IAN MCDOWALL
Ian began working as a nightclub bouncer at the age of 18 and by the time he was 24 he was taking a gun to work. Violence and anger took over his life. All the time he was getting more involved in crime and the taking and selling of anabolic steriods and other drugs. He lived for his obsession: bodybuilding but the drugs were destroying his health.His heart was becoming cold and hard as stone. After a serious fight at a club one night, he pleaded with God to change him. At that moment, love filled his heart and he was born-again by the power of God's Spirit. Ian is no longer filled with hatred but now travels with the Tough Talk team sharing his faith in Jesus Christ and the love of God.

ARTHUR WHITE
Arthur was a world Champion powerlifter, a successful businessman and a happy family man.Then, his life spiralled out of control. Cocaine, steroids and an affair wrecked his life. He lost his family, his business....everything. Death seemed the only way out. Yet, when everyone had given up on him, Arthur heard a voice calling out to him-the voice of God. On a freezing cold morning in Spitalfield market in East London, he responded to the voice and Jesus Christ came into his life. His life was restored and he had a reason to live. Arthur changed his ways and became a born-again Christian with a passion to tell others of God's mercy and love.He is still powerlifting, but now without drugs, and has recently won a World Masters Powerlifting championship.

ADAM MACMILLAN
Adam went off the rails as a youngster starting with petty crime and ending up as an expert car thief. He got into drugs and lost his job because of smoking cannabis. Crime then had to pay his bills. In a friend’s flat one day he found a Bible and began to read it and found out about Jesus and called on Him to help him sort out his life. Soon after, he read an advert for a local church, went along to it only to realise it was one he had previously broken into! He attended the meetings and eventually became a born-again Christian and he gave his life to serve the lord. Adam has been in the Tough Talk team for several years.

JOE LAMPSHIRE
At the age of 16 Joe entered the financial sector of the City of London where he still works as a Lloyds broker. However, with no direction or purpose in life he became caught up in the London lifestyle. At the same time, he got involved in the occult and came to the realisation that good and evil really exist. Joe sensed that there was a void in his life that he was trying to fill with many distractions. It was only when he asked Jesus Christ and became a born again Christian that he felt complete. He is now competing as a competitive power lifter and travels with us all over the world sharing his faith and the power of Jesus Christ that changed his life.

MIKE STEWARD
Mike has been a born-again Christian for many years since, as a totally unbelieving University student, he had a dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ.Since then,he has been committed to sharing the Good News of Jesus in as many ways as possible. He is not a typical Tough Talk team member since he is not an ex-hard man nor a powerlifter but has had a long career as a Professor of Immunology in London University. His role in the team is to act as the Chairman of the Trustees of the charity and to run the Tough Talk office. He feels that it is a great priviledge to serve this group of men whom God is using so powerfully to reach our nation with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

TONY WITTICH
Tony was a normal schoolboy who was very influenced by the faith and life of his Christian mother. He became a born-again believer and was baptised but as he grew older, he drifted away from the church and his life focused on heavy drinking and other forms of self-indulgence. His self-centred life was dramatically influenced by his mother’s obvious trust in God as she was dying. Still, his life continued in a downward spiral until one day he felt that it was totally out of control. He cried out to the Lord to help and came back to faith. He has said that he will “ do absolutely anything” to help in the work of sharing the gospel.

BRYN ROBERTSON
As a young boy, Bryn went voluntarily to church with his brother where he came to a real understanding of the truth that is in Jesus. However, he then went his own way and got into drink, drugs and violence. His life spiralled out of control and he became dark and very angry. He felt that he had lost himself and he longed to go back to what was as a youngster. In 1999, he went back to his church and began to feel that he was back home. Finally, he got to a point where he cried out to God for help. God heard him and he has been really free since then.

SIMON PINCHBECK
Simon Pinchbeck, has been a Christian since 2002 when he was rescued from a life of escalating crime by seeing the change Jesus Christ had made in his friend (and now Tough Talk team member) Bryn Robertson. Simon had been a Police Officer with the Metropolitan police for over 20 years and first met Bryn when he regularly chased him over the terraces during crowd violence at Arsenal Football club. His life went out of control and led to him having to leave the police force after being charged with violent assault on another police officer. He then fell into a life of crime. However, Simon was very impressed to see how Bryn's life had been dramatically changed through his faith in Jesus Christ and he sought Jesus for himself. He gave his life to the Lord in 2002. Simon now regularly shares his testimony at Tough Talk meetings.

MARTYN PARRISH
Martyn started a life of drug addiction at a very early age and this resulted in his life spiralling out of control. The use of one soft drug led to harder drugs and finally, Martyn was injecting heroin and became a registered drug addict. He was very lonely and began to pray. He found strength to get his life back, but convinced himself that it was his own strength that had enabled him to get his life on track. Many years later, Martyn began to examine his life and started to read his Bible secretly. Suddenly, his wife Carol started to attend a church and his faith began to increase. They were both baptised in 2005 and looking back now, he knows that God has always been there for him. Martyn has been bodybuilding for many years and now joins the Tough Talk team at outreach meetings.

CHRIS SAYERS
Chris Sayers, the most recent member of the Tough Talk team believed in God from an early age. As a young boy, his parents became Jehovah’s Witnesses and he was made to go to their meetings. But as a teenager he rebelled, refused to go to the meetings and began drinking and smoking joints. Later, he took up kick-boxing and body-building to improve his self-image, used anabolic steroids excessively. His life spiralled out of control and his marriage broke up. After his divorce, he started a relationship with a Christian woman but continued in his old ways but in the summer of 2005, he went to Notting Hill Carnival and saw a Tough Talk demonstration outside Kensington Temple. He stayed on to the evening which really affected him and he gave his life to the Lord. He didn’t have a thunderbolt experience, but he says “something was happening inside me, it was like a softening”. He then joined a church in Whetstone where he was baptised and married in 2006. Chris his weight training seriously (but does not use steroids!) and now joins the Tough Talk team at meetings and demonstrates the squat.