00:18My parents never intended to call me John.
00:23They were going to call me Ian, but my cousin Ian Smith was born a few weeks before me.
00:30So they had to come up with an alternative quickly.
00:34When I was growing up, I realised that I had narrowly escaped, sharing a name with another
00:39Ian Smith, the then Prime Minister of Apartheid Rhodesia.
00:45When Rhodesia grew up, it changed its name to Zimbabwe.
00:51My name never bothered me as a child.
00:55When I was at junior school, I was one of the tallest in my class, and my friends all
01:01called me Big John.
01:03I loved my junior school and did very well.
01:09When I got to the age of ten, I stopped growing and all my classmates got bigger.
01:15So by the time I got to senior school, I had become one of the shortest boys in my class.
01:23To make things worse, I was one of the few boys to be sent to their new school in short
01:28trousers.
01:31I was bullied a bit, and acquired the nickname Piddly Smith because of my diminutive stature.
01:40There were three other Smiths in my class.
01:43Peter R. Smith, Peter J. Smith, and William Shakespeare Smith, who for some reason got bullied too.
01:54I was bullied a bit and acquired the nickname Piddly Smith because of my diminutive stature.
01:59I was bullied a bit and acquired the nickname Piddly Smith, who'll be in the
02:06way I go.
02:06Then I got up.
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