I was a very, very anxious 16-year-old.
About school, my body, getting thrown out of pubs, everything really. Sixteen is the age that your peers are starting to go out and I was delaying that as much as possible. My mum did quite a lot to try to get my sister and me to socialise a bit more because we were both timid. My sister got into it eventually, but I never really settled into that adolescent period. I was so anxious to achieve something, to get going. I’d gone from the little primary school next to the housing estate we grew up in to a grammar school. It was an opportunity, but also a sudden intense pressure to get good A-levels and go to a good university and get a mortgage and all of those things. That was on my mind from age 16. I remember thinking, “What if everyone else in my class passes their driving test,
