Jonathan Bellamy heard Anthony Bostock's story.

Anthony: From about the age of 12, I started to get out of the house a lot more. I associated with troublesome friends that were stealing from shops like Woolworths, so I started to go along with that. That started to excite me and I started to feel like I was doing something that was different from what was going on at home, so that was an exciting time.

At around the age of 13 I started to smoke pot. That became a normality. I'd get money off my granddad, or my parents, to contribute with others towards buying this substance and we'd smoke and find a house, or maybe an empty shed and sit for long hours and smoke. Life started to get a little bit crazy out of that.

Jonathan: In doing these things, did you feel anything in your conscience, or like you didn't want your mum to be disappointed in you, or anything like that?

Anthony: I wasn't unaware that what I was doing was very wrong, so I did feel to pull back, but it just felt exciting. I was doing things that I knew were wrong, but that was releasing me from the fear I felt in the family home. Mum was, I wouldn't say supportive, but she knew I was becoming a little rascal and it was kind of exciting her as well.

Jonathan: How did that develop as you got older?

Anthony: When I reached about 15, I thought I was a man, so I'd started to get into bands like Oasis and The Stone Roses. I'd started to want expensive clothes, so I'd begun to almost demand that my mum and dad would provide these expensive clothes for me. The culture of the rock and roll lifestyle had started to become very attractive to me. So at 15 I left home and went to live with my granddad, who I used to spend a lot of time with anyway. My grandad was a soft touch, so I could get whatever I wanted off my granddad. He provided these things that I was desiring and now I'd started to become what you'd call a loose cannon.

Jonathan: Explain that?

Anthony: I'd started to experiment with other drugs like ecstasy and amphetamines. I'd started to drink cheap cider like white lightning and sherry, which was very cheap to buy. I'd started to have a network of friends that were a lot older than me, so at 15 I was hanging around with guys that were 21, to 23, adults really. I was picking up on the stuff they were doing, i.e. sleeping with women and doing adult stuff.

Jonathan: How did you afford it?

Anthony: Yeah, good question. My grandad was very well off, so there'd be no trouble in getting £10 or £15 a day. As a group of, shall we say associates, not so much friends, we'd chuck it into a pot and buy whatever we could to see us through however many hours or days.

Jonathan: How do you think this was affecting you?

Anthony: When I was 15 I'd been expelled from school, so I went and got a casual job on a pot bank. They took me on without a national insurance number as a casual worker, which I suppose you could call cash in hand work. I started to earn about £100 a week on a pot bank and that then facilitated the lifestyle I wanted to lead.

I started to get into different stuff then, like I'd started to go to the football a lot, where I met a different network of friends. I was wearing the expensive clothes that I'd always wanted and I became a bit of a name. The fear that had instilled anger was now coming out in full, so I was getting into lots of fights and coming home with black eyes. I was coming home with cuts and bruises and in a strange way, I was receiving some negativity from my dad, but I think my dad started to look at me and see that I was becoming a man and that thrust me forward into the lifestyle that I was leading.

Jonathan: Was there a dynamic where you felt you were bigger and stronger than your dad now?