"What does the word 'winner' mean to you?"

I was once asked this during a job interview.


I mumbled some mess like: if you don't give up you technically haven't lost yet.


Another favourite has to be the often cited Thomas Edison quip: I've not failed, I've just found 'somewhere between 5,000 - 20,000'* ways not to do something.


Motivational speakers love to say shit like this. I've seen audiences smile with the reassurance that this sentence provides, but it blithely conceals the 20,000 wretched sacrifices that were 'necessary'.


What I wish I could have said during that interview was: "winners will not let piss stop them from winning. Therefore I am a Loser because...

I couldn't piss on the side of the road or rather 'race track', in broad daylight, in front of some fans, a mobile camera crew - and consequently the world, or rather worse: the people in the world that are watching specifically to see me because, to them, I am a friend, their child, their sibling, a symbol of hope for our nation, an example for the future - for some small child that wishes to grow up and be just like me and do what I am doing: pissing on the side of the road-cum-race track, in broad daylight, in front of some fans, a camera crew and the world - all of them solemnly beholding a winner squatting down to wee.

I can't handle that pressure. 

But winners can. Paula Radcliffe did. She carried on and won that race.


So what I'm saying is don't hire me; hire Paula".

I'm just saying...

* The number of times he claims to have failed is disputably within this range.