Sixteen was a bad age for me, various things were going on. Obviously I had the normal stresses of GCSEs. And I was a bit lost, a bit difficult for my parents. I was arrested for shoplifting at the age of 16. I’d been a shoplifter since the age of 11, on and off, and it was becoming a bit of a compulsive thing. A sort of way, I suppose, of handling stress. I’m now diagnosed with ADHD, but obviously, in the ’80s, I hadn’t been diagnosed. So I had lots of stuff going on I didn’t know about. I started smoking and drinking and sniffing petrol behind Blockbuster Video, just being a bit of a waster. My nan died that year. I haven’t got the best memories of my 16th year.
Then I suddenly moved to this big comprehensive in Newark-on-Trent, an area I’d only recently moved to. So I was having trouble fitting
