You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.
You know this is a No Filter podcast.
I wanted to share that story on the fact that me and Rosie had two quadriplegics having the best sex of our life, so there is hope that you haven't lost that sexual relationship.
Hi, I'm Katelinebrook and welcome to No Filter. At just twenty five years old, David Holmes was living the dream. He was working on the biggest film franchise in the world, out partying and fully immersed in a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll. A former gymnast turned stunt man, David was Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double in all the Harry Potter films, literally going up alongside the cast, almost like a big brother to a group of preteens who would
go on to become global stars. But while rehearsing a stunt for the final Harry Potter film, a move he'd done many times before, something went terribly wrong. David was flung into a wall and broke his neck. He remembers the sound, the feeling, and staying completely conscious as emergency services arrived. He now refers to his injury as the gift that keeps on taking Over fifteen years later, David has the use of only one arm, but as you'll
hear in this conversation, he doesn't see himself as a victim. Life, he says, guarantees nothing. It's what you do with what you've got that counts, and David is doing a lot, from writing a novel to producing a documentary with his friend Daniel Radcliffe, hosting a podcast, advocating for disability rights, and yes, having the best sex of his life. This
man truly has no filter and why should he. From the moment this conversation began, I was laughing because David Holmes is someone who brings a spark of silliness and honesty to every moment. Hello, Kay, I didn't realize that the extension of your skills had now spread to doing acting and a little falsetto.
You'd be surprised what I've managed to achieve in my life despite the fact of the barriers that are in front of me. I've got very secret projects that I can't publicly announce, but it involves acting and really very much.
So man, Yeah, well, you know, your talents not really that secret, given that you have written a book. You have written a book, The Boy Who Lived When Magic and Reality Collide My story, which is an extraordinary story, and a docco The Boy Who Lived. Now the journey, right, what a journey, an epic one, an odyssey really. But I've got to tell you I had an extraordinary day with you that, of course you on the other side of the world would have been unaware of. But I
watched the documentary about you with my son. I've got three sons, like your mum. I've got three sons, and my number two son is seventeen. Yeah, Ok, the same age that you were when you started being the stunt double for Daniel Radcliffe in the Harry Potter movies. And so we were this dooco together and you know, with a seventeen year old, you just don't know a teenage boy, You don't know what they're thinking. He didn't peel off at any point during it. Yeah, he's stayed fixed with it.
I mean we all were. It's extraordinary. And at the end he stood up and he went hmm, legend our blessed and walked out of the room.
Oh, blessed. Yeah, that's whole.
How's that?
But to know that in a society where young men are trying to navigate what it is like masculinity and to be a man, to know that for your son at that moment there that I showed him certain aspects of my life and my journey through the documentary that might help him get a grip of that.
What a gift day is.
So I'm very grateful to share my story to the journey that I've had because if it hasn't knock on effect for so many others, then it's start a good thing.
Right.
Well, it's also very appealing, I think because because you're a stuntman, ye and outside of on a film set, aside from either movie, there's the movie stars. We get that, But then if you're going to go for who the next alpha men are on a film set, it's the stunties.
Yeah, I believe it is.
Yeah, I mean the director's assistant directors that we're all justling for, like our mark.
On the creative experience.
But some performers get to be the young sum heroes and tell the story with their physicality and to make the impossible possible, and for many years I did that, and then it's you know, it's part of who I was as a child, and it's part of who I
am now as an adult. Despite the fact I'm now quadriplegic, I still perform stunts something last year I set my head on fire, right, and every day I get wonderful messages just like what you had with your son, where people saying this, you know, really helped me gain perspective and understanding on the journey that I'm on and some of the difficulty or the trauma that I've navigating.
So well. It's such an interesting thing because you yourself, i'man aside from the accident and who physically you are compared to who you were, you know at the start. I think that there's many lessons that can be learnt, that can be extrapolated to different circumstances that aren't necessarily to do with physicality.
Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, life's hard for all of us.
This life is hard.
Broken neck or no broken neck, it's hot. We're given this lesson, like this gift, and then you have to understand it's a lesson of loss. I learned that lesson the hardest way at twenty five with my accident, and I continue to have to navigate that lesson now with changing in neurology, or elderly dogs that are just shitting everywhere in my house, or you know, seeing my parents' age and stuff like that. So it's I learned that lesson at twenty five and it made me make my peace with the facts.
It teaches you gratude. All right.
I am here today now where I'm going to be in ten years time in my body, I can't tell you. No one can tell you that. You can't tell me with yours. But with what I'm going through, with the changes, with the journey, with what I've lost, it forces me to be here now, to like take in the day and it's a really crappy gray day in England, but still the world presents gifts. Spring has happened, there's leaves on the true I've had a visit by a greenwood paper in my garden today. I've got I've made a
really good show on the steam room. I've done toilet routine, which as a quadriplegic is very hard to navigate. Can I be really crude in this podcast?
Please? You can be what however you are no filter.
Yeah, no filter? Right, so are you ready for this strapping? Okay, So, as I go into detail in the book, I can't have control of my bower routine. Yes, so my routine involves in certain responsibitories in my house. Now I have no act to do that. So that means I've had more hands up my ass than the cast of the Muppets. So yeah, you soon learn to think. All right, that's just a process. That's what we got doing. Once that's done. At the start, it's horrifying, it's really bad, it's degrading,
it's all of those things. And anyone who goes through medical issues will navigate this at some stage.
And when you get older, you're going to navigate this.
And there is a handing over of things that we consider to be innate sort of rights, like the right to autonomy or the right to privacy over our bodies. And of course you forfeited that in a really sudden way.
Yeah.
I always say to people, never neglect the fact you're sitting on a socially conscious asshole, because it tells you when it needs to part, and mine doesn't. So I've crapped myself everywhere top of Mountains film premieres. You name it at about accident, and it never gets easier, but if you can find the joy and humor after it, it gets a little bit more digestible.
So I always just laugh at myself. Shit happens to us.
So this accident that you refer to that will be discussing happen in two thousand and nine. So you've lived in this new incarnation of your body, yeah, for quite some time. But before then you describe yourself as arrogant and self centered and a bit of a knob. And so this was when you were like flying high as a Stundy. Yeah.
The ego is so easy to creep in when your number one s on call sheet, working on the biggest kids franchise, driving a fast Mercedes, and you know, prowling for sexual partners.
You know what I mean? I say prouding, that's not that's the work, you.
Know, She's a different word. Yeah, but yes, you were enjoying the array of gifts that life has to offer.
Yeah, and I had a lot, and I was enjoying a lot and whether if that was you know, sex, drugs and sausage rolls.
I've consumed them all.
And it's it was that was me then, and that was me at the height of where I was with the success that I was given. But that success wasn't just handed out for free. There were years of gymnastics and hurt and pain and turmoil and bullying that got me to that point of success.
The bullying. The bullying is interesting. Was the bullying because of your height?
Or yeah, man, you've been in society we screw small men, We give small men a bad wrapping life, and it's that we're off on us foot. But mac milligates it right. Why would you want to look down on people your
whole life? Looking up to people is the way like aspiring looking up like never never being ashamed of your height or your stature, or your social position or your wealth, like because if you've got something to look up to, whether that's physically or mentally, it gives you aspirations for your life and it gives you a grounding to say, you know, I want to be there or I want to And I'm not saying like extended my legs and
get taller. I'm saying right that the humbling experience of what it is to be smaller, to have people call you half prime and ditch and all that lot and some minute breaks. But for me, I learned to embrace it and then eventually use it, and it turned me into it very successful young man as a gymnast.
Incredibly because you're are you five foot two?
Yeah? Five foot two one in three quarters, but I take five foot right. Picking yourself up that extra each always makes a difference, you know.
So I've heard.
Yeah.
But here's the thing with that turned out actually to be to your advantage because when you first met Daniel Radcliffe, he was eleven and it started filming the Harry Potter films. You were seventeen. But you could be a perfect stunt double for him because you had that physicality, not just that all of the kids.
In the first two films, I'm the Hermione when the troll smashes through the bathroom doors.
I am the.
Ron sitting on the back of the horses. He gets hit on the chest piece. I am the Malfoy in the quidditch match, flying off with his broom. I am the Malfoy flying on the table. And Harry Potter two in the dueling sequence, there was I doubled pretty much most of the young cars Neville in the first two films, and then all of Dale grew up, and then Dan. Thankfully he's only grew to five foot five. So Harry lifts in my shoes. I could stay it's stunt double yeah.
Yeah, right. And then you So during the course of those movies, you became incredibly close.
Yeah, I was just pe teacher.
Yeah.
So twice three times a week he comes to the stunt department. We'd shut the doors and we do things that were giving Insurance Company an absolute heart attack. I'd get him doing some sorts off and trampoline, jumping off a pork cabin, swinging swords around, doing judo, keeping fit, exercise. It was all part of being a gymnast growing up, having coaches in plant, their coaching and their physical gifts
to me, learning how to be a good gymnast. I was able to just do that for Dank, and now whenever I see his body in a film or a TV program, or if I see him do something that's a sun element, I'm always very proud that I contributed to that, to the man that he is on camera now. And I'd like to say, and I'm sure I'm not overreaching. I'm sure he would say that I contributed to the man that he is in life as well, which.
Is well, he does say that, Yeah.
It's a good things. You got to watch him grow up on the camera. I got to watch him grow as a human being, and I could not be proud of who he is, whether that is his willingness to stand up for what he believes in over certain issues, or seeing him as a younger father and how the joy that brings to his life. He's a great human being and will sacrifice his life to make sure other
people stay employed. You know, Like recently he was on a Broadway show and it was going to close down and he's looking around and if he was to leave his contract. They asked for an extension, and he looked around and he's like, well, if I don't do the extension, then all these people become unemployed. So he went back and he'd done eight extra shows a week for three months. You know, Like that's commitment to others, not commitment to himself. So that's the mark of who he is.
And you know him very well because the reading your book, it really imparted a lovely sense of course, we all know the Harry Potter movies. But for you guys, it was almost like an annual summer camp. Yeah, because you saw each other every year for ten years.
Yeah, pretty much. There was the longest break between the films was maybe.
Four arms in total, So we were always interacting with each other and we were able to because it was Hogwarts Express was a runaway train after the second film.
It was just massive.
And I think keeping the continuity of crew helps keep those young adults in an environment where they felt safe to explore becoming better actors, that felt safe to grow up without the prime eyes. And I'm a bit nervous because they're redoing it now, and then the young cast members are also now exposed to social media and the damage that that is doing to our society. Now.
I use it as a tool like it's a worktool, you know what I mean.
I use it to help promote an image of disability that doesn't frame us as a victive. For young people who are very impressionable that trying to work out who they are. I think it's very damaging to be able to click a button and put a filter on and change your face.
After this short break, David tells me what he remembers about the day of his accident. Don't go anywhere well, interestingly, because your physical body was your ultimate work tool, and you sustained so many injuries as stunties do in the course of your work. Before I'm going to call it a fateful day. How do you think of that day in two thousand and nine, You know, the day that sent.
Me down with different roads, that put me on a different path. And it's a day that's hard. You know, every time the analysty comes around, it's always that very soon I'm going to be in a.
Wheelchair longer than i was on legs, you know, that's.
Always or when look, you know, time passing is hard, and I try to enjoy the passing of time as best I can. But at the same time, when you're going through physical changes like I am, it is some of those important data are quite difficult to navigate.
When is when is the anniversary days?
Right towards the end of January.
I don't say it because yes, yeah, funny enough, it's just certain aspects of my life, like Wikipedia's got my birthday wrong and stuff like that.
It puts me down as forty three. I'm actually forty one. So and also now I'm a public person.
There is just a few vula benities that are trying to protect myself from.
And how do you recall the events of that day.
Fully conscious throughout the whole thing? I remember it. I know the noise.
What noise makes when your neck breaks, I know is that I recover of breath. I sometimes relimit with posed to make stress when a falling asleep. So funny enough, I listen to podcasts when I'm falling asleep. So yeah, that was something that I learned in hospital as I'm slipping into sleep that I can go for pts and relive that moment, like we live the plug socket that was looking at to fix my eyeline and you know the noise of the wire.
Pulling and all that lot.
So I just find a coping strategy and know how to use it.
For those who don't know, you were doing a stunt that involved you being on a wire and then fired pulled rapidly towards the wall, and you'd rehearsed at the day before.
Yeah you got it. Yeah, so we was doing Harry battling the Guini and for the snake.
Yeah, so as we as we should have been doing as some performers. In the Harry Potter series, we saw so many spelled reactions that were used by a wire and it's our job to always try and push the boundaries of the action. And as the film's got more intense and more serious and what, we were always trying to make the spells a bit more serious, reactive, speedy out and all that lot.
And you succeeded, by the way, because those movies, I think changed changed the way movie making is told with any element of magic.
Very few franchises continue to hold their own as they progress through each different film, and Harry Pottery is one of those things.
So yeah, I was.
Raised the day before, and then the suggestion was made short in the distance and to put a slack line in so the snatch off the floor was too quick. That was two vital mistakes that sent me into a wall SINNI mile an hour on my chest folding into my nose that my spinalcle separated at the C six c cent vertebrae, just at the bottom of your neck before your thought rack starts. And I was instantly paralyzed from that moment. And I knew that I'd done it.
I knew what a boken. Brain felt like and I felt my whole body, and once I'd recovered my breath, I kept consciousness, made some very good, smart suggestions about making sure a camera was safe, that I had the footage because I knew Health and Safety would have to review that, and then told my best mates don't call my mum to worry her, and then slipped into unconsciousness. And then you come back to consciousness again. And then it was the full rig more of a slow ambulance,
and I always gutted. I was then putting a helicopter, you know, but yeah, the rigmar of snow ambulance, one hospital and then onto the spinal lord. And then a couple of days later, I woke up and some nurse was rolling me over, saying you need to evacuate out your bows.
And then I realized I don't fill my arn, you know. When she was telling me what you doing, I was.
Like, ah, and I'll feel that so and then you have to learn to rebuild your up. And it's when everything's taken away like that. It starts from scratch, you know, you know, you're stripped back to how you are as Otoba, so vulnerable, so needy, so you know, people needed to feed me, people needed to dress me, wash me, you name it. So and then grueling rehabilitation. And I'm thankful for the gifts of gymnastics and my physical prowess to
understand that nothing's gained without hard work. So I worked tirelessly at the hospital to try and regain as much function as possible above my level injury. And then just before discharge, I had developed a spinal series, which is why I'm going through changes now, which.
Which is apparently quite rare.
Very rare, Yeah, very rare, right in the beginning. So it's assists within this final called that mine actually board up to the C one vertebrae because it was it was just growing so quick, and that's the problem with where I was so healthy and fear so many white blood cells went to the area to sort the bruising out, and they were they were trapped in so it was a it was one of those things that doctor says, if you don't go surging, now you're going to die.
It's going to stop your breathing. So big surgery, and then I had to redo my rehabilitation again.
So bad hard luck on top of bad hard luck.
So yeah, and that's now because it goes up to C one that's where independent breathing, speech and swallow is. So as I get older, there's a good chance that I won't be able to keep hold of those things.
So the cyst I gather can't be removed, and it's kind of like waiting for you, like Voldemort.
You got it.
Yeah, So it's inside my spinal cord. He's got a shunk that's draining the pressure. If that shump blocks, and it's back into the surgery again. And I two ninety went from out a surgery to see if I can check the status of the the pressure of the cysts, shave back some scar tissue, and then I had some really bad complications that it killed me. In twenty ninety, was fighting for my life for surgeries, another little brain surgery, and then came out and just about recovered to get
on a plane to go to Thailand. Got to Thailand, and then COVID happened. And then when I was in Thailand, I realized, hang on a minute, I'm still going through changes. That surgery didn't work, so I had that to deal with, and then COVID, and as a vulnerable individual, I was asking myself is my last worthit? When I have to risk covers to come to work. You know, like a lot of people in the same spectrum, we're doing that,
which is not a nice place to be. Could have done with a bit more support from our governments and all that lot. But I was very grateful at one of my best friends with me and look after me, and we just got through it like weel did.
It is extraordinary, both in the book and in the documentary and just speaking to you now that when I think there's a great physical trauma or a great loss of any kind, or a debilitating condition, and this is really spoken about, I think people like to have this idea that people are just kind of like peacefully wasting away or whatever. But often there's a lot of bitterness, and there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of resentment.
But you seem to have consciously made the decision to focus on the positives.
Well, what's worse than breaking your neck, It is in your pain, in your loved one's eyes. What's worse than getting a diagnosis is having to tell your family and holding on to those emotions, those vacuous emotions, you actually hurt yourself the most first. So if you can go, okay, that's you have to let go of the things I can't got, you know what I mean. Like I'm not religious, my dad is. But there's a prayer there. I will always say.
It's a good prayer, and it's God grant me the grace to accept the things that I can't control, embrace the things that I can. And I think that's a really nice way of just going.
You know, life is going to happen, and asteroids could come and fucking wipe us out right now, we have no control over that.
I hope. I hope not not before our interview.
No fingers crossed, not now.
Yeah, I mean yeah, if I saw one, I might be sticking my hands down my shorts just so in case my body's you know, like the blokes in Pompeii's Yeah, I masturbated in.
Lying on his side. That's the guy I want to be.
They got they got done instantly.
Yeah, done instantly. But his body was preserved in that position. So he's just lying on his side, having a way because like, yeah, wicked. No dignity, Yeah no, there's no dignit. He was final point injury, not just like living with like with the barroutines addressing there's the other. But I mean, I'll tell you now, I'm in a relationship and my girlfriends are four quadriplegic, so she's got less function than
I have. But we don't connect over our injuries. We connect over our love for each other and how shared experience of being loved by great families and friends and committed care teams. How did you?
How did you meet?
She owns the property that I rented in Spain, and she was emailing me quite a few times about my requirements, and it was very just email exchanges, and then it went to voice notes, just going back. Do you know
it's how being disabled them it's the other? And then she'd never stayed at anyone else's house after a hospital discharge because she went to a mom and dad's house and she couldn't and she had her accident in the same year as me, and I said, well, I built this house and I can accommodate for you here and your care team, and next time you're in London, why
don't you come and see my house? Because I knew that she was building her own property up in Sheffield, which is you know, three hundred miles away annoying me. And because this house is a smart home, all the doors are controlled, all the lights to controlled, the TV,
everything by by boys and thirteen years ago. I'm very, very independent in this property, like to the degree that I'm probably more able in this environment than most people that are able bodied, just because I know how to navigate it and control it with the technology.
I must sound very admiring of the fact that you get technology to work for you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I wanted her to incorporate those things in her life because I know what it does for me, and I would want every person.
In with his final cord injury to have an environment.
Like this, because the most the saving thing about and being a wol Che user is the environment you interact with, you know, like so in here, it's not like that.
So she came down. She was going to a gas like Anthont gig in London, and she stayed the night for the first night.
And her function is she can bring her arm to here, but she hasn't got the shoulder function to lift it out right.
So we was outside sitting in the sun.
In my garden and the wind blew her hair in her face, and I saw her trying to blow it out and I was like, do you want me to get that for you? And as I brushed the hair out of face, I was like, we're really beautiful. And then you know, I went to a place in Spain. She I had a week where there was space at the end, and obviously it's her house, and I was like, why don't you come out for that last week and
we can get a bit of time together. And then I just looked at her, was like the world's unfair in it, but if we were able bodied people, we'd be doing something very different right now. And she's really really shy, like shocking me shy. She could barely look up look at me. She just she raised her eyes, she looked at me and she gave me a nude and I was like, oh, it's on. And then we've been able to achieve connection despite what we can't feel,
what we can feel is phenomenal. What we can embrace and what you know, it takes a team of people for us to another couple the kiss together, but it makes it mean more when we have to work so.
Hard for it.
You know, our shared life experience, when we go on holiday together it means more because we have to work harder for it. And then, you know, every orgasm that we both give each other it means more because we're having an orgasm below our level of injuries, something that most people say it's unachievable. I'm like, no, I don't accept that reality. So yeah, I'm a prime numbers man. I ain't happy until she said at least eleven, maybe thirty. But I tell you a really funny story. And she
doesn't mind me saying this. Asked her for a permission.
What's her name? By the way, her name is Rosy Rosie.
But anyway, this is a great story. So we was in Thailand two years ago and we got both got hoisted on a couch. We're watching a film together. We've already had our first kiss. We're sitting under the couch and we used our phones to call people. So do we Yeah, but we have to use voice control to ask someone to come and help us.
Okay, yes.
So her phone's on the armrest next to her, My phone's on my leg next to me, and I'm sitting there and she's got a skirl and I've got a carecter cut and nickers off because they were just getting in the way, and I was just fuck it on going for it. So I leant over to perform our sex, not realizing half an hour later that both her phone is falling off the sofa and down by the cushions, and my phone is falling down by the cushions. So I've only got one arm, like with half a muscle
on it. So now I realized that I'm stuck. So my first portal call is but we've got to call someone. We were laughing about it. It's funny, and I'm.
Stuck, so we go like, hey, Siri, Like so we're asking Siri, and it's not hearing us.
Oh all right, because it's smothered in the cushions.
Because it's smiling in the cushions. So now I was stuck on my partner like.
This, oh, trying like literal we breatheing through her never regions like a scuba diver while simultaneously trying to shout from my phone. And we were stuck there for like forty five minutes before or just one of our candygivers just open the door upstairs, like you guys are. Rose is softly spoken, and she was like no kind of needs to help when they come down and rescue me. And as I was pulled up by the candgiver that all I said was tell missus Huggs, he died the way he wanted to.
You know that we find.
Ourselves in situations like that all the time.
Now we can ever make light of it and embrace it as a comedic moment, or we can let it really break us down and dehumanize us. And I refuse to not find shit funny because everything in life is laughable because if you don't, you forget it.
That reminds me of something that you said when you said after the accident to your family and your friends, try and hope for me to be happy like I am, ye, happy like you want me to be, which was so powerful for people at many levels in how we love people.
Everybody looks at my story and goes, eat a musk's going to get you walking again, you know, or you know, let's we're going to end paralysis and all that. And I'm like, yeah, great, we should pursue that because it's like a life changing, life sentencing thing. But we should also try and accept and push for a society that does see me and accept me for who I am, because regardless of spinal cord injury being fixable or not,
there will always be children born into wheelchairs. There will always be elderly people needing wheelchairs to navigate society you know yourself, including disability is not if, but when for all of us. And we're all focusing on these silly little issues right now that talk about very important for marginalized people in society. But my community is the ones
that you know governments always think less than. And I will say to everyone, if you are able to live like this, then you are more that because you are a great problem solver. You've been able to navigate great difficulty and you've still been able to remember that their happiness can be found leaving in the darkest of places.
You know, because you had always lived a life that was characterized by is it a lack of fear that a stuntman has? No?
Not at all?
I thought, is it it was the ability to embrace the fear and overcome it.
It's not.
It's definitely the ability to say, all right, that's scary, but I'm confident enough in who I am and my ability and my conviction to be able to achieve the impossible.
Now that goes the same for gymnastics, Formula one drivers, anybody that has to navigate something that's quite sketchy, even people in Australia that get in the water with a sharp you know, you know you're getting in and you know, oh, there could be could be the day that I lose, But you still get in because the ocean is a beautiful thing and you know you can't compartmentalize the risk and you take navigated, calculating risks to achieve.
You know, the storytelling process.
So I take great comfort in the fact that despite where I am in my life because of Harry Potter, my contribution to those films brings comfort and joy to people every.
Single day around the world.
There are kids in conflict zones right now, petrified their part of their parents. Put Harry Potter on a own in front of them and it helps them escape their reality. There are people struggling with mental health issues right now that are always like turning to those films to help them get through a tough time.
So yeah, I'm very very grateful.
That I was able to contribute to that fact for tons and tons of people, and say with this podcast now right I get to share my perspective and hopefully someone goes, you know what you know that's helped me today and wicked, I think you came for that and for me and the people that helped love me to being the person I am.
That's not all of my conversation with David Holmes coming up. We talk about the close and enduring bond that David has with Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Felton. We'll be right back. At what point did you and I don't imagine it was a critical defining moment. I imagine that it was maybe a gradual realization, But at what point did you realize that your approach to physical fear you would now have to turn into a different approach for your life as you now know us.
I think that's a gradual process that's always tested.
I think, you know, someone asked me on social media recently or I put up a post about me being in a Liz Holy film and it just got picked up by just like the land of misogyny on social media and someone I was trying to defend it. I was like, come on, can we just be a little bit respectful? You know, we've all got wives or partners
or sisters or daughters in our life. And just think if someone was talking about your loved one like that, and then all the boys that were saying all these several things jumped on top of and someone said you knew here. I was like, Well, to be honest, I'm a new person every day.
We all are.
Every single day the sun comes up, We've got the opportunity to be a new person. And I feel that in society where we've championed the rights of others and women especially, we should always realize that when one gains another one doesn't have to lose another, one doesn't.
Have to be threatened, you know.
And there's a team of young men right now, I say team, there's a generation of young men right now that are looking to outside sources to try and work out what it is to be a map. So I would always say that conviction of who you are comes from accountability. Are you accountable for who you are to this day? Are we accountable?
On? This conversation interesting because I know Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Felton described you as an older brother to them. Yeah, Dan Radcliffe said, an older brother that had spent his whole life wanting and then when you had the accident, because you had that physical sort of prowess and superiority taken away from you, how did that relationship change because there's such deep affection and love there.
Yeah.
So they were young to have to see me like that with wied in me and stuff hanging out my nose and you know, even some stage's fire for breath, and they were my bedside between breaks and filming, and they kept it together and they for me being brave for them on camera all those years and help giving them the some of the foundation on what it's like to be a little bit older and to have a
little bit of success or whatever it is. They got the opportunity to flip that and be braave for me, and I look back on top of that while still navigating the pressures of finishing off the biggest film franchise in history. Well yeah, so, yeah, So I'm very grateful for who they are that day and this day. They are amazing human beings that carry the torch of what they were part of and will do for the rest of their life.
It's interesting because you're talking about people who had a constancy to them and showed bravery for you as you said when you needed it, as you had tried to show in your role for them. But watching the DOCI entry in particular, what I was so struck by was the relationship with you and Greg Powell, who got you into who was a father figure to you when you were a young stunty, who.
Was my film father.
Yeah, yeah, he was one of the men, like my gymnastics coaches, that helped me and loved me to be the man that I am. And despite the fact and our relationship like had what happened to me in it, I still love him like deaddy and look up to him and aspire.
To always make him proud.
And there are worse things to have in your life than good men that will always.
Have your back, you know what I mean?
It was it was knowing what the nature of your relationship had been, and how paternal and beautiful and us it was how he guided you through those stunts and had such a deep love for you. And then he said he was the last person to hold you when you could walk, and he was the first person to hold you when you couldn't walk.
Yeah, yeah, messed up so and.
He can't he can't handle it though.
No, I know, because that's that generation of men that would bottle up emotion instead of being able to articulate it. And as we are, I mean, there's a push now for that idea of masculinity to come back a little bit.
And there is a point of Gars smoking. He's a cigar smoker.
The Gars smoking, tony soprano, bad boy, gangster because of his background. You know, his dad was a you know, an unlicensed boxer and then licensed boxer and then celebrity.
He's some man and navigated some of the criminal.
Underworld in London and all of those things that make him the man that he is and the life lessons that make him the man that he is. But I always take it back to we're all children, ones, right, And if Greg and me were in a playground and he accidentally knocked me over and I was crying and then he got upset and me getting upset, then I would want to comfort that child, you know what I mean, so we will remember that we're all babies.
Ones. I find that your capacity to understand that incredible. Thanks me, I really do, because it seems sometimes that I think when you're in the situation that you're in, aw I had a son who was bravely ill with leukemia, and sometimes you find yourself cast in the role of not only having to deal with the shiitthand that you've been dealt, but also comforting the people around you. How is that pressure?
It's can either embrace or you can try and run away from it very head in this ad. But the problem is still going to be that, you know what I mean, Like, there's only so much avoidance. We will go for our life trying to run away from pain, but it's inevitable if your archae or not.
So you can.
Share your see others share your pain and come to an understanding that you can work as a team to get through it. Or you can't take someone's pain away from them, but you can be there for them when they're going through it, you know what I mean, Like your son, you couldn't take that away from it. You know, you are fighting your own voldemont in your family, your own demon, and you couldn't stot it.
But you could just be.
And like as a mum should I say, it's your job, It's not, it's you. It's your blessing.
That's what it is.
It's your blessing to be able to do that. It's a blessing to be able to hold someone's hand when they're going through something.
Sometimes it's a really painful blessing.
Yeah yeah, But nothing's free in life, right, nothing? No, nothing's for free. No, not in any like there's no free mills. You know, we sit there reading stories about horrendous things on these digital devices, going oh, that's shocking, And then you've got realized that the digital device that's in your hand is built and mind through people that are working in horendous circumstances.
So you know, there's always a contradiction. Nothing is for free.
How futuristically do you think for yourself?
Now?
Try not to. I have to because I have to navigate my life with.
A relationship with my partner and hurricane teams and just trying to get together in a relationship that's three hundred miles apart, and booking podcasts and writing books and going on holiday and so I have to try and playing ahead as much as possible. But the more you put in front of it, the more present you can be in the moment, you know what I mean. So this morning, whilst I was playing puppeteer on the toilet sea while
playing with the puppet. I should say I was just having to think of what did I want to share with you today. You know this is a no filter podcast. I wanted to share that story on the fact that me and Rosie had two quadriplegics having the best sex life, So there is hope that you haven't lost that sexual relationship.
Do you feel differently us having this conversation now than you would have had before you met Rosie because there was a period in your life that was yeah.
Yeah, definitely yeah. I didn't think that was on my journey.
I didn't think that sharing life and love outside of my support network and friends was on my journey. But in that song that I recommend to your lovely producer, Grace, the song was by k Tempest and the song is called Grace, and in it there's a line that said, when I stopped looking for me, I found you, and that for us, the two of us, we're constantly looking for ourselves with living with a spinal cord injury. How am I going to get through the hudhips today? How
am I going to navigate? Someone get me out of it? Someone else with me goes toilet, someone helping me eat someone.
You know. But when you yield to all of that, and yield to those pressures and yield to who am I now? I've got a broken neck and my listener. When you just let go of all that, then you can embrace the gift of life. So the gift of my life now is my rosing, and I'm very very grateful. I love it dearly, and despite how hard it is for both of us, it's the most beautiful spiritual thing that I've experienced. And I grew up in a church and my dad's a Baptist, so a Baptist minister, not
a full time minister. He's just a deacon.
So he has faith and he turns the scripture to help him navigate his mental health. I have to hold my breath underwater and do meditation for as long as possible.
Are you vevim halffing? Ah?
Yeah, well I do, because breaming speed swallows on my radar. I'm not just going to sit in that that happen. So I do breath work, breathwork in a fifty degree stem room every morning and every evening, and then in twenty minutes, my physio turns up and I'm going to sit at the bottom of my swimming pool. I sit on a scuba bowl, and I will breathe and then
hold my breath for as long as physically possible. Now, being that I have no intercostal muscles whatsoever, and I only breathe from my diaphragm, you might be amazed that my record's four minutes and twenty five seconds.
Wow.
Yeah, because my brains.
I am amazed.
Yeah, my brain is. Part of my brain's going you're not breathing, You're not breathing, you're not breathing, And the other part of me goes, I got you. You know, you know I got this.
That's the stunt man.
That's the stummail.
Yeah.
Today, I'm aiming to get past four minutes, and there is not a world record set for a quintia bleeding, So I think I'm going to push.
For a world record this year.
There's always a goal.
At least that one. Yeah, at least give someone something to aim for. That's like me, you know what I mean.
Dave Holmes, Yeah, thank you for sharing yourself so much. I think you've really taken no filter to another definition.
Yeah, of course, man, it's yeah, we get one chance. In life to and the best thing he's sharing, I think, to share the experience of being a dumb monkey on a rock, spinning through space with a load of other dumb monkeys on a rock, you know what I mean.
And yeah, it's like I get.
To do that with a broken neck, and there'll be a generation of people behind me that have a spinal cord injury that will be like that lost little boy that I was in hospital feeling like hope is all gone. And then maybe, just maybe they might find my journey in my story and it might give them hope.
So you're not only the boy who lived, You're the boy who.
Is living always yeah, always yeah, embrace the day, Carpe dim and all that jazz, yeah and all else fowls. You could just row a few fucks to the wind, and you know what I mean, Yeah, what are you going to do? Is the pride of our life?
Why you're just going to take it and get the best out of it.
My son was right, You're a legend.
Oh, thanks very much.
I don't know what I thought I was expecting before I spoke to David Holmes. When you know that you're going to meet someone whose life has been identified by their physical prowess, and they've had it all taken away from them. It would be easy to expect a person who is dour, or embittered or angry, and David Holmes is none of those. He's uplifting, he brings joy. He's quite brilliant, and if you'd like to read David's book or watch his documentary, we pop links in the show notes.
The executive producer of No Filter is Nama Brown and the senior producer is Grace Rufree. Audio production is by Jacob Brown and I'm your host, Kate Lanebrook. Thank you for listening.