ONA Magazine | John Humpish

AT OCTOBER'S NEWCASTLE ON DINNER, JOHN HUMPISH (ON 73-81) CAPTIVATED THE AUDIENCE WITH STORIES FROM HIS DIVERSE CAREER IN MARKETING AND FINTECH, AND THE LIFE-ALTERING EVENT IN 2019 THAT RESHAPED HIS PATH. SPEAKING WITH ONA’S CAROLINE BRIGGS, HE SHARED HOW THAT PIVOTAL MOMENT LED HIM TO REEVALUATE HIS PRIORITIES AND DISCOVER A NEW SENSE OF FULFILMENT THROUGH GIVING BACK.

Read an excerpt of John Humpish's ONA feature below:

Old Novo John Humpish had barely left John O’Groats when his Fitbit watch gave up and died. 

He was at the start of a journey from the north of Scotland to Lands End in Cornwall, that would eventually take 79 days and raise more than £100,000 for the London Air Ambulance. 

But just as John was finding his stride, his FitBit had already had enough. 

“We had to wait until we got to Inverness to buy a replacement and on the first day, I wore it I did 65,000 paces,” John laughs. 

“For months I was a world leader, getting badges and medals and honours galore in the world of Fitbit.  

“But the second I finished the walk I fell off a Fitbit cliff! Instantly, it was telling me it had all gone so horribly wrong, and I was consigned to the Hall of Shame.” 

John is visiting the Royal Grammar School for the second time this year, barely a month after finishing the walk. An experience, he says, he is still trying to process. 

His first visit in came in April as he passed through Newcastle on the meandering route he was taking from John O’Groats. By this point his journey had been defined by terrible weather in the Highlands and punctuated by the kindness of strangers. 

Reaching the sun-drenched finish line some 1,200 miles later, John and his walking buddy Andy Moore had recorded three million steps. 

“Crossing the line we didn’t really stop to look around and consider what we had done, but as soon as we did, it was like a switch had been flicked and we were euphoric. 

“We definitely realised we had achieved something out of the ordinary and there was a huge sense of relief too.” 

Reaching Land’s End to be greeted by family and friends was the culmination of a journey that started in April 2019 when John was a man with the world at his feet. 

The successful businessman, who co-founded the mould-breaking Starling Bank, was 53-years-old, happily married with two teenage boys, and in seemingly robust health.  

Just hours earlier he had watched his beloved Newcastle United lose at St James Park – an event too frequent to be considered foreshadowing. 

Walking down the steps from Kings Cross Station to continue his journey home to Berkshire with his boys, John was gripped by a sudden breathlessness. 

It was at this precise moment of misfortune that a series of fortunate events were triggered.  

As John instinctively lowered himself to the ground, an off-duty GP happened to be on the same staircase. He quickly realised something was dreadfully wrong.  

Within seconds the GP was performing life-saving CPR, and an emergency call was intercepted by the London Air Ambulance. The simple fact John was on the stairs when he suffered what turned out to be a massive pulmonary embolism ultimately saved his life.  

“All Air Ambulance London heard was a middle-aged man had been found in difficulty   down a staircase at King's Cross,” explains John. “Obviously I felt very slighted by the term ‘middle-aged’! 

“But the minute they heard that description, they knew I could have suffered trauma injuries falling down the staircase,” John says.  

“If they’d known it was actually a medical emergency the helicopter wouldn't have been dispatched.”  

London’s Air Ambulance responds to seriously injured patients in the capital – usually caused by traffic collisions, stabbings, falls, and incidents on the rail network. 

The trauma team flew from their base in Whitechapel, landing on the busy Euston Road, to be faced with a medical emergency instead. It was then John had his next piece of good fortune.  

“For reasons I don't understand even today, helicopter crews carry clot busting drugs in the way that the road ambulance crews don't,” he says.  

“They took out this enormous needle and it went straight into my chest cavity and basically just exploded the clot there and then. 

“The air ambulance doesn’t attend medical emergencies, road ambulances do. Road ambulances don’t carry blood clot-busting drugs, but the air ambulance does.  

“That’s why I am alive today.”  

A further hour of CPR continued with John ‘completely beaten to a pulp’ on the concrete stairs, but he was far from being out of the woods.  

Vital organs began to shut down as he was flown to St Bart’s Hospital where doctors were pessimistic about his odds of survival.  As John lay in an induced coma his elderly parents, wife, and children filed in to say their goodbyes.  

But John hadn’t read the script.   

“I woke up six days later,” John says brightly. “Much to their surprise!”  

“Then the consultant came around, quite a dour Scotsman, and he told me I’d have short and long-term memory loss, cognitive impairment, and I wouldn’t be able to walk.   

“At which point I said: ‘have you got any good news, doc?' John laughs.  

"I was in intensive care with 63 tubes, electrodes and goodness knows what else going in and out of my body, but I felt actually very, very good... partly because I was on unbelievable amounts of medication.  

“I absolutely loved every facet of my life and I was going to fight to restore every bit of it.”  

Just eight weeks later John left hospital: first stop London Air Ambulance HQ where there was a surprise in store.  

“I went into this meeting room and counted 25 people – all of them were involved on the day: road traffic police, the helicopter crew, doctors. 

“They were all there,” John explains, visibly choking up. “Every single one of them. Walking in and seeing their faces and hearing about their roles in saving my life absolutely destroyed me emotionally. Even talking about it now still gets to me.” 

Doctors later discovered the embolism had been caused by an undiagnosed rare blood cancer called polycythaemia vera (PV). 

With treatment PV is non-life threatening or, as John describes it, a “couple of tablets a day and you’re done” condition, dismissing the diagnosis with a wave of the hand.  

While the pulmonary embolism and cancer discovery wasn’t the end of John’s life, it proved to be an ending of sorts, ushering in a new dawn that John hopes will define the rest of his days.  

“In terms of my business career, I don't particularly have anything to prove to myself or anyone else.  

“This is a new phase of my life. I've got a lot of energy, a lot of time, hopefully a lot of skills, and the right thing to do is to channel that to the right causes.  

“And I was absolutely clear coming out of that meeting with the Air Ambulance that I was going to do something to pay it forward.” 

With the dour doctor’s pessimistic prognosis still fresh in his mind, John came up with the plan to walk from John O'Groats to Land's End.  

“I wanted to do something that was quite iconic,” he explains. “Most people in Britain know what it means, and no-one thinks it's a short distance, but equally it's not a stupidly dangerous thing to do. 

“It is grounded and relatable, the sort of thing that anyone with walking boots could have a go at doing.” 

John was joined by his friend Andy for the trek with a target of raising £120,000 for the charity that saved his life. 

Other friends joined them for stretches of the walk, and some days were harder than others, especially when they were soaked to the skin. Conversation was sporadic, listening to engaging podcasts a must.  The handful of occasions they walked more than 20 miles in a single day were “a killer”. 

CLICK HERE to read the ONA Magazine Issue 114 online.