Today’s guest, unlike our previous guests did not get an official diagnosis of his dyslexia until later in life, 59 to be precise, this was November 2019, just prior to Covid.
Born into a business family tracing their roots back several centuries in York. He is the youngest of five children and attended a prestigious fee paying school called St Peters. The end of term school reports described a boy who was always pleasant and cheerful but whose academic performance puzzled most of the teachers. Top of the class on some occasions and bottom on others, one teacher remarked on his performance as being incredible, 17th in class and top in the end of term exam. This erratic performance continued until age 16, when he left the school with an unclassified result in English, and yet five random 0 level passes including one in Greek Civilisation.
Away from school, his childhood revolved around the family businesses, in particular an agricultural machinery supply company, where he would spend his holidays involving himself in all aspects of the business, from serving petrol on the garage forecourt, being tasked with work in the accounts office but mainly in the workshops and in particular helping load the lorries and go with the drivers to deliver the tractors and farm machinery.
He worked for two other farm machinery dealerships before returning to the family business at age 20. Only working for the business for three years before it was sold. He then went to work for a then unknown company in the UK called Karcher. Where he was one of the first salespeople in the UK to sell their range of power washers. He credits Karcher for teaching him how to sell successfully.
He took the sales skills, and in 1985 set up his own business to sell mobile phones, this was not without its problems because the first bank he approached declined to give him a bank account on the basis there would be insufficient demand for a company specialising in the sale of mobile phones.
Needless to say the business was highly successful. A very key decision, in the first few weeks of establishing his own business was to book a place on the Dale Carnegie course. This was to be the starting point for his journey of business education and personal development. However, after a few years he felt overwhelmed and this led to mental health issues, resulting in his exit from the mobile phone industry.
Over the next few decades his life cycled between great highs and lows. He now believes he was incorrectly diagnosed with depression. He refused to accept antidepressants but instead pursued an alternative strategy of improving his health by changing his diet, exercise and further personal development leading to a number of diverse qualifications which he now holds.

Generally speaking the cycle of office based jobs, started successfully but became stressful and untenable. Throughout this time he would take time out to go and drive trucks. Never having held a full-time job as a truck driver, he has worked through agencies and consequently has a wide variety of experience driving all kinds of lorries and carrying most kinds of cargo. But finding the food industry the most interesting and in particular has worked extensively in the transport of potatoes.
During this time he also got married and divorced. And is now Father to 27 year old twin daughters who have their own careers and with whom he is still in regular contact.
From time to time, he was offered work training other drivers and it was as a result of one of these projects that he was asked to submit a report, which he asked his brother to read. And was told that to submitted would “do you no favours at all”
This experience led him finally to obtaining a full dyslexia assessment, and in turn this has led to getting help from the Department of work and pensions and consequently he is now looking forward to an entirely different future.
In particular our guest often relates the experience of having breakfast in his kitchen the morning after the day of the original assessment in 2019 and literally bursting into laughter as he looked around his home and realised his whole life was governed by the fact he is exceptionally dyslexic and never realised.
The 7/8 of the dyslexia iceberg, that is to say all of the aspects of life that is affected by being dyslexic other than the poor ability to read and write, are the aspects of dyslexia that are guest today has become particularly interested in.
Please welcome Alan Kaye.