A stuntman from the age of 14 and Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potter films, David was the first person to ever play Quidditch on a broomstick.

During the making of Deathly Hallows Part 1 a stunt went badly wrong and David's spinal cord snapped. He was only 25 and would never walk again. Sixteen years later, the pain can still be excruciating and he requires round-the-clock care, however David has not only accepted his new reality, but embraced it with an attitude that few of us could aspire to.

David has since taken up automobile racing, driving a car with hand controls which he could operate. He also started started Ripple Productions, which in 2020 launched a podcast with Daniel Radcliffe, called Cunning Stunts, interviewing other stunt actors to raise awareness about the risks they face.

He shared his phenomenal story in the 2023 documentary David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived. Now, with the release of his new autobiographical book of the same name coming soon, David’s story shares his life before and after, showing us the importance of making the most of every day, and the good that can come out of even the worst of circumstances.

Here, in our latest edition of My Audio World, David talks to Flare’s Naomi Roberts about the transformative power of sound and how it’s helped him on his amazing journey…

So settle in and enjoy an unforgettable My Audio World conversation.

It's a lifeline. It's also something I’ve used as escapism. I mean, everyone has a soundtrack to the best moments of their life, don’t they? I've driven around New Zealand and most of the way I listened to musical scores from TV and film, there’s nothing better than being in the most beautiful landscape and playing the Jurassic Park theme tune. So music, for me, is everything.

I'm more of a melody, percussion sort of guy. Some people like the quality of the songwriting and the poetry in itself. I have a love for all of it, but definitely melody and percussion is something that pulls me in at first. Last night, I was driving back from Blindboy, I listened to Taylor Swift's Folklore, Daft Punk, hip hop and Fred Again as I was driving through London, it's the perfect soundtrack for seeing the city.

Absolutely. I'm scoring every part of my life. Just before this interview I was listening to a new Arabic album, Altın Gün, the album's called Aşk, really cool. Before that, I was listening to the new album by The Waeve, by Blur creator, Graham Coxon. If you want to just bring joy to your day and lift your mood, listen to The Ballad of Bernard Swimmins, man. It's beautiful.

Without a shadow of a doubt, I'll lean into it when I need to have a cry and I'll find what I need. Do you know Cleo Sol? Recently, her two albums this year, I found them to be really helpful. I'm going through a change of neurological status. I'm losing an arm and having to let go of that. And that comes with pain, like tolerance, everything. And sometimes I just need to have a cry about that. So I'll get in my shower, because no one can tell you no crying in the shower, it's just perfect.

I mean her album Mother… my mum can't hug me, I've got the boundaries of a wheelchair between us. My mum still washes my bedsheets for me, I'm a forty-year-old man. But I say to her, you can't hold me, you can't hug me, you can't do much for me, but every time I pull the bed sheets up to my face, I feel like you're with me. You know what I mean? And that album Mother by Cleo Sol, it does the same thing, it just takes me to my mum.

With someone that's lost as much feeling as I have, (my advice would be) don't be afraid to feel the whole range of human emotion. We've all been heartbroken, we've all been in love with someone and they've not loved us. And that's why they write songs about it. Don’t be afraid to feel anything. And music is one of the best keys to opening those doors.

Yeah, it's with the editor and the publisher, just getting tidied up. The title of the book is David Holmes, The Boy Who Lived. I wrote it myself over 18 months, just after we signed the documentary deal. I sat there diving into the deepest parts of my brain and my memories and talking about some subjects that were difficult to write about, but I've got some great stories, man, I've lived a very big life.

It’s a cathartic process. You'd be surprised by what you suppress and what you put to the back of your mind. It’s free therapy. You know, I'd encourage anyone to write a journal, or to just go back and write some of the things that they would never dare speak to someone about.

I'm a very open person. This book will go out into the world filter-less in the same way my documentary was, in the same way I am. I've tried to recover a life of a stuntman after breaking my neck - and the life of the stuntman is about how we take risks in front of and behind the camera. And in a society where masculinity is being eroded away as a bad word right now. I grew up in a very toxic masculine environment within the stunt industry. But now I understand like for me, what is it to be a man? Well, accountability is probably the first one, am I accountable for myself, for my actions? That is number one.

Me and my girlfriend, who's a high-level quadriplegic like me, we're about to go on an all singing all dancing road trip across Europe. It's very hard to travel as a quadriplegic and there's three of us in wheelchairs going. There's a lot of organisation that needs to go into it, a lot of letters written to hotels and a lot of planning. But the number one thing for me is getting the playlist right on the journey. Going in the car, it means we don’t have to rely on airlines or other people that can break my wheelchair and ruin my life, which happens almost every time I get on an aeroplane. Whenever I get to an airport, the moment I get out of my car and get to my destination, I know that I’m the problem. The number of times they call you a wheelchair, 'we've got a wheelchair here', not a person in a wheelchair, not a man in a wheelchair, just a wheelchair.

I just look at people and think, you're ignorant, I feel sorry for them, like if only you knew. I’ve spent a life in a relationship with pain; through gymnastics, working my body. And you begin to understand that life begins outside your comfort zone and nothing good in life happens unless it's hard work. My current relationship is a prime example of that, I've dated able-bodied women, never felt enough. Now it takes four people to get me and my girlfriend close enough to give each other a kiss and a cuddle: it makes it even more special. Like I say, I've tried to recover a life of a stuntman after my accident. You know, to try and rebuild what is the centre? Who am I? Am I a disabled person? Well, I don't want to be a disabled person. Whereas I've leaned into that now and I can just be, I am who I am.

(On the subject of Boundaries)… I set my head on fire last week. It's being submitted for a picture in the National Portrait Gallery. The photographer asked if I had any ideas, I said yeah, I'm going to sit naked in the shower chair and set my head on fire with a catheter bag on my leg. It's funny, I showed it to my mate and he said I looked like Lumière from Beauty and the Beast! I just think, in our society, do we not reward the artists that take the most risks? And stuntmen are artists, we risk our lives for the sake of art and storytelling. No one knows that more than me. Yet, we’re not awarded BAFTAs and Oscars and all of that lot. So it'd be nice if me and my partners were recognised for the artists that we are. That's why I set my head on fire; I want to start a conversation. You know, there is someone that likes adrenaline, someone that takes risks, someone that’s willing to suffer for the sake of art.

God, that is a really hard one. Really hard. Going back to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, that definitely blew my mind. I say Mac Miller, Swimming in Circles. Like Circles, which was released two days after he passed away, is just unbelievable.

One of the greatest albums of my life: Frank Ocean, Blonde. Oh my God, when that album came out on a Sunday, it came out at about midnight. I listened to it everywhere in my house on loop for the WHOLE day. I grew up in a Baptist church and around choirs and gospel choirs. What that album means to me... I mean, Godspeed, James Blake's cover of Godspeed is just unbelievable. He did an EP album of covers during the lockdown.

George Michael, love George, grew up on George, will always turn to George in times of need. I've actually mapped on my Instagram albums that have helped me get through tough days. Like, if I'm in a bad one today, I'm just going to lean into music. I was halfway through Symphonica by George Michael. I got to about five o'clock in the day and you hear him covering Nina Simone's Feeling Good. It's like a tennis match between him and the orchestra and how much fun they're having. Listening to that, you're just like, okay, it's going to be alright. I've had everything you could ever imagine, fentanyl, oxycontin, you name it. But give me presence to be here in the here and now and to be connected. That's enough.

In recent years, Folklore by Taylor Swift blew me away, simply because we were all going through something collectively as a society. And she was able to create something that really hit a note on the melancholy that we were all feeling from the loss of connection that we had. She paints some of the greatest pictures with her poetry. And not only that, but her melodic arrangement, the people she chooses to work with, I know she writes a lot with The National Wood and Bleachers, yeah, just class.

I like anything... I'm open to anything. I think when we start closing off our ears or eyes to any new art, that's when we start getting old. We should be open to being challenged, you know, like I don't like drill music, but I will listen to it. I might not like it but I’ll give it a go.

After this interview, promise me you’ll Google Audience Choir by Jacob Collier. These are normal people who are not trying to sing properly. But he will just build and build and build and build and then he finds these notes with 1000 people in the room. He made his album with all the recordings from his live concerts, it's exceptional. He's a genius.

Always, I am an album person through and through. Even if there are tracks you don't like, you should listen to someone's whole piece of work. There's no point looking at half the painting. If someone's trying to paint that picture, give them that time to sit in front of it. This probably started for me with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, just that story she tells us all the way through the album. It puts you in the classroom, it puts you in that teenage understanding of love and relationships and all of that. From then onwards I've always been an album person, especially when back in the day you had CDs and car stereos. As you're driving along you can't just change the CD and stick another one on.

Only to sleep. I fall asleep with the sound of someone calmly talking to me about something. I'm tuned into it now, so if I listen to a podcast in the car on the road, I start feeling tired. I had post-traumatic stress for a long time after my accident. I'd fall asleep and hear the noise of the wire pulling me and me breaking my neck and it would wake me up with a jolt and be really traumatic. Podcasts, I used to listen to them quietly. The first podcast I listened to was Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo, who actually reviewed my film, which was amazing. And I wrote a letter and they read it out. That was the only time that I got emotional in that whole process of putting my film out, was listening to them review my film, after what they've done for me, which is get me through a really, really hard time.

Blindboy, always, every week without fail. But music all the way. If the world is changing around you, then you should put on a playlist. Like, what do I get for one of my best mates, Daniel Radcliffe, when he can buy what he wants? I make him playlists. You know, when he started his new family, for his new little one, I made him a playlist. I made him a playlist when he moved into his new place for his birthday.

Yeah, I'm like… “try this.” Nothing makes you love harder or deeper, nothing connects you to a place more. The power of storytelling through film and TV has always been one of my crutches. But music is another one. If all of my senses were taken away, if I lost sight, I lost speech, and I lost taste, but I had sound, I would still want to live.

Tarantino is pretty up there, isn't he? I would say Lord of the Rings, Howard Leslie Shore, you can't beat it, one of the best film scores ever made. Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. DJ David Holmes, like when he did the soundtrack to Out of Sight, golden.

You know what? The sound of breath. I sit on the bottom of my swimming pool, underwater, on a scuba tank. Simply because it allows me to sit upright and focus on breathing, on my journey of independent breathing where my speech and ability to swallow might be affected. So I actually do maximum breath holds just because I refuse to go down without a fight. I can hold my breath for four minutes 25! But when I'm underwater, and I take that breath off the regulator, and I hold it, there's nothing. There's nothing but me. I can almost hear my central nervous system. I can hear my heartbeat. And then just breath. Because it's a gift and one we all take for granted. And it's a gift that I have to work on, it's a gift that some of my friends who live on ventilators don't have. So the sound of breath. I have a 16-year-old dog that snores really loud and at this point, she is the soundtrack to my house. She's been with me since I had legs, but hearing her breathe around me is great.

Oh, loads. But noises that annoy me are moaning and negativity. It is the language we have about ourselves and the world around us that directly affects the life we get to live. Life is a gift, if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones... who wrote that line? Oh yeah, a band called Daughter, the song is called Youth. That is a beautiful song.

It really is the depth of sound that you guys can create. You can put those headphones in and it's like being in the studio with the recording artists. I've been in a room with a 50-piece orchestra of strings. I've closed my eyes and heard all the different parts of the orchestra around the room, and your headphones do that. If you listen to "Reckoner" by Radiohead on Flare earphones, you can hear the shaker on the left side at one part of the studio, and then the snare drum on the right side. Then, at one point about a third into the song, the bass comes in. The whole sound goes from wide to a collective gathering. Very few speakers can give you that full range. Now, with what you guys do, you can reduce that rhythm down to be a more intimate experience, which is a gift. So keep doing the work.