I was born in 1977, at the time the family lived in Easington village, where Billy Elliot was filmed. My father had the local car dealership and my mother was very involved with horses and the local hunt. With the onset of the miners strike we moved to Houghton le Spring to a hill top farm. It was a working farm however we were just residents. I however was always helping the farmer out, it was great fun driving tractors and as any good farmer knows making things. We were always making a part for this or that tractor or new enclosure for a bull.

I was driving from an early age, I think 9 or 10 I know for sure that when I was 12 I was teaching my brother then age 10 to drive my mother’s brand new Mitsubishi Pajero “Imported from Cyprus”. We were doing well, it was a private road I would like to and, then he got a bit carried away with himself and took out 50m of fence in the paddock.   That was it, the next week we were learning to build fences.

While living in Houghton I played for the local rugby team, this was a sport I continued when I went to senior school. I started at Durham School when I was thirteen, it was a private school but I was a day pupil. The hours were horrendous, starting at 8.30 for chapel till 9.00pm as we stayed to do our homework or prep at school.

There were lots of activities available; I was still playing rugby against Harrow & Eaton and Ampelforth. I took up rowing. It was a gentleman’s sport. We were competing in regattas which were open to all. It was great, we would spend all day Saturday at different regattas about the North east. Our crew was a four, this is four rowers and a cox who steers. We were quite successful, as were all the crews from the school, we were after rowing against clueless students who did not have the dedication or skill we had. We competed in the National championships a couple of times but won nothing. However we did win the schools equivalent to the Boat Race, Maltlake to Putney in London.

Whilst in school my interest in cars and selling was already growing. I had already owned many dirt bikes, quads and trikes that we used on the farm for fun. I also had a Landrover Fire Engine and a dumper truck. I learnt at an early age how engines work and how to fix them when they didn’t.

I started a weekend job when I was fourteen. At the time my father had a conservatory business and we were doing exhibitions around the North East. We would get to garden centers and hotels and try to make appointments for the sales staff to follow up. I started just setting up the stands then progressed to selling. I did quite well and got a feeling for having money in my pocket.