I know Simon Robson through Wokingham Theatre and have done for years, but I hadn’t realised he was writing a book until he handed me a copy. It screamed to me initially, ‘coaching book’. Oh God, I thought.
I should probably declare an interest here. I’m not a great consumer of ‘self-help’ - seminars, webinars, any-ars, or books. There seem to be an awful lot of people prepared to tell us how to be happier, richer, calmer, more productive, more resilient, better leaders, better parents and presumably better at loading the dishwasher. So I started flicking through Simon’s book like it was half time at Airdrie FC and we were, of course, 2-0 down. But then something slightly annoying happened. I quite liked it (there endeth any comparison to Airdrie FC).
That’s because I don’t really think it’s a coaching book. It’s a book about Simon, about the stuff that’s happened to him, the people he’s met, the things he’s got right and the things he’s got spectacularly wrong. Work, relationships, resilience, vulnerability, and the various bits of baggage we all accumulate while pretending we’ve got everything under control. It’s funny in places, and then later it’s uncomfortable in a way that makes you squirm. Simon isn’t showboating in any of it. There’s no sense of a man performing his own vulnerability for effect.
It reads like someone genuinely opening up, which is a rarer thing than the coaching shelves would have you believe. Somewhere amongst all of that are ideas that might actually be useful, which feels a lot more interesting to me than someone standing at the front of a room telling us the seven habits we need before breakfast.
It also feels very Third Half. Most of the conversations I’ve enjoyed over the past year haven’t really been about what somebody does, they’ve been about how they got there. The diversions. The cock-ups. The people who changed things. The moments when life didn’t follow the PowerPoint…..
So when Simon suggested launching the book at Wokingham Theatre and asked if I’d sit down with him and have one of those conversations in front of an audience, I said yes.
On 20th November, that’s what we’re going to do. No presentation, no 47 slides on unlocking your potential, just Simon and me talking about the book, the life behind it, and this rather provocative idea that none of us are broken. Because I’m not entirely sure I agree with him. What does “broken” mean anyway? Are there things that happen to us that actually do break something? Is resilience something we possess, something we learn, or something we only discover when life gives us no alternative? And when you write a book based heavily on your own experiences, how comfortable is it when someone else starts poking around in them? I’d guess the evening will have the same shape as the book. Some things to laugh at, and one or two moments where the room goes quiet.
We’ll find out. We’ll also open it up to the audience, so I won’t be the only one asking questions, and we’ll record the whole thing as a special edition of The Third Half.
None of Us Are Broken: The Launch 20th November 2026 Wokingham Theatre, Cantley Park
Reserve a place here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/none-of-us-are-broken-the-launch-tickets-1993916349476
Come along. You don’t have to agree with Simon. I’m not promising I will either. That might be the interesting bit.
People. Planet. Progress. The Third Half
