Never Underestimate the Power of Good Influences

11 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, the speaker recounts his upbringing on an Oxford council estate and a troubled teenage life that included knife crime and theft. He attributes his eventual escape from that environment to a combination of luck—earning decent GCSE grades without much effort—and a pivotal shift in his social circle when he entered sixth form. There, he befriended middle‑class, university‑bound peers, whose aspirations and stable family backgrounds contrasted sharply with his own. His outgoing nature led him to organize social events, further integrating him into this new group. The speaker frames sixth form as the turning point that redirected his life away from crime toward more positive influences.

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I've got one question to finish with. You know, if you think back to the school that you were at in Oxford, that council estate, how many of them escaped? Was it the mindset instilled by your father? Did you get lucky somehow? That's a deep question. Look, I was in all sorts of trouble by the age of 16, including knife crime and theft and bad stuff. The moment for me that maybe was lucky, I was able to get decent grades in my GCSEs without trying very hard. My friendship group was a load of middle-class white guys who were all going to go to university, and they had aspirations, and they had 2 parents, and they'd never been in trouble with the police. And Actually, that became my friendship group. And because I've always been incredibly organized and very gregarious and outgoing, then for 2 years in sixth form, all I did was organize parties at private school girls' houses on Friday nights. And this was before WhatsApp and before like the internet and everything. So we just had an amazing time. But that was the change for me when I left those people behind when I went to sixth form and they didn't. My life sort of changed at that moment.