Instead, I’m here to tell you finding your purpose isn’t enough. The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

We were training 12 to 15 times a week, 50 weeks of the year. I think sometimes people see you compete at the Paralympics or other amazing places around the world and think that is what you do all the time. There is an element of that, but a lot of it is just really boring and repetitive. The vast majority of your time as an athlete is spent on the road or in the gym.

Having found suitable men, our next problem was to keep them and nurture them until they were ready. To do that I had to give them work of significance to do, and not treat them as apprentices. As I allotted them important tasks, some of the old guard became apprehensive for their own positions. They saw no reason why these bright, young, energetic men who had not contributed to the struggle, should come in and displace them before they were ready to go.

Running CiRA with some 250 staff, I have come to spend less time discussing their data with my colleagues and students, and have been absorbed by my duties as the "chief executive officer" of CiRA, including devising strategies to advance both basic and applied research and to obtain sufficient funding. Anxious about the lack of financial resources for the future to allow us to continue hiring research support staffers, I even ran the full Kyoto Marathon in 2012 to raise online donations from the public. It was hard but helped us raise more than 10 million yen.

Yeah, I try to make sure Sundays I’m about and present. This weekend he wants to do an apple crumble. We’ll normally do some sort of slow roasting in the morning because we’ll be off to rugby training, and then the afternoon when we get back, it’s all cooked and lovely.

The team’s achievement of winning 2 Michelin stars in 2012.

Everything that’s happened to me was because I said yes to everything and gave it a go. I never thought, wouldn’t it be good if I got two Michelin stars and my own TV shows. I just tried my hardest at everything I got the chance to do. If I could give the younger me advice I’d just say, never underestimate graft. Give up on sleep, work very hard, and it will pay off. Graft graft graft. And never give up.

My team.

That everyone understood and respected the food pyramid, the way it all works. Good food doesn’t come cheap. You know, there’s a lot of heart and soul and care that goes in producing as well as cooking. So I’d give a little bit more love to farmers.

It’s very easy to get caught up in a habit of work hard and play hard. I couldn’t tell you how much I used to drink in a week – I haven’t got enough fingers. I own two pubs and had built up a reputation of being the best party person in the industry. It got to a point where I realised I was getting too old to be that guy. Now I enjoy the challenge of being on a stag weekend for three days, but drinking Diet Coke and coffee.