What Works?

This episode was recorded early in 2020, and then the whole podcast enterprise was tanked as I was trying to cope with COVID19 and the lockdowns. I am realising this now as Vince is retiring at the end of 2024, and we're going to miss him a lot, and it was a really interesting interview.Transcript Speaker 1 Because I. One of the. The waggon I had a double espresso and I'm ashamed of myself. Speaker 2 Do you know what I'm in a good place with my coffee dictionary. Do you know I'm? I'm fine. I gave up. Nicotine largely gave up alcohol. I'll. I'm good. I'm good. I accept. I'm completely addicted. Speaker I. Speaker 2 I gave up. Speaker 1 For eight years. Bloody hell. And then somebody gave me a double espresso. So. And it's like cocaine. It's fantastic. Speaker 2 I got when I came back from sanity leave because I I stopped drinking not through choice, but just to kind of. I kind of lost the taste for it and for a couple of years I haven't had any and I came back. Eternity leave. And I was like, oh, this is fantastic. This is like I completely get it. Yeah, right. I think that's a good level. My fricatives keep sounding awful, but that's on me, not on you. Speaker 1 I've moved away from it. Do you want me to? Do you want to test again? Speaker 2 Just tell me. I mean, I'm not very loud. Just tell me again your chia seeds or coughing water? Speaker 1 Yeah, disgusting. My healthy breakfast. I. Speaker 2 Think that'll be fine. Thank you very much. Let's. On it. Brilliant. I'll move it slightly closer. 'cause you have more important people, right? I'm just going to start, weirdly by introducing the whole. We are recording. Yes, it's recording. Excellent. Welcome to what works. This is a UCL PALS podcast where I, Sophie Scott, get to talk to my colleagues about what works for them and how they got into really doing what they're doing and how they manage their work and their life and all the other things we don't normally talk about with colleagues, and it's an absolute pleasure today to introduce my colleague Vincent Walsh, who has been at the ICN since the inception of the ICN. Speaker 1 Almost. Speaker 2 OK, but let's go back a bit further. So what I'd like to start with, if that's OK, Vince, if you could tell us a little bit about how you ended up getting into science at all. Can you remember like you know anything, perhaps even when you were a kid that now when you look back on it, you think that was a bit of a sign, this is where I was going. Speaker 1 No, I I. It's funny that you ask what works. I have no idea what works, and I honest to God, it's not an affectation of no idea. I would how I got to do this. I wasn't a nerdy kid. I didn't play with electronics. Umm, I left school at 16 with 4G CSESI never knew I was any good at anything. Definitely never read a book until I was at least 16, possibly 18. If it didn't have pictures of a sports person or a music person in it. So I always get irritated and slightly suspicious about these people who are reading Tolstoy when they're 4. And I think just wasn't. It wasn't wasn't my my track at all. So no. About science. Until people, what my students don't believe me. But until my mid 30s. No idea about science career, so yeah, just left school at 16. To work in a record shop. Speaker 2 Which one? Speaker 1 Jazzling records in Oldham loved it. And then. Speaker 2 Excellent. Speaker 1 Some of my friends. 2 girls were applying to be nurses. And it wasn't a degree then, so you could do it with  O levels. Which were Cs, by the way. Didn't get any As. And as I remember it we we put an application in for me as a kind of a joke, why don't why don't why don't we do it? And and then I ended up being a full time nurse for five years and part time for three years. And specialised after I qualified in Psychiatrics. So I discovered my career progression from wiping ***** to kissing them and I and I know which is most useful. And I loved it. And it was when I was at nursing school that I I met a guy called John Hart. And it was funny because he was the first person any of us had ever met who got a degree, who wasn't a doctor or a teacher. We thought it was a freaking genius. But he was also the first person I met who I kind of wanted to be like, if you like. So it was. It was him who got me into, fell in love with him. Totally. It was him who got me into reading. And I think it was when I was 20. We chatted and he suggested I might try and go back to night school. And do some exams. Umm, so I did that. Still no idea. About about science. I'm 23 by this time. Speaker 2 So what did you do? Speaker 1 So I did. I did psychology at Sheffield but. Even at that time, like most psychology undergraduates, now you imagine you're going to be a clinical psychologist. And I mean, I don't like listening to people. I learned that pretty quickly. And I guess in the first year then we had. We had Dawkins selfish gene on our and that was the kind of, if you like, Damascene conversion and had some great tutors, Ian Mitchell and Peter Eggrave and John Frisby. Speaker 2 Remember Frisby? Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah. And then I started getting obsessed. It was then that I started getting obsessed still. Because people, you know, people got all these A levels that I didn't have, I just thought they were cleverer for a a long time. I mean a long time. And I had no idea what to do for a for a PhD. Really wanted to do 1. Speaker 2 I realised I've made you miss a bit out, so you went back to night school and you took exams. When you say that, did you mean like more 0? Speaker 1 Uh. Speaker 2 Levels or A levels was it like? Speaker 1 I did. I did. I did O levels and A levels. Yeah, I still. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing I was ever good at school was maths. Speaker 2 At night. Speaker Yeah. Speaker 1 So I went back and did maths and some other things. I always remember finding maths really easy. That's the only thing I remember. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So you've gone back and when you did the O levels and A levels that still wasn't particularly science oriented. That was thinking about were you already thinking about psychology? Speaker 1 Yeah, it was just psychology. It was. Psychology was thinking about Cos it was. Yeah, it was psychiatric nursing that I was. I was doing. So that was the kind of. Speaker 2 That's where you wanted to go. Speaker Yeah. Speaker 1 Not logical next step, but it ...

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