The Convex Conversation

Sahar Hashemi OBE reveals how her love of skinny lattes in '90s New York led to her giving up her career as a lawyer and starting Coffee Republic with her brother, Bobby.

Sahar talks openly about the highs and lows of growing the business from the kitchen table to a £30 million empire with 110 American-style coffee bars, as well as the pain of leaving. 

As well as mentoring executives in how to retain a start-up culture in large companies, Sahar champions more than 2,000 female founders in a movement she created - Buy Women Built - leaning on her own mantra ‘leap and the net will appear’ to form it.

Mud on the seabed and the diverse, weird and wonderful invertebrates who live in it are having their climate moment, according to Marine Biologist Dr Ceri Lewis.

Based at the University of Exeter – Ceri is part of the five-year Convex Seascape Survey researching how a healthy ocean can help fight climate change. She’s passionate about worms – from microscopic to 3 metres long - and how they influence carbon stores on the seabed. 

Ceri also talks about her latest scientific trip to the Galapagos where she’s studying the effects of the exponential growth in microplastics on our marine life. 

Wendy Fulcher shares the story of losing her husband and soulmate John when he was just 52 to an aggressive stage 4 glioblastoma and how it led to her setting up a powerful, research charity. 

John was under the care of TV star Davina McCall’s consultant neurosurgeon Kevin O’Neill who we featured in our last episode. 

Kevin and Wendy set up the Brain Tumour Research Campaign together more than 20 years ago after Kevin expressed frustration at the field being woefully underfunded. 

BTRC supports Kevin’s ground-breaking research, lobbies Government, is run entirely by volunteers and has raised more than 4 and half million pounds so far to help find a cure. 

Wendy with consultant neurosurgeon Kevin O'Neill, chair of BTRC

Davina McCall’s consultant neurosurgeon Kevin O’Neill gives a fascinating insight into the five-hour surgery he carried out on the TV star, navigating his way between the brain’s two hemispheres to successfully remove a rare colloidal cyst Davina nick-named ‘Jeffrey’. 

Kevin recounts the journey into the centre of Davina’s brain and recalls the moment he came face to face with Jeffrey who, he laughs, was waving at him, smoking his pipe! 

Kevin is passionate about the ground-breaking research he leads with the Brain Tumour Research Campaign. He co-founded BRTC more than 20 years ago with next week’s guest Wendy Fulcher who’ll be sharing her personal journey. 

Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott’s son David gives a very personal insight into his father – a giant of the Labour movement – revealing family stories and anecdotes from his life at Westminster.

David was born two days after John became MP for Hull East, serving his constituents and the country for 40 years.  Former Prime Ministers Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown regularly kept in touch with John as advanced dementia took hold. He died, aged 86. David is now focussed on getting Alzheimer’s at the heart of Labour’s new ten-year health plan and ran the London Marathon for Alzheimer’s Research UK.

He shares memories of the shy, working-class ship’s steward - full of self-doubt that never left him - who went on to fight for social justice and better working conditions, leading him to Downing Street and the Lords.

Crime reporter Martin Brunt has covered some of the biggest, shocking and most notorious crime stories in British history for Sky News over the last four decades. 

Still working in 24-hour breaking news, his book - No One Got Cracked Over the Head for No Reason – filled with previously undisclosed details and fascinating inside track is about to come out in paperback. 

Martin shares gripping dispatches about his relationship with violent prisoner Charles Bronson; an unusual encounter with his music hero Sir Paul McCartney; discusses the nations insatiable appetite for crime - both real-life and fiction - and reveals how his fascination with Valerio Viccei, the charismatic Italian robber behind the Knightsbridge safe deposit heist, ended in a death threat!

 Photograph by Mark Senn

Inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandi, social reformer, author and Ted Talk speaker Robin Greenfield explains why and how he’s simplified his life - strand by strand - so others can simply live. 

38-year-old Robin was on his way to his first million in his 20s, drove a new car, ran a marketing business in the States and was immersed in consumerism. Now he undertakes extreme experiments and adventures to demonstrate more sustainable ways of living in harmony with the planet and which don’t exploit others around the world. 

He’s just walked 1600 miles from the US/Canadian border to LA with only the basics to survive to inspire people to slow down and take a look at their lives and what we perceive as societal norms. He’s now given away the few possessions he had to do an experiment in non-ownership. 

ENT surgeon Gabriel Weston’s new book is a deeply personal and provocative journey through the human body.

In this captivating, alternative exploration of our anatomy, Gabriel dissolves the boundaries which often divide surgeon and patient, pushing beyond the limit of what science can tell us about who we are. 

Gabriel has just sold the rights to her first book Direct Red, about life as a young female surgeon, to Netflix and Brad Pitt’s company Plan B so watch this space for a new medical drama. 

Simon Hart reveals why he’s published his personal diary entries in his new book, Ungovernable – The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip, lifting the lid on what really went on at Westminster during one of the most turbulent times in British politics. 

Simon had a front-row seat at the heart of government - in the cabinet under Boris Johnson; as Chief Whip for Rishi Sunak and cast out to the side lines by Liz Truss for her 49-days at Number 10. 

Simon describes the Whip’s office as a field hospital where MPs are patched up; reflects on some of the jaw-dropping issues he dealt with, and looks at the impact social media has on politics, which he believes makes leading the country much harder for current Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

Successful entrepreneur and co-founder of Intelligent Change Alex Ikonn shares how he turned his life around through the simple habit of gratitude. 

Alex’s teenage years were tough - he lost his father to cancer, suffered hardships at home with little money, mum worked round the clock to make ends meet – but by changing his mindset and practising daily gratitude, things started to improve. 

He co-founded Intelligent Change to create tools and methods to help others transform their lives and become more intentional. From the Five Minute Journal (which Alex describes as ‘a toothbrush for your mind’) to The Life Designer – their beautiful books and apps have helped millions of people find meaning and purpose.