My experience of institutions usually ends badly. It all began at school. Things did not improve when I was thrown out of Havering Technical College. The course was Exhibition Design and Window Display. I was accused of not taking the course seriously and was deemed to be a bad influence on the other students and the college in general.

Well, I could not really disagree, clearly the course was not for me. So I was resolved to go back to work in a factory, from whence I came. There were opportunities at that point to get general labouring work in most places, you would just turn up ask to speak to a supervisor and thats how it worked.

Prior to this course I was general labourer in the Polydor Record distribution factory in Ilford. Walking round the warehouse picking up albums packing them up for dispatch to various record stores. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a glamorous, but I did have a certain pride that I was in some small way part of show business. I had tried to get a job in the theatre as a director, I tried many West End theatres but to no avail. In hindsight, perhaps I set my aims too high and also made the classic mistake of asking the box office clerk, who I realised much later, had little influence in the engagement of new directors.

So the principle of Havering College, felt quite bad about asking me to leave so she arranged for me to have an interview at East Ham Foundation course, she was quite right it was the perfect fit.

I am not sure what happened at college. It was an amazing time to listen and watch explore, wonder and be amazed and bemused. I never really got to have much influence at artschool, I had my own determined point of view, absorbed everything, tried on as many ideaoligies and attitudes as possible. I took year out to earn some cash and also to seperate myself from my fellow students. They were a great bunch but I did not like being one of a crowd that much, so the year out seperated me from my own year and put me apart from the next year -into a kind of no mans land. I have been there ever since.