A Life Less Ordinary with Sophie Elwes

Karen Darke tells me about being injured aged 21 in a mountain climbing accident and how she overcame her fear of heights following this accident to eventually climb El Capitan, as a paraplegic using just her arms. She shares with me her story from first riding a handcycle to becoming a Paralympic champion in Rio in 2016, helped, along with a lot of training, motivation and hard work, by an unders...

Siena Castellon is an 18-year-old advocate, author, mentor and Young Leader for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She is autistic, has dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD. After being eventually diagnosed with autism she wrote The Spectrum Girl's Survival Guide: How to Grow Up Awesome and Autistic, which is a fantastic guide for neurodiverse girls navigating a neurotypical world. We discuss the...

Actor, writer and TV presenter Charley Boorman has travelled all over the world by motorbike, often alongside best friend Ewan McGregor. He has had two huge motorbike accidents which left him with serious injuries which have left long term damage but he refuses to be defined by his injuries. In the Apple TV+ show Long Way Up they travel up from Ushuaia in Argentina through South and Central Americ...

Two-time world champion and gold medal-winning Paralympian David Smith MBE was born with a club foot and has had a rare tumour in his neck which left him fighting for his life after several major surgeries and having to learn how to walk again four times. We speak about how learning and competing in karate as a youngster taught him a set of values which would lead him to competing at multiple spor...

A former drug dealer, crack addict and young offender, Brett Moran 's life changed when he stumbled across a book on meditation whilst on a drug deal in a prison library. He has since become a published author, life coach and yoga and meditation instructor and his daily meditations on his Instagram account have helped countless people deal with life’s challenges. Sophie and Brett discuss thei...

Sophie Morgan is a TV presenter, award-winning disability advocate, artist and entrepreneur who became paralysed at the age of 18 in a car accident. Since then Sophie has carved out an impressive career as a TV presenter covering a range of topics, as well as presenting Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympic Games for both London and Rio. Sophie is passionate about creating change for people...

Paula Akpan is a freelance journalist and co-founder of Black Girl Festival. She is also co-founder of The ‘I’m Tired’ Project – a campaign which aims to highlight the significance of micro-aggressions and stereotypes faced by people in everyday life. Paula writes about a range of subjects with a particular interest in blackness and queerness. She shares her thoughts on the apparent ‘discovery of...

Alana Nichols is a five-time Paralympian and six-time medalist who has competed in three different sports - wheelchair basketball, alpine skiing and para-canoeing. She is the first US female Paralympian to win gold medals in both summer and winter games. Coming from a para-ski racing background, Alana is one of Sophie’s biggest role-models and a total inspiration for her. She is president of the W...

The talented Ashley Belal Chin rose to fame in 1999 BBC film Storm Damage and has enjoyed success as an actor, screen-writer, rapper and spoken word poet. Having thought happiness was found in success and material possessions he realised, after converting to Islam in 2002, where it was really to be found. We speak about his upbringing on a council estate in London where he spent his youth mixed up...

Sophie speaks to Netflix’s Sex Education star George Robinson about his rugby accident in 2015 when he broke his neck and finds out about his journey to appearing in one of Netflix’s biggest hits of 2020. They chat about Tiger King, self-image, representation of disability in the media and the audition process. George gives his words of wisdom about how important it is to learn about yourself and...

Sophie talks to the multi-talented Alexandra Adams. Alexandra is an athlete, a photographer, a cook, an artist, a writer, poet, TED talk speaker and medical student. She’s also deafblind and suffers from a Mitochondrial condition. Sophie and Alexandra first met on a training camp in Austria with British Parasnowsport in 2016 and that was the start of a friendship which led to many interesting conv...

Sophie talks to Ben West who is an award-winning mental health campaigner who lost his brother Sam to suicide in 2018. Realising there was no formal training for teachers about mental health, Ben created a petition for teachers to receive mandatory Mental Health First Aid training. Sophie and Ben discuss the stigma around the ‘S’ word, how people opened up to him after his brother’s death and he r...

Sophie has a conversation with cross-bench peer and eight time gold winning Paralympic medallist, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE DL. Tanni sits in the House of Lords where she advocates for disability rights, welfare and disability sport. She first went to the Paralympic Games in 1988 and to four more Games after that, winning 11 Paralympic medals, eight gold medals, breaking three world records...

Hosted by Sophie Elwes, who knows a thing or two about overcoming difficulties, after sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2011. Each episode Sophie will interview an extraordinary guest who has faced and overcome enormous challenges and adversity and is achieving incredible things in spite of what they've had to deal with. She'll be finding out their story, about their greatest struggles...