Five BBC Radio Leeds staff are swimming in the Thousand Mile Challenge to raise money for Children in Need.
James Deighton – former rugby player and BBC Radio Leeds’ rugby league producer exudes strength, until the mention of swimming. Then this muscly, physically fit fifty-one-year-old winces and clams up. In spite of, or perhaps because of his fears, swimming training has now become a major part of James’ life after volunteering as one of the Radio Leeds staff taking part in this year’s Children in Need challenge.
“I don’t know what it was about the water that terrified me” James said. He has pushed himself as far back into his chair as he can go, squirming slightly, avoiding eye contact. “I was the last person in the class to learn to swim and you couldn’t really call it swimming. I think they just gave up with me after awhile.. I remember being on my back, I remember being covered in floats. There was a torpedo float on my front, polystyrene floats on my shoulders and I had class mates on my arms and legs trying to hold me on the water. Trying to make me float. I was just petrified to lie backwards and, traumatised really, and embarrassed.”
Across the country BBC Local Radio stations have signed up to collectively swim 1,000 miles to raise money for Children in Need. The five BBC Radio Leeds staff will need to collectively swim 24 miles over five days. That is 64 laps each, every day, for four consecutive days from 4th to 8th November this year.
Sarah Wakefield is the breakfast newsreader at the station. Sarah has never dived in to a swimming pool, nor been “brave enough to try front crawl”. She sits forward in her chair, leaning in, animated. She has been swimming training this morning, hair still slightly damp. Sarah did get a badge for swimming as a child: “I think I got one badge.. and that was just for taking part.” She rolls her head back and laughs, “I actually got the nickname ‘hop-along’ from my swimming instructor when we learnt at school, because I kept one foot on the floor and thought that nobody would notice.”
Sarah and James will be joined in the charity swim by three other colleagues: Emily Pilbeam of BBC Introducing, Katherine Hannah – the sports producer and Nick Ahad – the weekend presenter. The group have mixed abilities but it was the cause and the challenge which motivated them. But the training is taking its toll.
“Someone said to me ‘are you enjoying it?’ And I said straight away: ‘no, not at all.’” There is rueful look in James Deighton’s eyes. “You get to thirty lengths and you think ‘I’m not even half-way through’ and you’ve been in the pool for ages and your hands are all ‘puckery.. my shoulders start to hurt, the small of my back starts to hurt, I get cramp in my feet and then you’re overthinking things as well.”
But through the pain and the challenge it is the cause that has motivated them to make another stroke, to do another lap, despite the fears and the pain.
“It’s just such an amazing charity and such amazing causes and this is one of the reasons why I put my hand up to be involved in this challenge.” Sarah Wakefield shrugs, her body language says ‘well of course I would do this challenging thing for a good cause’, “..and anything where we’re part of a team, we’re raising money and Pudsey Bear’s there, then it’s a winner isn’t it?”
Charity was a strong motivator for James Deighton too. He talks of doing the swim to prove to that terrified 8-year-old that the swimming pool isn’t as scary as he felt it was. And though he talks candidly about his historical fear and his physical and mental struggles with the training, he dismisses them just as swiftly.
“You just have to think about the live’s that some children have and they’re not as fortunate as I was. If the only thing they had in their life that was troubling and stressful was not being to swim as an 8-year-old, they’d be well-off.” Deighton’s eyes light-up when talking about Children in Need, “Their are children in need, and their lives are much more stressful and demanding than it is for us to put our body’s on the line and try and get through this. So that’s something that keeps us going, it keeps me going certainly.”