Читать книгу Taking le Tiss онлайн

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To be fair, there was precious little else to do on Guernsey apart from going to the beach. So it was sport, Sport, SPORT. The island was obsessed with it, and I came from a very sporting family. I was born on October 14, 1968, the youngest of four boys, after Mark, Kevin and Carl. I turned up as an afterthought, or because my parents wanted a girl.

My mum and dad (Ruth and Marcus) got married at 16 and had had three children by the time they were 19—and they are still happily together—despite the strain of looking after the four of us. They’ve been behind everything I have ever achieved, but the only principle I didn’t follow involved hard work. They grafted like mad when we were young, often holding down two jobs each to ensure we didn’t go without. We grew up on an estate and didn’t have a lot. It was a bit rough and ready but not a bad place, and when you are a kid you don’t really think about your surroundings, you just accept that’s how life is. And Guernsey was a fantastic place to grow up, with wonderful beaches close by. It was so safe. It really was the kind of place where people didn’t lock their front doors or their cars, and I must admit I’m quite pleased two of my kids are growing up there. The only thing people weren’t relaxed about was sport, particularly when it came to competing against Jersey.