I moved to London when I was 4 years old. My early days living in High Street Kensington were amazing. I would go to Kensington Gardens every day, cycle past Kensington Palace, play with kids who lived in 5 storey town houses and my school was the salubrious St Mary Abbots where children would stand to attention whilst addressing their teachers and attend assembly every morning, sing hymns and say the Lords Prayer under the watchful eye of a priest.
By the age of five it was just 'me and my Mum' and the only father figure being alpha male characters that emanated from the small portable TV. However, I still lived in the best part of town, went to a great school, had wonderful polite friends, and didn’t even know what a swear word was yet alone have a concept of racial prejudice. This was my world and my persona, mannerisms behaviours and my character a direct consequence of this rather limited reality. It was here that I learnt life’s harshest lessons.
NOTHING IS FORVER & REALITY IS RELATIVE
At 10 years old we moved to a damp, cold council flat, unable to pay heating bills and lived on state handouts. Long gone were the airs & graces of Kensington Gardens replaced by discarded adult magazines and bottles of methadone which were littered all over ‘the estate’.
The people that gave this new area its charm all came from a gene pool the size of a thimble. (a gene pool in need of much chlorination). Their mentalities and vocabulary a true testament to this as were the mindsets that they instilled in their children. I did however learn new words from these kids. Though they weren’t straight out of the state syllabus and I most often heard them whilst being chased by those yielding bottles of correction fluid trying to paint me white.
Bullying was a relatively indistinct concept back then and my soft, charming, polite persona of a young gent amongst the local boys meant I was a walking crosshair. The nicer I was, the more I got my arse handed to me on a silver platter. My mother's advice of ‘tell them they’re not being clever’ just made things worse and it was then that I started to understand the importance of a father figure who might have taught me a few defensive moves, so to speak.
I became reclusive, ate my lunch in the science lab and failed at every academic subject.
Consequently to cover my tracks, I learnt the art of blagging and convinced my Mother that Parents & Teachers evening had just stopped to exist, learnt to forge documents and developed my own version of street smart. Necessity is indeed the mother of all inventive creativity
I ended taking a fanatical interest in Body Building and all the paraphernalia associated with it. By the time I was 16, I had created a completely new persona, changed my stature, my image, address and even my name ready for my anticipated college years. I started training underneath a railway arch with characters that epitomised the movie Lock, Stock & two smoking barrels. I made some new and very unique friends and it felt good to have mates called “John the Neck” & “9mm Phil”. These guys saw me as a blank canvas and showed me, errrrrm ‘stuff’.....
My life centred on creating a physique which made my head disproportionately small in comparison to the rest of my body. I learnt every style of combat disposal and read anything I could find on sports science, pharmacology, bio-mechanics and nutrition. If it made you bigger, faster, stronger or enhanced performance, I knew about it at a molecular level. I developed a fanatical interest in these fields and I was able to fine tune diets, create supplements and even treat injuries.
I was soon nick named ‘The Doc’. I used my brawn to work some of London’s most undesirable doors to pay for my first university degree. I soon climbed the ranks and provided close protection to A-List celebrities which continued to pay for further study. I had wasted so many years cowering away that I was determined to make up for it in every way possible.
One day whilst walking past a shop window I noticed a small poster of a man with a mobile phone aerial rammed into his eye with words KRAV-MAGA written underneath. (This is when mobile phones had aerials) I had to see what this was about. My interest in plunging mobile phones into eyes was balanced by my interest for healing & continued further study. I excelled academically and in my second university became the champion of every nerd, geek and social outcast. Some years later I qualified as a Krav Maga instructor and perfected mobile phone eye plunging.
My genuine passion in self improvement and overcoming my weaknesses whilst helping others combat theirs has resulted in a very unique fitness company that specialises in expert level personal training, self-defence with an emphasis on all round well being deeply rooted in my passion for nutrition, supplementation and alternative therapies. Who would’ve known that one day, that scared reclusive kid would one day be helping others attain their goals?
