As a young boy, Michael Mol knew exactly what he wanted to be when he grew up. A hero. Not the variety that wears a cape and flies around with underpants on the outside, but the type that does good and helps people in distress.
Some dreams do come true, because Michael grew up to become Dr Mol, General Practitioner, saver and changer of lives. Including, as it turned out, his own.
One day, on a whim, and in the hope of winning a pair of stylish sunglasses, Michael entered the Mr South Africa pageant, which strives to find a “model male” who is not only good-looking and fit, but possessed of inner strength and a great personality. Michael won, leading his father to hug him on stage and say, “Well done, son. What have you done?” Michael wasn’t sure himself.
For a while, he carefully balanced his two titles, Mr South Africa and Dr Mol, until his telegenic qualities and natural, easygoing charisma landed him a slot in front of the camera on Top Billing.
He became a full-time TV and media personality, although he did keep practising his medical skills, taking time off from showbiz to deliver his firstborn son, for example.
These days, Michael enjoys the best of both worlds, as the celebrity at the helm of Hello Doctor, an innovative company that offers medical diagnosis and advice by phone. Finally, he feels, he’s achieved his childhood goal. Not by being a hero, but by making a difference in the lives of others.
He sat down with Ruda to talk about change, family, medicine, and why perfect strangers sometimes come up to him in the street and say, “Oh Michael, firstly, I hate you!”
Hello, and a very warm welcome to another session of The Change Exchange. We have a guest, as always, doctor Michael Mol. So glad to meet you.
Thank you for having me, Ruda. This is a real privilege. Been a big fan for many years.
Doctor Michael Mol. You went and studied medicine. Did you want to be a doctor? Just, as a little boy wants to be …
I did, and I think at that stage there was a generation where you became a teacher, a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant. You had four options, pick one, was kind of the approach in our family. But I think from a little boy always wanting to be the hero in the story, for me the hero was always the guy that helped everybody, and for me the one degree or the one line of work that would help people was a doctor. So I think from way back when I always wanted to be the doctor, but secretly the hero in the story as most little boys want to be, I’m sure.
And then you entered, and won, Mister South Africa. It’s not something that serious young doctors do?
No, it isn’t. In fact, I remember …
How did that happen?
You say that … On the night, I remember my father coming to me on stage and he gave me a big hug, he said: “Well done, son. What have you done?” Come on! But Ruda, no, I entered the competition on a whim.
Was it a dare?
It wasn’t a dare. It was a pair of sunglasses. The whole idea was if you enter this competition and you get into the finals you get a free pair of sunglasses, and I love my sunglasses. I thought: “I’ll do that?” Game for anything. At that stage it was kind of yes to anything that comes across our path and an adventure. So it was actually a pair of sunglasses that landed me in that position with that title, and again, it was … I remember the South African Medical Journal – there was lots of press, actually, but I remember the South African Medical Journal had like half a sentence, right at the bottom, saying: “Congratulations doctor Mol for becoming Mister South Africa. We’re so embarrassed that one of our own was as stupid as that!”
And how did that change your life? It must have opened doors that you didn’t even notice before?
It opened one door, and that was to Top Billing. Top Billing was 10, 12 years of my life and one of the judges on the show had called the producer to say he needs to check out this guy, some young doctor who has won Mister SA, “I think he will be great for Top Billing”. And that’s the door that it opened. During the actual year of the reign … The words reign and pageant …. I’m like: “Oh, you know!” Not much happened. I carried on doing locums and I carried on at the hospital, what I was doing and studying. But Top Billing really opened a whole bunch of doors, and that was life changing. Those experiences, and the platform that it gives you, as you well know. It just opened many, many doors.
Tell me about that? What do you mean if you say that it changed things.
Well, before Top Billing, no-one wanted to hear what I had to say. Not even my wife! And all of a sudden you become a familiar face for someone and they’re willing to stop and listen. And all of a sudden it’s this whole idea of I’ve got a platform now, what am I going to say? Do I get to make a difference? Do I get to just make this all about me, or can I actually turn it around … We talked about this earlier, can we somehow give back or add value in some way. And it took 12 years to figure out that I probably wasn’t adding a whole lot of value to Top Billing. It was all escapism and it was fun, and I enjoyed doing that, but that was actually the reason I stepped down to say: “It’s been a wonderful, wild ride. I had amazing privileges, worked with amazing people, seen amazing things, but it just feels to me that it lacks a little value and significance, and I’m not giving back.” So that’s when I stepped down and decided to launch a medical show. A kind of new era of media publicity, if you like.
So I was going to ask what was it that you want to use the platform for?
Well, I think the idea to bring across a message, and idea to … For me the biggest challenge of presenting and producing is the whole idea of “Am I relevant” and “Am I adding value”. And for me, being able to step down from something like Top Billing, and again, there’s no criticism, I think it’s an amazing show and they have done so well and it’s a South African icon, if you like, but for me to step down and to say I’d rather produce content that I can control and content that I know makes somewhat of a difference. People, for example, often stop me in the streets and go: “Oh Michael, firstly I hate you. Best job in the world, you did this or the MIG in Russia or the edge of space” or whatever the case, those were amazing …
You had the life I wanted to …
Exactly, you know. And that’s great for a while, but then you start to wonder about the value of that. With Hello Doctor or The Doctor Mol show, people started stopping in the street and saying: “I lost three kilograms because I did what you told me.” Or: “I quit smoking.” Or: “I went to have my blood checked and I realised I’ve got Type 2 diabetes and I’m doing something about it.” And all of a sudden that kind of feedback was a real sense of learning something and people are changing behaviour because of what they’re seeing on TV. And that to me … That sense of significance, that sense of adding value is what really kind of fulfilled an empty spot here, somehow.
But did you, in the meantime, also work as a doctor?
I did.
While you were with Top Billing?
While I was with Top Billing. And it was a busy season of life. No kids, thankfully. I was married, but I was travelling and then to make up for my time away I would come back and do double shifts, as doctors shouldn’t do in trauma units, but when you work in a trauma unit you’re part of a team and you can’t let your team members down. So I’d be away for a week and come back and it’s a double shift and half a break and double shift and did that for probably two or three years, Ruda. Until one day I got up to go, leave home, and my wife said to me: “Oh, by the way, I’m not going to be here when you get back. I didn’t sign up for this. I married a doctor, not some TV personality or not some, you know, known figure. Just so that you know.” And obviously alarm bells went off and red lights and I went: “Hang on a second.” And Jax and I worked through that and it got to a point where I needed to choose, it’s either media or medicine, but it can’t be both. Because if it’s killing my wife it’s going to kill me. And at that point, said: “Boom! Let’s do media. I have the degree, can always go back to be a doctor – that’s not going to change. But this opportunity in television is going to be fun and it looks like there’s some more doors that might open up. Let’s pursue that only.” And so I did. Picked media over medicine. Ten years later …
Was that when you made the change and you started your own show?
No, then it was Top Billing full time, we moved down to Cape Town, quite a change. I think Jax and I needed that. There was a sense we’d come to a point where we’ve got to move on and move from where we’re at. So it was Top Billing for a good couple of years, and then there was another … I took over a business in between … You would know, as a presenter there’s only so much time that you can spend working, and then there’s a fair amount of downtime, downtime always gets filled with something.
But producing is a … It’s a business and it’s a difficult business because it’s kind of seasonal and the income is not regular and you have to control the budget and pay people and so forth. Where did you learn that?
On the fly. At the coalface. A little bit of experience in the past, having run a company or two, but generally it’s all brand new. And especially the show that we did was an advertiser funded show, so you’re raising funds to produce the show. You’re still making sure that the funders are being satisfied that their brand is being exposed while you’re still teaching and coaching at the same side, and adding a bit of humour and a bit of light heartedness and you know, there was a whole lot of things that you were juggling. So you’re absolutely right, I think we did five seasons of it and I’ve gone grey because of it! Which is not true, by the way. Grey is genetic, it has nothing to do with the amount of stress that you go through.
What do you spend most of your time on now?
So what I’m doing now, is we started a company a few years ago, which we called Hello Doctor, with a big dream of taking first world healthcare into the third world. The idea of, or the fact that Africa has more cellphones than it has people, and everything. But the vision was to say let’s give everyone access to a doctor via their mobile phones and their request. In other words, whenever you need a doctor, you just pick up that phone of yours and irrespective of the device that you have, you have access to a doctor within the hour.
Do they sign up? Is there a subscription?
It’s a subscription model, and if you’re a member or subscriber, whatever you might call it, you have a doctor on call 24/7. And of course, the doctor won’t come out to you, but we’ll address whatever we can over the phone and there’s a whole lot you can do telephonically in terms of assistance and help and advice. In certain countries we’re even allowed to diagnose. In Kenya the minister of health came behind us and he loved this idea, “go ahead, practice full telemedicine”. There are 30 conditions that we … And we’ve obviously made sure that those conditions are safe and that we can treat and diagnose and prescribe medication for without seeing the patient face to face. So we send our little scripts via SMS, I go to the pharmacy, show the SMS, get the medication and it costs them all of R1.50. It’s ridiculous.
How has this changed you and what you know of Africa, what you know of people, of priorities?
I think the sense of being able to give back sounds a little bit romantic and it’s a wonderful notion, but the idea that we’re being significant, that everything we do really does make a difference. It matters. That, for me is key. Up to that point life was very self-centred and it’s all about me – success is so often intrinsic, it’s what can I gather and gain and build. But when you turn around and say: “What can I give and, you know, build.” But when you turn around and say: “What can I give?” Or: “What difference can we make? Can we make someone breathe a little easier just because we’re around?” It’s a different kind of motivation. There’s, kind of, at heart there’s a strong faith basis for what I do that’s not necessarily a company rule, but for me a strong belief in what God has done for me and for my family and there’s this mandate to say: “Let’s take that and let’s be the model to the world of what God did for us.”
Well, they say that one of the major elements of happiness is gratitude.
Absolutely. Yes, you’re so right. And recognising. The whole idea of we’re not entitled. Everything that comes our way is appreciated.
Plans? Dreams? Professionally.
Professionally I would … You know what bugs me? It’s our life expectancy in South Africa. It’s a silly thing, but globally human beings will live to about 70, 71 on average. Women longer than men. In South Africa, we’re about ten years off the mark, so give or take, about 50 million South Africans at 10 years, that’s 500 million wasted years every generation. And for me? Not on my watch. And you know, we can do something about that. About half of the issues related to a shorted life is lifestyle, diseases of choice, diseases of lifestyle, which means we can do something about that through education, through prevention, through behaviour change. You know, you talk about career success for me, if I could … If we … I say I. If we could somehow increase that life expectancy of our fellow countrymen and if we could do it for South Africa we could do it for Africa. That for me would be a great marker of success one day.
What’s the problem? Obesity? Diabetes?
Diabetes is huge. I suppose obesity is right. The big African issues are obviously clean water and infectious diseases, but that’s only about 40% of it. The remaining 60% …
So it’s not tuberculosis and HIV, mainly?
Those are infectious diseases, mostly do play a role. But like I said, 40%, 50% at most. The rest is as you say, just poor eating, obesity – yes, but sedentary lifestyles … Diabetes is a big one. There’s … Smoking, can you believe in Africa smoking is a big issue? All those things that can be monitored and adjusted through just a bit of education, when you say guys, think about what you’re doing. We spend so much time pulling people out of the river, but what we need to do is go up the river and stop the people jumping in the river. Prevent first, before the cure.
And the personal story? Tell me about meeting Jacqui? Did you know she was the one? Or did she decide?
Jacqui, gee, the truth is I didn’t know Jacqui was the one, but 22 years later, man, I’m guaranteed …
So convinced!
Without a shadow of doubt. Jacqui was wonderful. We were high school sweethearts and we didn’t get on very well at school, but just, as soon as we go into varsity we really did hit it off and she was gorgeous. She still is gorgeous. I remember coming to that point in our lives where we had to make that decision, and of course the butterflies are there and the ‘love’ is there, but I remember packing a backpack and just heading out for three days…Suikerbossie, some trail somewhere up north, just to go and make that decision away from her. “Is this woman going to be a soul mate? Is she going to be a great mother for my kids? Is she going to be a great companion one day when our kids are gone?” All those kind of questions you’ve got to ask yourself and just make almost a … I hope she doesn’t watch this … A logical decision. I want to sort of say is this really the woman? And you know what? After three days I wasn’t convinced, but I took a chance anyway and thank God I did. She turned out to be all of that and more.
Can you remember your wedding day? Can you remember when you said: “I do”?
10 December 1994. I remember it well, yes. I wasn’t wearing a tie, in fact.
That’s very avant-garde.
Yeah, I know. For 1994 it was. It was one of those no-collar ties. I remember the minister saying: “I normally start off the ceremony with a joke about how beautiful the bride looks and nice tie to the groom, but you’re not wearing a tie so you stole my opening line!” But no, it was a very, very special day. And families still together, moms and dads still around … We’re very privileged.
But then you told us, just a moment ago, that there came a time when you actually almost had to make a recommitment.
Absolutely.
And that sounds like a more serious moment.
Ja.
Because when you’re 24 one does these things – I was there – without much thought. But later on it’s a very adult decision.
Absolutely, I think marriage changed me in a way that it became … I became we. And all of a sudden I’m not one person – I’m two. Or we’re two, or one, in a biblical sense, if you like. And I think for Jax and I – that moment – and we’ve had a couple of those. It’s not just one, tick, done. It’s a daily … We work at our marriage …
In what way?
A very practical way is that no matter what Jacqui says or does, or what I say or do, we always think the best of one another. So it sounds very ordinary or almost …. Not patriotic, but patronising in a way … No matter what we do …
Ja, but it actually is ….
I’m just going to give you the benefit of the doubt and just always think the best of you. And it’s been an amazing little approach that avoids the misunderstandings or the feelings of regret or the feelings of …. The kind of, the cancer that grows? That sense of “you really don’t get me” or “you’re just out to get me” that happens under the surface. I think we deal with that by just, ja, focusing on what’s right about one another.
And the kids? You delivered the first one yourself?
I did. That was a … Quite a moment! We didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl … Joshua for a boy, Jessica for a girl and I wanted to be the first to know. And as it so happens, in fact that’s typical of my son’s life even now at the age of 16, as he came out of the birth canal, I held him up and I just stared at these two little buttocks and the nurse on the other side of the table went: “It’s a boy!” So I was only the second to find out if it was a little boy or a girl, but a very special moment and boy, a defining moment. Up to that point, I was we, but it was always still that sense of what can we do, what can I become? And when you hold this little helpless babe in your hands, all of a sudden “what can I do to help you become all you need to be”. The sense of: “God, you’ve given me this little life for a short time. I hope I’m worthy of the responsibility and worthy of the honour to be given a son.” And then a daughter, and most recently a little son again.
And how have they changed you over these past 16 years?
I think my kids have taught me the value of authenticity, You can fool most people most of the time – you’ve heard that. But not your kids. And for me, what an unbelievable value, it’s just to be completely authentic. What you see is what you get. And what they see on the box or what they see in the media … If that differs from what they see at home, I’m failing. So for me the yardstick has always been: “What would my kids say about this?” What would my kids say about the fact that you travel around the world and you know what colour these cushions are when people are dying of HIV and Aids somewhere?
And we haven’t seen you for two weeks.
Exactly, you know. I think kids and authenticity … What a great lesson.
My son says he doesn’t like my … Hy hou nie van my poeiergesiggie nie.
Exactly, dis nie ma se gesig nie! That’s so true. In fact, my youngest has never seen me on TV, come to think of it. And I wonder if I should be showing him the reruns.
And quite practically, tell me about your home? Where do you live and why are you there? How long have you been there?
We’ve moved into a home about two months ago. So we were in the Southern Suburbs – deep Southern Suburbs, and then we moved closer to schools just to give Jacqui a bit of her life back – I think for many moms the … Carting three kids around, all of the extramural activities … Your life is no longer your own, so we wanted to change that and moved really close to schools, rented for a while and eventually bought a home about two months ago, within walking distance of the school.
So that was your deciding factor?
Yes. Proximity to the schools. So now it’s walking distance, it doesn’t take Jacqui that long to drive them to school or anywhere. “Why do you drive when he can walk?” “But he’s only seven!” We’ll get there eventually.
And what does it look like, what does it feel like when you walk in?
I think a home for me is … It’s driving into my garage and kind of hitting my head on the steering wheel because there’s a bicycle in my parking spot. But the day it’s not there I’m concerned. It’s walking to my home and tripping over a skateboard or listening to a cover version of Bruno Mars coming from my son’s room or stepping on a piece of Lego AGAIN. Those are all aspects that make it our home, and that’s been like that in every home we’ve had, so … We don’t have a spare room. We fill up every room that we have and each little room has its own role and purpose. We didn’t want to be excessive with this house.
There’s no guest wing.
And you can hear everybody from everywhere in the house, so there’s no sense of … Our doors are seldom closed and we’re very privileged to stay where we stay.
What is your … If you project 10 years, 20 years into the future … What’s the picture that you want for you and your family?
That’s a great question, Ruda. I think for me the whole idea of unity, of togetherness … It might be a romantic notion, but sitting around a big dining room table with everybody, causing a complete raucous and a noise, throwing things, shouting, laughing … But together. And for me that would be a dream come true. We work very hard at not having TV in our home – we do have a lot of screens and we do have internet connection, etc. But we make an effort to meet and to look one another in the eye and to talk all the time. And if we could maintain that, keep that and pass that on to younger generations and have grown kids one day that do the same … Grown kids that want to be with us, and kids who want to be with us, that would be a dream realised.
All of the very, very best, and may it work out like that. It sounds as if you very consciously work at it, so it’s half the journey.
We say “By the Grace of God” in everything we do, so absolutely.
Thank you.
Thanks Ruda.
Until next time. Goodbye.
- This interview first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in it don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.
