou Art. I always have a playlist in the change rooms playing on speakers before I referee a game. The last song that I will ever listen to before going out on the field will be How Great Thou Art.
Presenter
And do you have any other prematch rituals apart from that?
Nigel Owens
I have my lucky boxes, which my cousins bought me for Christmas a few years ago, Superman boxes, but I managed to get them to the World Cup. They were.
Nigel Owens
Past their best. I had a hole in a very awkward place on them, and if I ever fell over on the field, it could have been very embarrassing for everybody involved.
Speaker 3
On the Halloween
Speaker 3
Avid Raiva Pevarb
Speaker 3
Ay Royan Yau Tibhun Treasli.
Speaker 1
Revolution
Speaker 3
Argo soy horn and toilet.
Speaker 3
All I like to share my while I be.
Speaker 3
How are we doing?
Speaker 3
What a vow which
Speaker 3
Thank God about you.
Speaker 3
What about we teach what a week?
Presenter
How great thou art, John Ivy and there. So you were born, Nigel Owens, in the little village of Munath Kerig, and for the first few years you lived with your parents in a small holding. And I've seen a very touching, beautiful photograph. You're a tiny babe, and your mum is holding you in her arms, and there are the beautiful rolling Welsh hillsides in the back. T tell me more about your mother.
Nigel Owens
Yeah, she's a wonderful person, my mother. Um she sort of the way I was brought up I felt you know in in the right way and taught us right and wrong. Saturdays she'd be cooking all day. I'd go and referee. My my dad would come and watch me referee in the local games and then we'd call in the pub on the way home for a for a beer and then we'd get home then there'd be stuff homemade ready for us to eat and stuff and it was that's what you call the
Presenter
That's what you call the perfect day, isn't it?
Nigel Owens
It was the per it was, it was the perfect day.
Presenter
As a small boy, I mean, as I understand it, your your dad and your grandfather used to break in horses, and uh, you know, that's a tough job. Not many people can do that successfully, certainly. And you would get on the horses when they were in that process of breaking them in, so that would build your nerve as a little boy, surely.
Nigel Owens
Neil lost my life as well, or Neil got very injured by it. When I was born, my grandfather was in hospital and he had a stroke, massive stroke.
Nigel Owens
And my mum was actually in the hospital at the time where this was happening, ready to have me. My grandmother took me in her arms then after I was born, and pretty much.
Nigel Owens
put me in my grandfather's arms, who was now in bed with a stroke, basically that he could hold me because he would probably never get a chance to hold me again, because they expected him to pass away.
Nigel Owens
whether, you know, the the act of God or whatever that happened
Nigel Owens
The following day, he started improving. He got better, he came out of the hospital, and he then lived for another 13 years. And I was very lucky to be part of that 13 years, really, you know. And so you're getting very emotional. It's a very emotional thing to talk about. And my mum and dad and me lived with our grandparents then for about five or six years in this small
Presenter
All right, well it's a very
Nigel Owens
Holding of a farm, only about three or four acres, the actual place itself, and then they rented another ten or twelve acres. My grandmother kept horses, and my dad was about to sell the horses now, because my grandfather was in hospital, and he came out and said, No, no, we're keeping the horses. And dad would walk the horses then to different fields, and then I would jump on their back and learn to ride. And there was one horse called Cara, beautiful horse, and they were breaking it in, and my dad hasn't got much patience. And I was on the back of the horse, and my grandfather was there with the stick by the side of him now, telling him what to do. And the horse would move in my honour. And my dad sort of tapped him on the back and said, Come on, move. And the horse reared up.
Speaker 1
This is how good.
Nigel Owens
And fell backwards. I fell down and the horse was falling on me. But as I fell, my grandfather just dropped his stick and just just pulled me out of the way just in time, so the horse sort of fell on sort of the side of me. It hurt me a bit, but not that would have killed it. That would have killed me. It could well have.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nigel Owens
We didn't tell our grandmother and and mother for for years after, until after my grandfather passed away where they wouldn't allow me to go on the horse again.
Presenter
Much more to come. For now, Nigel Owens, tell me about your next piece of music. We're going to listen to your third. Why have you chosen this?
Nigel Owens
My cousin had taken over a local pub in in Kumaur. There'd always be somebody there playing the organ. And uh they asked me to go up to give a song. I was about nine, ten, eleven years old at the time. I went up and sang this song a little piece and this old guy there, he took his hat around the pub and people would chuck money and then I had about five or six pounds. This is my money a fortune then.
Speaker 3
No, I wasn't mad.
Speaker 3
Just like a flower when winter begins
Speaker 3
Just like a candle blown out in the wind
Speaker 3
Just like a bird that can no longer fly I'm feeling that way sometime
Speaker 3
But then as I'm falling way down by the low
Speaker 3
I picture a light at the end of the road
Speaker 1
Light and
Speaker 3
And closing my eyes I can see through the dark The dream that is in my heart
Presenter
Within my heart.
Speaker 3
A little loving
Presenter
That was Nicole and a little piece. Um in uh twenty thirteen, Nigel Owens, you became patron of the anti-bullying charity Bullies Out. Indeed, I noticed that you're wearing one of their bands round your wrist today. You'd had direct experience as a kid at can you tell me what happened?
Presenter
Yeah, I was bullied when I
Nigel Owens
I was in the Gwendreth Grammar School and and enough
Nigel Owens
no particular reason and just by one individual who's the same age as me and uh
Nigel Owens
The reason why a lot of people who are bullied do not talk about it is because you feel a sense of shameless. You feel a sense that it's your fault. You feel that you are weak and you don't want people to know that you are weak. And uh it's a very, very difficult time in my life. Um and and there's no doubt it, you know, it affected my education,'cause I didn't want to go to school. Uh I was landing up doing things that I'd been taught not to do, to lie to my parents that I was ill and didn't want to go to school and uh I feel very passionate really about you know helping people to overcome that s sense of shameless. Believe me, you know, I've experienced it myself. It's a very, very horrible place to be.
Presenter
And so you were sixteen when you refereed your first senior club game in Wales. What were the highlights? And go on, give me a couple of the lowlights as well.
Nigel Owens
Yeah.
Presenter
Behind the
Nigel Owens
Eilis was referee in the first senior game. The Lola Highless, we were.
Nigel Owens
I couldn't drive at sixteen years of age. So I told Arlene West, a wonderful guy. He said, Look, Arlene said, I'm ready to referee now.
Nigel Owens
But don't send me too far because my dad can't drive further than two or three miles locally. He's never driven on the dual carriage. When my mum was in hospital, very ill.
Nigel Owens
My dad drove down to see her one night on his own and he drove down the wrong way of the dual carriage road. So he was very, very lucky. So I said, you know, don't take me too far.
Nigel Owens
First game he sent me, he sent me Tregaron, which was about an hour and a half car drive away. He said, Don't worry, he said, I've sorted out. You don't need to lift to the game. You can go with your way team on the bus, Nankaredi, which is about five, six miles away. So I told the bus driver, look, drop me off now about a half a mile before the club. Got off, got to the change room, ref the game. Last minute penalty to the way team. They won nine six back to the clubhouse. And then the captain of the way team goes, Nige, come on, bus is ready. And as I'm going out on the bus, they're all in the window sticking two fingers up and shouting at me. And I could have well finished refereeing then. I thought, it could only get better.
Presenter
It could only get better, is the good news from that. Tell me about your next piece of music, Nigel Owens. We're on your fourth, we're halfway through. Tell me about this.
Nigel Owens
Mavano is a very, very famous song in Wales. And every time I'm somewhere, I was out in Paris in a restaurant in the middle of Paris and somebody there recognised me, said, Oh, Welsh Nigel, my grandmother's in there, she's having a ninetieth birthday party. This was they were French people. Could you please sing a song?
Nigel Owens
So I sang them a vanui, and they were all clapping and cheering. So, when people asked me to sing a song, this is the song.
Speaker 3
And this guy called Devs.
Speaker 3
A wider breed, Dougie Friday.
Speaker 3
Give once.
Speaker 3
Or father with young.
Speaker 3
West here, whale and ever there
Speaker 3
Please
Presenter
Ridian and Brunterville and Mafanway. And you did not finish your A levels, as I understand it. Was that connected to your unhappy Yeah.
Nigel Owens
Yeah.
Presenter
So let's go.
Nigel Owens
No, I was only in happiness school that first year.
Nigel Owens
And I went to do A levels. And then, after about two weeks in school, I went down to get the rugby ball from the office to go out and play rugby on the yard with my with my mates during dinner time. And the headmaster, Ardwin Thomas, said um
Nigel Owens
Boys said you've better make the most of playing rugby today because we're going to have to shut the school tomorrow. A caretaker's gone off ill and we can't get anybody to open the school.
Nigel Owens
And I said as a joke, That's an easy enough job, I'll do that.
Nigel Owens
I go to school the following day and in
Nigel Owens
Tarnoyd goes, Nigel Owens to the headmaster's office, please, and Norma Mesa go, No, what the hell have you done now again?'Cause I was always mischievous in school. He goes down, he said, Right, he said, I've spoken to them in Kamadan in the education department. They're willing for you to do the caretaker's job. You can come in in the morning, open up at six o'clock, to stoke the coal fires, and then start back then at half past three. Then you'll be finished by half past six, locking up and doing the fires overnight.
Nigel Owens
£153 for a 16-year-old boy back in the mid-late 80s. You know, this is wonderful. And the headmaster said, Look, you know, the caretaker's coming back now. He's going to be here for another eight months. Then he's retiring and the job will be yours if you want it. And I thought, right, great. So I left school, went to work on a farm. But after working on the farm for a year, they needed a technician in the school. So I went back to the same school and worked as a technician there for 30 years. Can you imagine that happening today? Can you imagine the headmaster? No, I cannot. And maybe that's where sometimes society goes wrong. So when you're talking about education giving you opportunities, it gave me a wonderful opportunity.
Presenter
No, I cannot.
Presenter
Time to fit in the music, Nigel. Uh tell me about this. This is the fifth.
Nigel Owens
I tell people now that I had a girlfriend back then and they wouldn't believe me, but I did. Um this was the song that was number one. Um we always have a smooch in the school discourse and in the club discourse and uh always have a little snog at the end of the night then of the spooch and that's power love was means so much to me really because it's uh well yeah, probably the last time I had a girlfriend.
Speaker 3
Cause I am your lady
Speaker 3
Then you are my friend.
Speaker 3
Lost his house.
Presenter
That was Jennifer Rush and the power of love chosen, you said, Nigel Owens, because it holds very potent memories for you of those early snogging disco days. Now, you know, you you run a lot as a referee. You have to be fit, almost as fit, as fit as players. Were you in good shape at that point?
Nigel Owens
No, I wasn't. Um I was quite a beast that sort of eighteen nineteen as
Presenter
You struggled a lot with getting yourself in shape. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Nigel Owens
Yes, um I was also at that stage then of my life, I was about nineteen, starting to realize that I was I was different.
Nigel Owens
that I was suddenly finding myself attracted to to men.
Nigel Owens
and this was totally alien to me. Brought up in a small uh village, I had never met or seen or known a gay person in real life. The only gay people that I knew were the odd one or two
Nigel Owens
camp characters on the television programs, like Are You Being Served? and uh so it was something totally alien to me. I was becoming somebody that I knew nothing about and somebody I didn't want to be. So it was getting me down. And then in that getting me down, you you were comfort eating and then I got bigger and overweight and uh I decided, Right, you're finally gonna try and get men attracted to me then.
Speaker 1
being served and
Nigel Owens
And I'm gonna have to try and lose weight and then
Nigel Owens
I made myself ill after eating food. I became bulimic.
Nigel Owens
So now I wasn't feeling good. I was really thin and and looking drawn. And then, all right, I I need to go to the gym then and try and put some weight on. So I went to the gym and started doing weight training and I started using steroids, so I got hooked on steroids. So I went to the doctor and said, Look, I think I'm gay. I don't want to be gay. Can I get chemically castrated?
Nigel Owens
And I would have done anything to be
Nigel Owens
Normal in what pe in people's eyes. You spoke then to the doctor. Had you spoken to anybody? No, nobody at all. No y nobody at all about it. And uh I did something one night that I
Nigel Owens
that I would regret for the rest of my life. I left a note from my mum and dad. Um left the house at about four o'clock in the morning. I used to work on a farm, so I had a shotgun in the house. I loaded the shotgun, left with paracetamols and a bottle of whiskey and um
Nigel Owens
For what I put my mum and dad through when they must have woken up and and saw that note and knowing that they were
Nigel Owens
Probably never going to see their only son ever again. I overdosed on the paracetamols and the whisky and uh slipped into a coma.
Nigel Owens
And then my mum and dad obviously phoned the police. There's a police helicopter out looking for me and family and friends and everybody searching for me and
Presenter
And by this time you're out in the fields.
Nigel Owens
I was out in the mountains right above the house, looking down at where I was brought up in in the mountains above me.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nigel Owens
And if I hadn't gone into the coma, that I have no doubt I would have ended my life, because the shotgun was lying on my chest, underneath my chin, ready to pull the trigger. And because I slipped into a coma, I couldn't do it.
Nigel Owens
The doctor told me, Look, another twenty minutes and it'd been too late to save you and um my mum said, If you ever do anything like that again, then you take me and your dad with you because we don't want to live our life without you and um
Nigel Owens
I sat up in bed and and and cried that night really and and realized I need to grow up. Refereeing that World Cup final between Australia and New Zealand in front of eighty five thousand people and millions of people watching at home scrutinizing every single decision you make and a huge amount of pressure was nothing compared to to the challenge of of accepting who I was and and in accepting who I was then saved my life.
Presenter
Nigel, I have nothing to ask and nothing to add. I just want you to tell me about this next piece of music. Tell me what we're going to hear.
Nigel Owens
Well it it it leads perfectly into the song really. My Angen Agan is the Welsh version'cause it's a Welsh song by Bryn Vaughan, I need the song. The words are in Welsh. If you translate them they say, you know, you know, you turn to the song and and the song will will get you through it and this song got me through the darkest times of my life.
Speaker 1
I'm a garntzovsky to zandke.
Speaker 1
Nothing disturbed you joy travel
Speaker 1
Hi Kairiangar Shish Strayon Stream
Speaker 1
Meriao Norquiran here nahi.
Speaker 1
I'm not sure if I can do it.
Speaker 1
I clipped on the geeky ones like
Presenter
That was Bryn Vaughan and I Need the Song. You said, Nigel Owens, just before we began to listen to that, that you realised that your life couldn't go on like that and that you had to live much more honestly and be true to who you were, and yet still it was many years before you would come out and before indeed you spoke to the rugby authorities. You've said that they were very understanding and treated you indeed entirely the way you should have been treated, which was with empathy and with equality. What about your parents when you told them?
Nigel Owens
I told my mum was the first person I I told.
Presenter
And you were how old?
Nigel Owens
Thirty four.
Nigel Owens
I was brought up to be honest, and here I was now lying to the most important people in my life, and it was affecting my life because.
Nigel Owens
Unless you're happy.
Nigel Owens
Within who you are, and you cannot excel and be the best you can be at whatever you're doing.
Nigel Owens
And also as well, you can't enjoy life if you're not happy within yourself.
Presenter
And your refereeing career at that time, it's very interesting to see you had kind of stalled. You were on the brink of getting big gigs and then you just weren't getting them because you weren't quite up to scratch.
Nigel Owens
You're right. I'd refereed Scotland and Bulgarians up in Aberdeen, and I'd refereed Japan against Ireland out in Osaka. I did them okay, but not well enough. And then in the autumn internationals, then after that in two thousand five, there were like fifteen games, but there were sixteen international referees, so everybody's having one game, one referee's going to miss out. Pardio Bryan, the referees manager at the time, rung me up and said.
Nigel Owens
You're the worst performer, you're gonna lose out. And I thought I'd blown it. Because the worry in the back of my mind was what are people gonna say when they find out? Am I gonna be able to carry on refereeing?
Nigel Owens
People within the community, you know, when I when I walk out in the on the council estate, only twelve houses on the council estate, are people gonna turn their back on me? Are people gonna ignore me? Are my mum and dad gonna ignore me? I was lucky. Paddy O'Brien rung back two weeks later and said, Look, there's one game coming, just outside the window. It's uh first Saturday in December, Argentina against uh Samoa in Buenos Aires. Uh you've got to referee the game.
Nigel Owens
And his words for me were, Don't mess it up.
Nigel Owens
And I went out there and I thought, right, if I'm a referee this game, I need to be happy within myself. I thought and thought for weeks and weeks, right, I'm gonna have to be honest. So I went to tell my mum. It was very difficult telling my mum that we both cried, but she said, look, nothing's changed between us, everything will be the same. And when I told her, she said, well, I did guess. And I thought, did she? Yeah, I said, I was distraught now. I thought, well, how the hell did you guess? How did you know?
Presenter
I was hiding it so
Nigel Owens
Yeah.
Presenter
Well yes, I thought and she said well
Nigel Owens
Well, yeah, she said, I thought. And she said, Well, I did find some magazines under your bed a few years ago. This is before. Yes.
Presenter
Ah, that old story.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nigel Owens
Yeah. I I left her to tell my dad. It took her a couple of days. And he found it difficult at first, not with me, but in in dealing with it. But my love for him and his love for me hasn't changed one bit. And then I went to Buenos Aires then and uh well, I told my referees manager then, Bobby Emin, and and the Welsh Sugar Union has been hugely supportive. If it wasn't for
Nigel Owens
The great sport that rugby is
Nigel Owens
the wonderful people within rugby, the Welsh Rugby Union itself and all the other governing bodies, World Rugby as well, if it wasn't for the great sport rugbyers and the people within rugby,
Nigel Owens
I wouldn't be able to be who I am today.
Presenter
Nigel Owens, we're on your seventh. Tell me about this.
Nigel Owens
It's A Sound of Silence by Disturbed and it's on my playlist. It's the last but one song that I listen to now before I go to the future referee.
Speaker 3
I've come to talk with you again.
Speaker 3
Because a vision softly equipped
Speaker 3
Left it seems while I was laying.
Speaker 3
And the vision that was planted in my brain still remain
Speaker 3
Within the soul
Speaker 3
Oh sorry.
Presenter
That was disturbed and the sound of silence. Nigel Owens, your honesty and eloquence today has been entirely remarkable to me. You've spoken about so many aspects of your life so clearly and and I wonder that you mentioned a few minutes ago, you were talking briefly about steroids and about bulimia, and bulimia particularly is a notoriously insidious condition that can lie dormant for a long time and come back.
Presenter
Is all of your life now happy and balanced? Are those things in the past where they belong?
Nigel Owens
Yes, they are.
Nigel Owens
The Bleemer only sort of finished about not that long ago, to be honest with you.
Nigel Owens
The time I stopped is when my mum sat me and my dad down and told us that she had cancer and she was dying. And I was in bed crying and thinking to myself
Nigel Owens
Here I am, healthy but still making myself ill and suffering from bulimia, where my mum and
Nigel Owens
And millions of other people across the world are fighting every day just for an extra few hours with their loved ones. And that's when the bulimia stopped and touch wood. I I haven't suffered from it since then.
Presenter
We know that you are an only child, and I think her referee's job must surely at times be a very lonely one. You know, you're out there on the pitch and you are making big decisions, and there are decisions that are often not appreciated by those around you. Do you ever want to come home to a family? I don't have children.
Nigel Owens
probably won't have children, who knows?
Nigel Owens
But I'm very lucky. I got good friends. I got I got a lovely partner and I got a lot of of family around me as well. I have a few godchildren and my cousins whose children now are sort of fourteen, fifteen, seventeen, eighteen. They're always over the house. So I have children around me, young people around me, but you are right. It is
Nigel Owens
Sometimes when I'm somewhere in the world, and even sometimes when I'm at home in my house on my own.
Nigel Owens
I don't think people sometimes realize or appreciate how lonely my life can be sometimes and
Nigel Owens
That worries me from time to time.
Presenter
As you know, it's desert island disks, and the idea is that we will cast you away alone to this island when you sit on the island and think about
Presenter
The very best bits. What are the bits in your life that absolutely stand out? I mean, you have stood at the centre, you know, of of sporting occasions that the world in their tens of millions has stopped to watch. That's quite something. That's quite an experience, surely.
Nigel Owens
It'd be very difficult to pinpoint the moment that means more than anything. You know, going to to Buckingham Palace recently to pick up the MBE with my dad there and my uncle and my partner, refering the World Cup final, seeing my mum sort of watch my first ever game, you know, on television.
Nigel Owens
When I look back at my life really, um I've had something that many a family would wish that a lot of their children could have, and that that is a second chance. I've had a second chance. I don't think refereeing the World Cup final as a stand alone could ever be the most precious moment in my life because there are times I've spent with some of the most wonderful people in the world, um, my mum, my dad, and other people as well, that that will be more precious to me than the referee Getty World Cup.
Presenter
We're gonna listen now to your final piece of music. Well, it really needs no explanation, I guess.
Nigel Owens
Doesn't matter where you come from.
Nigel Owens
the colour of your skin, your sexual orientations, or your religious beliefs all that should matter in life is that that you were to be treated the same, no better,
Nigel Owens
No worse. All we should be able to do and all we deserve in life is we are able to be who we are.
Speaker 3
I am what I am, I am my own special creation So come take a look.
Speaker 3
Give me the hoop.
Speaker 3
Or the ovation, it's my world that I want to have a little pride in. My world, and it's not a place I have to hide in. Life's not worth a damn, till you can say.
Presenter
That was Gloria Gaynor, and I am what I am. So, Nigel, it's time for me now to give you the books. I give every castaway a copy of the Bible and a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, and they get to take a book of their own to the island to accompany them. What's it going to be?
Nigel Owens
Hey, screw the f
Nigel Owens
The first book I ever read and the first book I ever really enjoyed and was Wind in the Willows. Um probably about time I read it again'cause I haven't read it since I was around twelve or thirteen years of age, really. You're a luxury too.
Presenter
Top
Nigel Owens
Or cup of tea. And Welsh tea. It's gotta be Welsh tea, bugs. I don't know, there's something about a cup of tea that cures so many ills, isn't there?
Presenter
Okay, an endless supply of Welsh tea bags for you then, Nigel. And if you had to save just one disc from the eight, which one disc would it be?
Nigel Owens
I need the song, I think, managan. Probably without that song.
Nigel Owens
And my family and friends, I wouldn't be here speaking to you a day, as simple as that.
Presenter
It's yours then, Nigel Owens. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Nigel Owens
My pleasure. Thank you.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.
Speaker 3
This is the BBC.
Presenter asks
When you were a small boy, your dad and grandfather used to break in horses – that must have built your nerve?
I nearly lost my life as well, or nearly got very injured by it. When I was born, my grandfather was in hospital and he had a stroke, massive stroke. And my mum was actually in the hospital at the time ready to have me. My grandmother took me in her arms then after I was born and pretty much put me in my grandfather's arms, who was now in bed with a stroke, basically that he could hold me because he would probably never get a chance to hold me again. The following day, he started improving. He got better and he then lived for another 13 years. And I was very lucky to be part of that 13 years. … There was one horse called Cara, beautiful horse, and they were breaking it in, and my dad hasn't got much patience. And I was on the back of the horse, and my grandfather was there with the stick by the side of him now, telling him what to do. … And my dad sort of tapped him on the back and said, 'Come on, move.' And the horse reared up. And fell backwards. I fell down and the horse was falling on me. But as I fell, my grandfather just dropped his stick and just pulled me out of the way just in time, so the horse sort of fell on the side of me. It hurt me a bit, but that would have killed me.
Presenter asks
You had direct experience as a kid of bullying – can you tell me what happened?
I was bullied when I was in the Gwendraeth Grammar School and by one individual who's the same age as me. The reason why a lot of people who are bullied do not talk about it is because you feel a sense of shame. You feel a sense that it's your fault. You feel that you are weak and you don't want people to know that you are weak. And it's a very, very difficult time in my life. And there's no doubt it affected my education, 'cause I didn't want to go to school. I was landing up doing things that I'd been taught not to do, to lie to my parents that I was ill and didn't want to go to school. And I feel very passionate really about helping people to overcome that sense of shame. Believe me, I've experienced it myself. It's a very, very horrible place to be.
Presenter asks
What about your parents when you told them [you were gay]?
I told my mum was the first person I told. … I was brought up to be honest, and here I was now lying to the most important people in my life, and it was affecting my life because unless you're happy within who you are, you cannot excel and be the best you can be at whatever you're doing. … I went to tell my mum. It was very difficult telling my mum that we both cried, but she said, look, nothing's changed between us, everything will be the same. And when I told her, she said, well, I did guess. … I left her to tell my dad. It took her a couple of days. And he found it difficult at first, not with me, but in dealing with it. But my love for him and his love for me hasn't changed one bit.
Presenter asks
Is all of your life now happy and balanced? Are [bulimia and steroids] in the past where they belong?
Yes, they are. The bulimia only sort of finished about not that long ago, to be honest with you. The time I stopped is when my mum sat me and my dad down and told us that she had cancer and she was dying. And I was in bed crying and thinking to myself: here I am, healthy but still making myself ill and suffering from bulimia, where my mum and millions of other people across the world are fighting every day just for an extra few hours with their loved ones. And that's when the bulimia stopped and touch wood. I haven't suffered from it since then.
“I tell people now that I had a girlfriend back then and they wouldn't believe me, but I did.”
“I was also at that stage then of my life, I was about nineteen, starting to realize that I was different. That I was suddenly finding myself attracted to men. And this was totally alien to me. Brought up in a small village, I had never met or seen or known a gay person in real life. … I was becoming somebody that I knew nothing about and somebody I didn't want to be.”
“I overdosed on the paracetamols and the whisky and slipped into a coma. And then my mum and dad obviously phoned the police. There's a police helicopter out looking for me and family and friends and everybody searching for me and I was out in the mountains right above the house, looking down at where I was brought up in the mountains above me. And if I hadn't gone into the coma, I have no doubt I would have ended my life, because the shotgun was lying on my chest, underneath my chin, ready to pull the trigger. And because I slipped into a coma, I couldn't do it.”
“The doctor told me, 'Look, another twenty minutes and it'd been too late to save you' and my mum said, 'If you ever do anything like that again, then you take me and your dad with you because we don't want to live our life without you.'”
“Refereeing that World Cup final between Australia and New Zealand in front of eighty five thousand people and millions of people watching at home scrutinizing every single decision you make and a huge amount of pressure was nothing compared to the challenge of accepting who I was and in accepting who I was then saved my life.”
“I don't think people sometimes realize or appreciate how lonely my life can be sometimes and that worries me from time to time.”