Ben Winston (@benwinston) is one of the most successful producers in television.
He was the executive producer of The Late Late Show with James Corden and also produced Friends: The Reunion.
He has also produced music specials for the likes of Bruno Mars, One Direction, Adele and Elton John and recently made a documentary series Ed Sheeran: The Sum of it All for Disney +, which premiered in June.
When did you start supporting Arsenal and why?
I grew up in Temple Fortune, North London, and I lived there until I moved to Los Angeles about nine years ago.
My family has always been Arsenal. My father (Baron Robert Winston, the world famous fertility doctor and scientist) was always an Arsenal fan. He’s become more of a fan now than he was when I was a child, I think.
I became obsessed when I was six or seven and my sister Tanya, who is five or six years older than me, was always a massive Gooner and she probably influenced me quite a bit as well as my dad.
One of the main influences on me was Alan Sefton, who was the head of the Arsenal Community Department and the head of the Arsenal Charitable Trust.
He came from Portsmouth in 1986 to head up Arsenal in the Community and we were the first club really to create a community programme in top level football, which had such a huge impact on the area around it.
Alan is my mum's first cousin, so my first cousin once removed, but he's like an uncle to me. I spent a lot of my childhood hanging out at the JVC Centre with him, around the back of the clock end on match days.
I would go to games and then he'd let me into the car park so I could try and get autographs of the players and he’d also get me a lot of tickets for away games.
Alan has had a huge impact on my whole life, really, because he was always so community-minded. He always puts other people before himself. Suddenly there was someone with a job at Arsenal who was less concerned about whether we won on a Saturday and more focused about using Arsenal for the local kids to be able to speak French or learn maths.
He would set up these schemes that would really help the local community in a huge way. I always looked up to him as a leader. And the fact that he did it all through Arsenal, I thought, was such an amazing thing that our football club would do.
It was more than just the team on the pitch. So he had a huge influence on me as a young man and he still does. I think my real fervour probably came from the fact I was so close to Alan and he worked at the football club.
What was your first Arsenal match?
I was nine and it was Arsenal against Liverpool. The score was 1-1 and Paul Merson and John Barnes scored (April 18 1990, Barnes scoring a last-minute equaliser).
It was a hugely significant moment in my life. I remember walking up the stairs to the West Lower and seeing that pitch. I still remember the gasp of my breath as I saw Highbury for the first time.
It was a big moment because I'd been obsessed with football for a really long time, so the build-up to that first game was huge for me.
We got season tickets, I think probably around about 1991, in the West Lower and as I got older I moved over to the Clock End, where I stayed until we left Highbury.
Now I live in LA, I try to come back for games every six weeks or so. I’m a season ticket holder behind the corner flag in the back row so we can stand and no one bothers us.
Who was your first Arsenal hero and why?
David Rocastle. I remember having that video on VHS, ‘The Rocky Road to Success’ and I watched it every day.
It was a documentary about his life, with him in the 1989 home kit on the cover. I watched it so often that the tape got distorted.
I actually had the opportunity to meet him and interview him for my school newspaper when I was nine.
I was writing a sports column in the primary school newspaper and they told me that I had to do an interview with someone. Most people might think to do an interview with their uncle or their Dad but I spoke to Alan and told him: “I've got to do an interview with someone. It's always been my dream to meet David Rocastle. Would you ask him if there's any chance I can do an interview?”
Alan, bless him, said David was injured at the time and was coming to Highbury for some treatment and that he’d got permission for me to come in.
I remember it so clearly: he was there on the treatment table with (physio) Gary Lewin giving treatment on his leg. He was so kind to me. I walked in and I remember him saying to me: “I hope you don't write for The Sun?”
I was so nervous that I took him seriously. “No, no. I promise this is just for my school newspaper” I said and he laughed and I realised he was joking.
At the end of the interview we obviously had a photo together. My amazing Mum took the photo of us and it was back in the day where obviously there weren’t digital cameras. You just took a picture and you didn't know what it was like until you got it developed.
I remember going to the pharmacist every single day to see if the photos were ready.
It took five days and it was a great photo of David Rocastle. But you could only see my eyes and my forehead because it cut off my nose and my chin.
I remember being absolutely devastated by this photograph and we joke about it to this day about how Mum cut half my head off, cut my chin and nose off in the biggest photo of my entire life.
I actually started a football team called Rocastle Rovers after that and we played a few tournaments, a local football team for me and my mates. We played in the few tournaments such as the Arsenal Charitable Trust end of season games.
I remember the day that I came down for breakfast and my dad was reading the paper. And he looked at me and said we'd sold David Rocastle. I remember his face as he was telling me, his expression so grave, I knew it was bad news as soon as I saw him.
I was so devastated that he had gone and I just really remember that moment of being told that he was sold.
Who is your favourite ever Arsenal player and why?
There are so many heroes that we have had over the years, but for me, there isn't anybody that comes close to Tony Adams.
When I was at school I played football as a defender. I was a bad footballer but you immediately look up to the person who played in your position. I remember doing an impersonation of Tony, playing Number Six and putting my two thumbs in the air just like he used to.
Tony represented who we would have been if we were good enough to play for the football club. He played like he was a fan, the way he wore the shirt and the way he led that team, the way he was with us.
Especially in his post-playing career, he's the person I think I admire and look up to the most, by a country mile.
The way he so publicly dealt with his addiction, with his books, his charity, his talks, he has changed and saved so many people’s lives. He has set an example for so many. I don’t think people realise how much he does for others. He is just a level above the rest and is such an inspiration.
I've always been very close with Tom Watt, who’s been a great friend of mine for years.
One of my first jobs was working for Tom when I was a researcher on his talkSport radio show and we became friendly and we went to games together, to away games and a lot of European away nights. We used to call them ‘Tommy Tours.’
I don't remember what year it was, but I was meeting Tom for dinner before a game in Islington and he said “Just so you know, I am with a friend of mine who you might want to meet.” I didn't know who it was and I walked in the restaurant and there was Tony – and I could hardly speak.
So I sat with them and joined them. Tom knew what a significant moment this was for me. Although I couldn’t speak I still loved that dinner. And it just so happened that a week later, my father was speaking at an event at the Cheltenham Book Festival and I was going.
Tony lives near Cheltenham and so when it came up I would be in his area the following week he was really interested to come and hear the lecture. I didn't know if he would actually come, but he did and over the months that followed we just became friendly.
After a while he invited me to come and stay at his house for the weekend I remember driving up to the Cotswolds with my wife , and her asking why we were going to stay with a random person. I told her we would have fun , but to just allow this trip, because this was going to be the biggest weekend of my life.
She walked in and fell in love with Tony’s unbelievable wife, Poppy, who's now one of our closest friends in the whole world and is probably one of the greatest people we've ever met. His children are just a delight too, please God my kids will be as great teenagers as his are.
They’ve become really close friends of ours and we speak a lot.
They say to never meet your heroes but he's the most incredible man, a wonderful supportive friend and what he's done, what he's done in setting up this charity Sporting Chance and the support he gives people in need, I just I can't get over what he's achieved in his life.
Forget even about football. The number of people who rely on him and the number of lives he saved, I think he's a remarkable, remarkable man.
I remind him, even now, that he's my hero.
Mr Arsenal. We couldn't have a better person to be called Mr Arsenal.
What’s your biggest Arsenal regret/disappointment?
There was a period from the ages of 18-30 when I never missed a European away game.
I saw the world in an amazing way –it was a great geography education, actually, and I learnt a lot – breaking habits of going to the same places all the time on holiday or to visit family.
Why else would a young man go to places like Bremen, Kyiv or Moscow, even?
We used to turn up first thing in the morning, go and see a site and then we'd have an amazing lunch somewhere. Then we'd find the square to be with the fans, go to the game and be back on the plane that night.
I’d be back in school at 9am the next morning.
As for regrets I was there for all of the European finals that we have lost.
I was there in Paris with Nayim (Arsenal lost 2-1 to Real Zaragoza in the last minute with a freak goal from former Tottenham midfielder Nayim); Copenhagen (Arsenal lost on penalties to Galatasaray in 2000) and the Champions League final (2006 with two late Barcelona goals seeing us lose 2-1). I was there in Azerbaijan (Arsenal lost 4-1 to Chelsea) and I can tell you that flying from LA for that final was not fun – one of the longest flights I've ever done.
I remember when we lost to Zaragoza in 95 and getting the Eurostar home. I would have been 14 at that game and the French police tear gassed us at the end of the game because they decided that Zaragoza fans needed to leave first, so they locked us in.
Everyone started banging on the doors and they tear gassed us and it was so scary as a 14 year old. I didn't know what was happening and I couldn't breathe. I was with my brother and sister that night.
But I always remember when I got home, Tony Adams had a quote in the paper that said: “I hope our fans can remember, it's only by experiencing the bad times that we will truly appreciate the good ones.” I think about that whenever anything bad happens in football or life, really. By those moments in football, it really makes you appreciate the good ones.
The biggest disappointment was definitely Champions League final. It's the thing we've always wanted. It's the thing I think about more than anything else. I can't think of anything I want more, really, and I've never watched that game back, so I've never really seen the sending off, I've never seen the goals, never seen any of it.
As soon as you lose it, you are so far from it. I think that dawned on me when we were leaving that stadium in Paris. We had got so close and now we were all the way back to the beginning again and equal with everybody else. No closer than we were a year ago.
It still bothers me to this day.
What is your favourite Arsenal memory (away from the pitch) and why?
I bid in a charity auction for dinner with Arsene Wenger once. Me and a couple of friends and I went three ways on it so it was less expensive!
It was one of the most amazing lunches I've ever had.
Arsene walked in and I could see he was wondering who he was meeting. So I said “We obviously know who you are, Mr Wenger, but you wouldn't know who we are so why don't we all go around and introduce ourselves and talk about our love for the club, but also what you have meant to us?”
It was about two years after he had left Arsenal, towards the end of the Unai Emery era. My friend Joff, has recently lost his father and he spoke about the great times and the beautiful memories he’d had with his father because of what Arsene had achieved.
My other friend Dermot talked about what Arsenal had meant to him growing up and how Arsene showed such dignity and leadership and what an example he had set.
Then it was my turn and I just talked about how much Arsene changed all of our lives, the joy he'd given us, the impact he had on us, and how we would always remember everything he always did for this football club. And then I just thanked him for it all.
You could see at the end of those three speeches, he suddenly was like, “Oh, OK, I'm sat with three people who really get it” and he immediately changed his whole demeanour and we had a great lunch.
It was only supposed to be an hour and a half and it ended up being four or five hours.
He told stories and we drank wine and then he said something like “Let's do this every summer, every year.”
Of course we had no way of getting hold of him, but it was lovely that he said it and it meant a great deal.
What is your favourite ever Arsenal match?
It was the 1993 FA Cup semi-final at Wembley when Tony’s header won it for us (Tony Adams scored with a header to win 1-0 and avenge the 3-1 defeat we’d suffered against Tottenham at the same stage, at the same stadium, two years earlier).
Two years earlier, in 1991, we’d lost to Tottenham and it was so upsetting, seeing the Tottenham fans celebrating.
I had school the next day and my memory is scarred by it – absolutely one of the worst experiences.
Walking down Wembley Way after we’d won, knowing that we had had the last laugh, there’s nothing that beats that feeling, probably until we win the Champions League!
I’ve actually got a massive photo of Tony’s header on the wall of my office, taken from the angle of the bottom of the net.
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