On June 6th 2004, Frank Gardner was in Riyadh filming what was meant to be a routine piece of background footage when an Al-Qaeda cell opened fire. His cameraman, Simon Cumbers, was killed. Frank was shot six times and left for dead. One surgeon later told him he'd arrived at hospital the colour of a lab coat, bleeding from every wound faster than they could pour the plasma in. It was, in the truest sense, the day Frank should have died.
That day split his life in two. Before it, he was a restless Arabist who'd hitchhiked across the Middle East with nothing in his pocket, spent a decade in banking, turned down MI6, and talked his way into the BBC in his mid-30s to become its first ever security correspondent. After it, he was partially paralysed and in daily pain – yet back at work within ten months, and has spent the twenty years since reporting from the very places that nearly killed him. He describes crossing an invisible bridge to a new version of himself, this conversation is about what that crossing actually cost.
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FOUR LESSONS FROM FRANK
- Don't waste your energy mourning what you can no longer change. Pour it into what you still can.
- When crisis hits, there's a fork in the road. One path is self-pity – and it's entirely justifiable. The other is deciding to make the most of what you've got left. Choosing the second is a daily struggle.
- Look outwards, not inwards. Fill your life with the things that make you feel useful and alive. Fixating on your own troubles is a trap – curiosity about the world around you is the way out.
- Volunteer for the work no one else wants – the weekends, the bank holidays, the night shifts. It's how you make yourself indispensable, and how you get your shot when it finally comes.
CHAPTERS
05:18 – The daily indignities most people never see
08:57 – Why he refuses to let it define him
11:33 – Where his grit really came from: two extraordinary parents
14:19 – The bold early decisions that shaped a life
20:38 – Turning down MI6 – and the self-awareness to know why
27:45 – How to break into a career when there's no job at the end of it
30:27 – The attack: what actually happened that day
31:02 – Seven months in hospital, and living with the what-ifs
39:45 – The one thing he's still bitter about
42:15 – Losing Simon, and finding a way through the grief
44:37 – "You'll never walk again" – the second hammer blow
48:05 – The letter from the BBC that gave him something to aim for
50:42 – Going back to Saudi Arabia to face it down
53:52 – Why he doesn't spend his life grieving
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This was a Crisis What Crisis Production – Rex Fisher (producer), Ioana Barbu (studio manager), Fred Sharp (research), Johnny Seifert (audio), Jasper Cullen (video)
