When I was in my teens I began to really play around with my appearance, to the horror of my mom. It took her a few years to accept that her son was not going to fit the prevailing ideas of what was normal or not.
I started college, where i studied drama, English and history, but spent every night in the alternative clubs of Birmingham. I met some pretty wild and artistic people along the way, eventually moving into a bedsit in Edgbaston, where I could really indulge my new found love for walking around looking like a cross between Toyah, Maria Callas and Mortitia Adams without having to run the gauntlet of abuse that I used to take on the journey from my parents into Birmingham.
I did pass my exams though, much to my own surprise and soon started up my own little clothing business with my boyfriend and another close friend. Our shop was called TROJANS and we sold 70s stuff and things we had cobbled together ourselves on sewing machines in my boyfriends flat. It did surprisingly well. When I split up with the boyfriend I folded the shop, as i couldn't face working with him anymore.Myself and my other business partner decided to move to London and give things a go down here. We did so with a few thousand pounds to set ourselves up with and a lot of ideas about making it big! London was a bit of a shock to me. I was used to being a medium sized fish in a small pool. In London I was a nobody. People like Tasty Tim, Leigh Bowery, Matthew Glamore and all the other club "royalty" ruled the roost down here. Later I was to become friends with most of them but at that time I was really in awe and felt very insignificant!
