I'm no sportsman, but a rugby legend's simple, sage advice struck a chord

The Guardian

2 days ago

One of the benefits of a habitual tendency to say yes to anything that will get me on television is the unexpected friendships that can bloom on the dancefloor, in the jungle or, in this case, in the MasterChef kitchen.
I was a contestant in 2016. Among the others was the England rugby international Neil Back, who had been part of the World Cup-winning squad of 2003 and could make a Russian oligarch's close protection team look like the Cheeky Girls.
I was not a noted sportsman in my youth – I have grown to enjoy watching sport but have never been at home in the culture of the clubhouse, the changing room or the training ground. However, Neil and I hit it off instantly. Within two days we were breaking into wardrobe to find out from the names on the aprons who our opposition would be. Within a week he was holding me aloft in an improvised lineout, a testament to his strength rather than my athletic grace. We talked about all sorts of things – shared life experience, unshared life experience – and one day he taught me something that changed my life.
It is not an insight that others have not had. Indeed, it is obvious, a simple thing, but like so many obvious and simple things it is inexhaustibly difficult, too. It came up when we were thinking about which chips are best with burgers. I'm a french fry man myself, as slender and light as you like, but Neil goes for the chunky kind – cut immaculately, thrice cooked, then stacked as neatly as a Le Corbusier brise-soleil.
I was struck by the intense focus Neil brought to this task, which he rehearsed over and over at home before we got to the kitchen. I asked why and he said: 'Perfect practice makes perfect performance.' Of course it does, I thought, but then he said this was a mantra in the England team that won the World Cup. And of course, if Jonny Wilkinson had not practised and practised and practised kicking goals, we would have gone home as runners-up rather than winners.
Perfect practice makes perfect performance, for what is a perfect performance other than practice that does not go wrong? I knew a bit about practice because I am a pianist and have been since childhood. I have practised countless pieces, scales and arpeggios, acquiring the 10,000 hours of experience that doing anything decently requires. But I was lackadaisical, and while I found it quite easy to execute some tricky passages, there were others that were too much for me – too quick, too dense, too complex to play accurately or musically. When I was young I used to busk my way through them, hitting the sostenuto pedal when I got to an unplayable bar to blur the inaccuracies. I would also affect what I thought were Lisztian flourishes at the keyboard as a distraction. I don't suppose I fooled many people, but it got me through.
When I ran away to London and joined a pop band, I had to learn to play in a different way. It is only now, in my 60s, that I have returned seriously to the classical repertoire I played in my teens. It is interesting to revisit who you were as a teenager 45 years later, and discover what has endured and what has changed. What has endured for me is a deep love of music, and what has changed is a willingness to try to play it properly; not to busk my way through difficult passages but to face them squarely, break them down, put them together slowly and methodically, to practise and practise and practise, and to discover the obvious thing: if you practise, you get better.
This has not only made me a better pianist than I was then, even if I am not yet back to peak technique; it has made me a better musician. By that I mean more patient, more focused, more willing to engage. It's been a life lesson, too.
I read a story recently about a man who visited Rachmaninov, the greatest pianist of his day, at home in Los Angeles. As he approached the front door, he could hear the great man practising in his music room. What titanic flourishes, what miracles of touch and dexterity poured forth?
A chord of two notes, played very slowly, over and over and over again.
Richard Coles is a writer, broadcaster and former Church of England clergyman