Paint a picture for us – what kind of teenage boy were you?
I wasn’t your typical teenager. Whether it was because my mum cut my hair or because I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front seat of the car until I was 15, I retained a wonderfully childlike quality long into adolescence. I’d spend weekends – not sniffing glue or kissing with tongues – but collecting conkers or drawing pictures of the Red Arrows or writing letters to the Red Arrows.
The day before my 15th birthday, I had my passing out parade at the Scout hut. I shook hands with every Scout there, saluted the Scout Leader, lowered and folded the flag and then, while the others ran off to the recreation ground to hoik up a rope swing, I walked in the other direction – needing to find myself. I walked for what seemed like miles but was probably just kilometres until, in the window of a charity shop, I saw a denim jacket and knew I had to have it. I bought it, tossed my neckerchief into a river and donned the denim. Even though it was a woman’s jacket initially made for a female darts team, wearing it transformed me. Suddenly I had swagger, attitude and beef. If clothes maketh the man, then that denim jacket sure madeketh me.
