Tom Nash on new podcast Last Meal, his club career and the ‘anti-fragility’ movement

In the aftermath of meningococcal disease, this good-humoured bon vivant - with hooks for hands - built a notable career as a DJ, nightclub promoter, and now as a YouTuber.

Tom Nash and Caesar. Picture: Jarrad Seng

Meet Tom Nash and his dog Caesar. “He has separation anxiety, and likes to be draped around my shoulders like a scarf – he’ll ­happily stay like that for hours,” he says of the elderly Italian greyhound. Nash, 42, has done many ­interesting things in his life. He’s been a nightclub promoter and DJ, written an acclaimed memoir and given a TEDx Talk; he recently interviewed the famous scientist Richard Dawkins for a new 18-part YouTube series titled Last Meal with Tom Nash, in which he asks original thinkers what they’d like their last meal to be – and then cooks it for them (he’s a whiz in the kitchen, too) while they have a deep ­conversation about life. Also, he likes to have a bit of fun with ­strangers who ask about those hooks for hands.

Nash was uni student in Sydney when he contracted meningococcal. Photo: Jarrad Seng

Nash, pictured as part of Jarrad Seng’s ­project The Story of Scars, was a uni student in Sydney when he contracted meningococcal; he was in a coma for two weeks, and didn’t leave hospital for 18 months. In the early days he was given a 10 per cent chance of survival, tops – and only if he agreed to the amputation of all four limbs. The daily replacement of his wound dressings in the months that followed introduced him to “a level of pain I didn’t even know existed”, he says. It was a hellish mental space for the 19-year-old. “I’d wonder, ‘Am I going to die? And if I live, how shit will my life be?’”

But Nash didn’t only survive; in the aftermath, he thrived. He did a candid self-audit of his strengths and weaknesses and set about finding solutions to the difficulties of his new situation, which required lateral thinking and great patience. He learned to navigate stairs on prosthetic legs (no easy thing) and found a way to play his guitar again, using a slide. He taught himself to spin records in nightclubs, earning the moniker DJ Hookie. He discovered how nice it felt to pat dogs with his head. And he met his partner Lauren. “I’m happier now than I’ve ever been,” says Nash, who’s in ­demand these days as a keynote speaker, talking about how to ­develop the practical skills of what he calls “anti-fragility”.

He’s a funny bloke, with a dark streak to his humour. He’ll tell curious kids that he’s a reformed pirate, or that he lost his hands in a fight with a lion. And then there was the time he got into a lift and felt the gaze of all the occupants. “As soon as the doors closed I held up my arms and said, ‘It’s so weird to be back in this lift, where it all happened...’”

To see Jarrad Seng’s series The Story of Scars, go to thestoryofscars.com