Dwayne Fields, explorer

·51 min·4 clips

A London Underground driver, finding Dwayne sleeping on the Central Line when homeless at 22, pointed to his ring and said: 'For it to be a beautiful ring, it had to be burnt and bent and battered into shape — maybe that's what you're going through.'

1. Desert Island Discs episode features explorer and UK chief scout Dwayne Fields, interviewed by host Lauren Laverne. 2. Dwayne Fields is an explorer who has traversed Oman's deserts, Gabon's rainforests, and the Arctic; in 2010 he became the first Black Briton to reach the magnetic North Pole; he co-created the We Too Foundation to take young people from challenging backgrounds on life-changing adventures. 3. The episode's central question is how Fields moved from being shot at and stabbed in Hackney in his early twenties to becoming one of the UK's most prominent outdoor adventurers. 4. Born in Linstead, Jamaica, in 1982, Fields was raised by his great-grandmother Loretta, who he describes as 'the softest human being in existence,' providing a safety net that exposed him to risk 'in a safe way' and instilling a philosophy of equal treatment for all people. 5. His father lived nearby but passed every day on a motorbike without acknowledging Dwayne; the moment he watched his great-grandmother follow him to the gate, grab him with tears in her eyes, and say 'stop coming out here — can't you see the man doesn't like you' is the moment he says all his pride in his father disappeared. 6. Arriving in Hackney at age six after being called to the UK by his mother, Fields describes opening the back door of a maisonette expecting trees and countryside and finding a brick wall — 'everything that I'd known, everything that I'd become accustomed to, had been taken away.' 7. He attempted to make friends at school by scooping up woodlice, centipedes, and worms to teach classmates about female wood lice carrying young on their stomach; every child ran away screaming, which prompted him to decide 'maybe Dwayne, don't be you' — a behaviour pattern he says he maintained for years. 8. He found belonging at a Cub Scout troop in Hackney after accidentally following his friend Stavros inside — a man at the door said 'nonsense, let him come in' and he felt immediately at home because making things and tying knots recalled his Jamaican childhood. 9. At 19, Fields was stabbed in a serious attack while in the wrong place at the wrong time; in his mid-twenties, he returned to a Hackney estate to recover a moped he and his brother had built, and a man pulled a loaded gun on him — the trigger was pulled twice and both times the gun misfired. 10. After the moped incident, Fields describes what helped him was asking himself 'when were you the true version of yourself?' and recognising the answer was as a barefoot feral kid in Jamaica, wading into ponds to find what lived under them. 11. The reconnection with that self came when he stopped his car driving through Epping Forest, walked one minute into the woods, 'couldn't hear any cars, couldn't hear any sounds,' and felt 'it just reawoken something that had been quiet or silenced for so long.' 12. Fields became homeless at 22 after his relationship with his mother became unbearable; he hid his backpack behind estate bins during the day, pretended to friends everything was normal, and spent nights sleeping on the Central Line. 13. A Central Line driver found him sleeping, pointed to his ring, and said: 'For it to be a beautiful ring, it had to be burnt and bent and battered into shape — maybe that's what you're going through. You should call someone.' Fields used his last 30 pence to call his cousin from a phone box that morning. 14. His motivation to apply for an Arctic expedition came after his friend Etem — a football player for Dagenham and Redbridge who had just become a lifeguard — was shot and killed yards from where Fields himself had faced a gun; he resolved to use adventure as a platform against street violence. 15. He discovered the expedition while watching Ben Fogle and James Cracknell on breakfast television discuss plans to walk to the South Pole; when they asked for a third person he sent in an application too late, but was offered the North Pole instead. 16. During his research, Fields found that Matthew Henson had become the first Black person to reach the magnetic North Pole in 1909 alongside Robert Peary — 'the first time I'm seeing a face that looks like mine associated with the conditions I'm about to go into.' 17. To raise the required £22,000, he went door-to-door through Dalston asking businesses for money; people told him 'you're from Jamaica, that's not for us,' which only added to his determination to prove them wrong. 18. He trained by pulling tires on Hackney Marshes until boys laughed at him there, then moved his training sessions to a closed park at dead of night so no one would see him. 19. Reaching the North Pole in April 2010 after a 400-nautical-mile walk, he describes realising in that moment 'that point on the map was never the goal — it was about being bold enough to set yourself a target that appeared unachievable and working hard enough to realise it.' 20. People who appreciate biographical storytelling about resilience, outdoor adventure, and class and race in British public life will find the episode compelling; those wanting technical adventure detail or music discussion will find the episode skews strongly toward personal narrative.

As heard by us

Dwayne Fields turns a castaway interview into a grounded story about childhood, belonging and adventure as a way back to confidence.

Dwayne Fields's Desert Island Discs is strongest when it treats exploration as something that began long before the expeditions. Lauren Laverne introduces him as the UK's chief scout, a TV adventurer and the first Black Briton to reach the magnetic North Pole, but the pull is in…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a thoughtful journey from Jamaica and Hackney to Arctic achievement.

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