What sort of teenager were you?

I was quite a good teenager for about two years and then I got in with bigger boys just as the punk thing started to happen. I went from being this nice middle class kid to a person who went to punk gigs in London. I thought I was a punk…I wasn’t. I was 15 but just loved it, and hated doing any work, and hated my parents because they were middle class and not on the dole. It was ridiculous that I even had to live with them! I considered myself an adult, as you do when you’re 14 or 15.

What was in your teenage wardrobe?

Flares had to go, so we got straight trousers that were two quid from a builder’s merchant because you couldn’t get straight trousers anywhere. I used to wear them all the time, they stank as I never changed or washed them. And strange red and turquoise, very brightly coloured shirts from I don’t know where, PVC jackets, never safety pins – I didn’t like all that safety pin business. I had short hair and a real baby face with really chubby cheeks! I’ve got a friend who’s got pictures of me snarling, and I look so sweet! This lovely little chubby-wubby cheeky 15-year-old trying to look bad!

Was your bedroom a state when you were a teenager?

My bedroom was fairly normal I think. I didn’t have posters all over the walls because I didn’t like to think I lived there. I liked to think I was just staying there. I had magazines all over the floor, records everywhere and dirty clothes so the floor was a mess…

Did you do anything that really annoyed your parents?

My bedroom stunk of fags basically because I smoked, although of course I said I didn’t. My dad would come up and ask me why I was smoking in my bedroom and I’d say "I’m not!" Then he’d say "So why have I just found 40 cigarette butts in the flower bed directly under your bedroom window?"

What would you say to a teenager struggling with their parents?

I’d say listen to them and just pick up your stuff off the floor, put it away and if they still give you a hard time tell ‘em to sod off!

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