At 16, I was in my ninth year of being in an orphanage in Wolverhampton. I was there from seven till 19. Life was just starting to show a bit of glimmering hope. We’d learned how to climb over the wall and go for beer and meet girls. But it was a boarding school — it wasn’t great, put it that way. I think an unhappy childhood is very good, because after that everything’s fine. A happy childhood is terrible! How can things get better? But if you have an unhappy childhood, it can only get better!
People find it hard to hit you if they’re laughing. If you are the clown, or the funny one, you say the right things at the wrong time — so everybody laughs! But you still get beaten. I think it is a sort of defence mechanism. It was a great help for me — that and the guitar. It was [comedy] and Elvis that saved
