‘Who do you think you are? David Bailey?’

first camera was a second-hand Pentax ME Super. I don’t remember the adverts for Pentax cameras; I remember the adverts for Olympus cameras, the ones with photographer David Bailey. I wanted to be Bailey. Part of me still does. He was cool and hung out with rock stars, models and gangsters. The television commercials from the late 1970s and ’80s, screened during the soap opera and sporting spectacles such as the FA Cup final, reached millions, turning Bailey into a household name and Olympus into a household brand – except in my house. ‘Who do you think you are? David Bailey?’ would be levelled at anyone pointing a camera at a birthday