James Haskell

Why organisations work with James Haskell

• He is a genuine household name. Seventy-seven England caps, a British & Irish Lions tour, I’m a Celebrity, and one of the UK’s biggest sports podcasts mean the audience turns up before he has said a word.
• One booking flexes across formats, from after-dinner and awards hosting to in-conversation events with his Good, The Bad & The Rugby co-host Alex Payne. An event is not tied to a single register.
• His mental-health credibility is the real thing. He has worked with a sports psychologist since the age of 19 and co-founded the player-welfare campaign Progressive Rugby, so the serious content lands as lived rather than scripted.
• He can make a room laugh and then make it listen. The touring stories and the honesty about anxiety and lost identity come from the same person, on the same night.

Biography highlights

• 77 caps for England, the third-highest tally by an England flanker, behind Lawrence Dallaglio and Joe Worsley.
• Toured New Zealand with the British & Irish Lions.
• Premiership and Heineken Cup winner with Wasps, with further spells in France, Japan, and New Zealand.
• Man of the Series in England’s 3-0 win in Australia, and part of the 2016 Six Nations Grand Slam side.
• Co-host of The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, among the UK’s most-listened-to sports podcasts.
• Sunday Times bestselling author of What A Flanker, with further books across memoir, fitness, and personal growth.
• Co-founder of Progressive Rugby, the campaign group pressing World Rugby to act on concussion and player welfare.

Biography

On the Saturday, he was James Haskell, England rugby player. By the Monday after he announced his retirement, by his own account, he no longer knew who James Haskell was. He has likened the loss to pulling the pin from a grenade and waiting for it to detonate.

That candour is the part organisations tend not to expect. Behind the loud public figure is someone who has seen a sports psychologist since the age of 19. He talks about confidence, anxiety, and the pressures of a decorated career without varnish.

The rugby record gives him standing to talk about pressure. He won 77 caps for England, toured New Zealand with the British & Irish Lions, and won Premiership and European titles before playing in France, Japan, and New Zealand. He was Man of the Series in England’s 3-0 win in Australia in 2016.

Since 2019 he has built a second career with more reach than most playing ones. He co-hosts The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, one of the UK’s biggest sports podcasts, and wrote the Sunday Times bestseller What A Flanker. He also co-founded Progressive Rugby, the group pressing World Rugby to act on concussion and player welfare.

Key speaking topics

• Mental health and emotional wellbeing
• Performing under pressure
• Resilience and reinvention
• Identity and life after elite sport
• High-performance team environments
• The toll of social media on wellbeing

Ideal for

• Awards ceremonies, gala dinners, and client-entertainment evenings that need a host or after-dinner name with broad public recognition.
• Conferences that want a session on pressure, mental health, and life after a defining role, delivered with humour rather than as a lecture.
• CHROs and wellbeing leads building a mental-health programme that needs a credible male voice to open the conversation.
• Sales kick-offs and team events that want entertainment with a real message about performing under pressure.

Audience outcomes

• Permission to talk about mental health, from someone a high-performance and often sceptical audience will actually listen to.
• A blunt account of how elite performers hide anxiety and pressure, and the price they pay for it.
• A sharper read on why people struggle when a defining role ends, where the problem is usually lost identity, not the change itself.
• An evening they remember, because the serious points land while the room is still laughing.