I had never known my real mother, though I always imagined that whoever she was she must have wanted the best for me: the carrier bag I was found in when she left me on the steps of Guy’s Hospital came from Harrods.

I was fostered until I was 2 by a South London couple who in time applied to become my adoptive parents. As they watched me grow up, they probably wished they hadn’t bothered. I binned school when I was 15-and-a-half to go and work for a haulage company in Brixton. I’d already been bunking off two or three days a week for the last year or so. Instead of studying for CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education) I delivered coal in the winter and drink mixes to off-licenses in the summer. By going full-time I pulled in 8 a day, which in 1975 was serious money. With forty quid on the hip of a Friday night you were one of the lads.

My father had done his National Service in the Catering Corps and was now a minicab driver. My older brother had joined the Royal Fusiliers when I was a toddler and had served for about five years until he got married. I had exciting memories of him coming home from faraway places with his holdall full of presents. My own early life, however, was nothing remarkable. There wasn’t anything I was particularly good at, and I certainly wasn’t interested in a career in the army. My biggest ambition was to get a flat with my mates and be able to do whatever I wanted.

I spent my early teens running away from home. Sometimes I’d go with a friend to France for the weekend, expeditions that were financed by him doing over his aunty’s gas meter. I was soon getting into trouble with the police myself, mainly for vandalism to trains and vending machines. There were juvenile court cases and fines that caused my poor parents a lot of grief.

I changed jobs when I was 16, going behind the counter at McDonald’s in Catford.