Former MP John Hemming has spent a lifetime challenging accepted wisdom. Today his latest obsession is biohacking, but the real story is not vitamins or longevity. It is curiosity, regulation and whether Britain has become too cautious to explore better ways of staying healthy.
John Hemming has never been especially good at staying in his lane. I first met him more than thirty years ago when we both sat on Birmingham City Council: John a Liberal Democrat, me Labour. Yet politics was never the most interesting thing about him. Even then there was something unusual about the way his mind worked. Most politicians arrived armed with opinions and left with more of them. John arrived carrying questions. He had an irritating habit of examining accepted wisdom as though it were merely a working hypothesis waiting to be tested. Three decades later, very little appears to have changed.