For what it's worth:
I used to work on a magazine that was approached somewhere in the mix about doing an interview with Jamie. There was some confusion about what the sequencing of the approach was, I didn't think it was particularly strong by his own high standards, and at the peak of his popularity I was loathe to appear like we were rolling over to the Europeans who didn't back the mag but slated it anyway, so I rejected it. That was at least partly down to weakness on my behalf.
Long story short, I later met Jamie, talked to him about it and not only was he genuine, frank and honest about how he felt it was handled, but he also took my viewpoint squarely on the chin. Not only that but he never pulled his ads from the mag even when he had been jogged on by a nobody, which compared to some of the crybaby cool guys I came across marks him out as a solid and admirable chap.
There is no moral to this other than that I came away realising that my pre- conceived notions of him said more about me than they did about him, that he was pretty much 180 degrees the opposite of what I expected, and while I couldn't match his drive I couldn't fault his heart either.
People I know claim to remember him sleeping rough at EMB. He came into a business which wouldn't give him daylight, which wanted to use his talent to line other peoples' pockets, he saw what he wanted and reached out and took it with neither help nor encouragement from his 'industry' peers, many of whose business practices would make Tony Soprano wince. You couldn't do that in skating without being forthright, and you couldn't get to where he has and opened as many doors as he has for others (let us not forget) by running a creche.
More generally, my experience of skating has been that the guys who are considered outsiders are usually the most genuine, and the guys 'everybody loves' are political rats. So basically I'd like to thank him, ironically. Give me one straight talker over ten people who talk out the side of their mouths any day. At least he comes from skating.