The Convex Conversation

London’s Ambulance Service is the busiest in the world, receiving around seven thousand 999 calls a day.

Jules Lockett shares stories from her 21 years at the heart of the Emergency Operations Centre - as a call-handler, trainer & now EOC General Manager – and reveals her pride in wearing the NHS/Ambulance uniform.

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Jules talks about 50 years of Pride and how London Ambulance Service supports LGBT, ensuring staff can be themselves and feel supported. Jules is Co-Chair of the LAS LGBT Network.

In part two of our special, F1 legend Sir Jackie Stewart explains the dangers of emotion & how he managed to remove that emotion before a race by forcing himself to read despite having severe dyslexia.

The former three-times World Champion talks about how dangerous racing was in the sixties & seventies, his crash at Spa in 1966 and the safety measures he fought hard to bring in, even though it didn’t make him popular.

Sir Jackie, who remains one of motor sport’s greatest ambassadors, reveals how he started the champagne spraying tradition on the podium by accident & chats about today's star Lewis Hamilton. 

In part one of our two-part special, former three-times World Champion Sir Jackie shares stories from his heyday in racing – the close bond with other F1 drivers & their families, the excitement, glamour & adrenalin but also the incredible dangers & sadness of losing friends on the track.

Jackie’s beloved wife of 60 years, Helen, was his stopwatch, timing his laps to the millisecond with unwavering accuracy. Lady Stewart is suffering from dementia and Jackie talks about how he’s using the sharpness & speed of motorsport to inspire the finest young PhDs in the world to find a cure.

Some of those PhDs will be attending the Sir Jackie Stewart Classic in Scotland, an event to help raise funds for his charity, Race Against Dementia.

Simon Jeffries, co-founder of The Natural Edge, explains how mindset is a skillset & the path to long-term happiness begins & ends with our minds.

Drawing from his own personal experiences, including eight years & three tours as a Special Forces soldier, Simon shares some simple tips for making positive change, starting the journey to turn our potential into peak performance.

If you’ve plateaued, hit a wall, or feel frustrated with life, then Simon’s words will resonate & hopefully help you see how a change of mindset is key & there for everyone.   

Led Zeppelin’s frontman Robert Plant is to thank for two of the nation’s most loved & respected broadcasters hitting the road to share extraordinary stories from a combined 100 years in the music business.

Bob Harris & Danny Baker have been touring Britain with ‘Harris and Baker’s Backstage Pass’ recounting tales from the most seminal moments in music history featuring icons like David Bowie, Marc Bolan, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Van Morrison, The Beatles & many more greats.

Helen secures her own backstage pass and catches up with Bob & Danny in their dressing room at the New Wimbledon Theatre in London. 

To mark Dementia Action Week, Dr Dennis Chan from UCL reveals the ground-breaking work he & research colleagues are doing to detect Alzheimer’s disease - one of the biggest causes of dementia - years, even decades, before symptoms like memory loss show.

Dr Chan explains how Virtual Reality is useful in testing & how everyday digital data like our heart rates, sleep patterns & breathing patterns gathered on smart devices can be crunched to identify ‘fingerprints’ which allow the earliest signs of diseases like Alzheimer’s to be detected.

EDoN – Early Detection of Neurodegenerative diseases – is an ambitious global project, spearheaded by Alzheimer’s Research UK. It’s hoped this kind of big data will help scientists like Dennis make faster breakthroughs, enabling them to test new preventions and treatments.

Helen travels to the southern tip of the Western Isles to learn everything there is to know about one of life’s great delicacies & what it’s like to be an oyster farmer in one of the most beautiful, remote places in the Outer Hebrides.

Gerard MacDonald founded the company after a visit to France & the realisation that the cold pristine waters of the Atlantic could offer the perfect habitat. Landing on a white sandy beach in a small aircraft, Helen discovers Gerry’s work is not for the faint-hearted!

Triathlete Dame Flora Duffy dreamt of winning the Olympics from the age of seven when she started competing in triathlons in Bermuda where she was born & spent her childhood.  

Fast-forward to Tokyo 2020, and the 34-year-old won gold in typhoon conditions – finishing her cycle, swim & run more than a minute clear of Britain’s silver medallist Georgia Taylor-Brown.

Flora gives Helen an insight into the mindset of an Olympic champion, the pressure she felt as favourite in Japan, her brutal training regime and how she has her sights set on defending her Commonwealth title this year & her Olympic title at Paris 2024.

Line of Duty star Vicky McClure introduces us to her Dementia Choir, subject of a third series on BBC1 this autumn.

She explains how science has proved the positive impact music has on those living with dementia, something she sees when she’s with the choir members and experienced with her nonna Iris, who died of dementia.

Vicky also reveals how she uses music to help her prepare for roles in dramas like Trigger Point; chats about an incredible decade in Line of Duty, and the first film she's made with her production company -  Build Your Own Films - in her home town of Nottingham.

After 24 years as a correspondent, Foreign Affairs Editor & Diplomatic Editor at Sky News, award-winning journalist Tim Marshall has used his experiences to write best-selling books using maps of crucial regions to explain the geo-political strategies of world powers. 

Tim - who is commentating on the situation in Ukraine and writing for publications like The New Statesman - explains why he thinks this conflict is the best example in the world of geography being a determining factor.

He tells Helen there's been an outpouring of need for context in what he describes as a 'watershed moment' in our history - from both a detailed level on the ground and a bird's-eye view of why this is happening and the deep background & history to it all.