# Sir Jackie's early life with extreme dyslexia

- **Episode:** [133](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/133.md) (2024-10-03)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** dyslexia, early-life, school
- **Time:** 4:31–8:03 (start 271s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/133?t=271](https://truthliesandwork.com/133?t=271)

---

[4:31] Jackie Stewart: Now, I was a disaster at school. I'm an extreme dyslexic, and I can't read, I can't write. To this very day, I, I don't know the Lord's Prayer, I don't know the words of our national anthem. And many times have I spoken to members of the, uh, our royal family not being— I'm a millisecond behind everybody else because I'm hearing it and I can picked that up, and that's a sort of skill that I got out of necessity. And in my particular case, if I had just accepted what happened to me in school, I think I probably would be in jail somewhere because they said I was stupid, I was thick, and I was useless. They did not know what dyslexia was. I fortunately took up trap shooting, clay pigeon shooting, at an early age. My grandfather was a gamekeeper, my father a fine shot, and for some reason, at the age of 14, he said, listen, why don't you have a little go at trap shooting? Now, it turned out that I was good at that. In fact, the first event I ever entered, was in Scotland on New Year's Day, and I won the most beautiful trophy. I mean, it must have been this size. Um, why? Because everybody else had been drinking all night before New Year's Eve, and I, as a wee boy at 14 years of age, was completely clean. So I won it 3 times in a row, as a matter of fact, each year. for the same reason, but it gave me an indication of having to focus on whatever I was trying to do in the, in the element of my shooting. That was a fantastic learning curve to shoot competitively, as it so happened. But my mum and dad had a wee garage in Dumbarton, so I When I left school at 14 with no education, I started to be serving petrol on the forecourt. And I learned that if I did it very well and I did a bit more than was being asked for, I'd get tips. And I earned more money on tips than I did on what I was getting paid for a wage. And that was me learning That if I'm really nice for you, Fred, and you're really nice to me, he'll give me a wee bit of money. And I, I built that very strongly. I went to night school. That wasn't much of a success, but I also became a good mechanic. I worked in the garage and the floor was clean because I cleaned it immaculate all the time. And I'm still doing that in whatever activity I'm in. So I think you start by finding something you're good at. It doesn't matter what it is, and it may not be the thing that it ends up to be, the, the talent that you're being recognized for. And in my particular case, it was first of all shooting, because then I shot for Scotland