Felix White: How cricket helped me process my mum’s MS
Our Ambassador Felix White is a musician, writer and presenter of BBC Radio 5 Live’s Tailenders podcast. Felix’s memoir, It’s Always Summer Somewhere, is released today. In the book Felix writes about the effect of his mother Lana’s MS on the family as he grew up.
Felix chatted to Lee Dainty from the MS Society about his book and what supporting our work means to him.
Lee: Hi Felix, how are you doing?
Felix: Hi Lee, very well thank you. Welcome to my studio at home, my little office studio where I’ve been spending a lot of my life recently.
Lee: You and your brother Hugo have been supporting us since 2009 - so that’s well over a decade now. I first found out about it when a colleague came into the office and said: “Guess what, I went to see The Maccabees last night and they were selling badges to raise money for us!” What was it that inspired you to support the MS Society in the first place?
Felix: My mum had MS and she died when we were teenagers. So when our band The Maccabees started to become a thing and were playing to more and more people, we thought it would be nice to do something for MS.
Lee: You’ve supported us ever since throughout what’s been an incredible career. And you’ve got a new book coming out in August! It focuses largely on cricket and music and how your passions for both of them have helped to shape your life.
Felix: It is about cricket and music but mostly it’s a story about loss. And about watching my mum get ill and then processing grief. That’s really what the spine of the story is.
I was asked to write a cricket book and I realised early on that it was going to be an exploration into why we put love and feelings into the places we do.
That’s what it’s actually about. I thought it was really interesting that I’d developed an affinity with the England cricket team in the 90s who lost all the time. This was while I was trying to process the more unthinkable loss of my mum getting more and more ill with MS.
Lee: You obviously feel very deeply that you want something good to come out of it. And that’s why you and Hugo have given such extraordinary support to the MS Society over the years. We really wanted to recognise that by inviting you and Hugo to become official MS Society Ambassadors in 2016. What does it mean to you to become an MS Society Ambassador?
Felix: It means so much to be able to do something tangible. Also without thinking it at the time, it was about making something positive out of it.
Lee: The Maccabees are no more but you now have a successful cricket podcast for BBC Radio 5 - live Tailenders. And you’ve set up a charitable foundation continuing your support of charities.
The MS Society has just been very lucky to receive a gift of £10,000 from you guys – thank you so much for that.
Felix: That’s a total pleasure, it came about at the start of the pandemic so we could raise some money and distribute it to causes that were close to us - which of course the MS Society is a huge one.
Lee: What would it mean to you to stop MS?
Felix: It’s too big a thing to answer… but it would be an unreal achievement. It would be testament to all the many people who struggled for it.
Lee: Thanks for making time to speak to us today Felix.
Felix: A pleasure - you do such amazing work, it really is completely inspiring.
We’re hugely grateful to have Ambassadors like Felix and Hugo on our team, who use their public platform to raise awareness of MS.
Want to join Team Stop MS?
Share, donate, fundraise. There’s so many ways to support vital MS research. Go to our Team Stop MS page to find out how to get started.
