I started off thinking about role models from the world of sport. I wonder who comes to mind for you? I’m a bit of a Spurs fan, and I think Harry Kane, the Tottenham striker, would be a great role model for young people because he doesn’t just do it for the money (he could earn a lot more with a different club) and I have never seen any scandalous stories about him. I would be hard pressed to find another current Premier League footballer that fits the bill. I wonder if you know of anyone?

One of my favourite sports is tennis, and I would cite Roger Federer as a great example of the way to be as a champion sports person. In the women’s game, I always saw Steffi Graf as a great role model, someone with style, grace and impeccable behaviour.

Then my mind turned to role models from the world of politics. I wonder how many of you watch or listen to ‘Prime Minister’s Questions’ when the British Parliament is in session. Perhaps you have something similar in your country. What do you think of the behaviour in general of people in public life? Would you want your children and students to behave in the way that many Members of Parliament behave in their workplace?

In the end, we only have control over our own behaviour, but how many of us are, knowingly or unknowingly, an influence on others? I take my relationships with young people in my life very seriously. I have a responsibility to help them to become the best that they can be, while remaining their own person. A few years ago, my young niece asked me the golden question

‘Uncle Graham, what do you think about God?’

I thought very carefully for a few moments. I was honest with her. I told her that I had believed in God at one point in my life, because I was brought up to do so. Then I had rebelled, at the age of 17, and decided that I was an atheist. Nowadays I am not so sure. I don’t think there’s a God, but there could be.

‘What should I do, then, Uncle Graham?’ came the next question.

‘I think you should go and talk to some Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and any other religion that you can find out there. Then make up your own mind, and be prepared to change it as you go through life. And remember, whatever you decide, I will still love you’.

I see my role in life as helping people to be themselves, and to be comfortable with that changing person as they go through their lives. I have become more comfortable with who I am as I have grown older, and I can only suggest that might be the way to go.

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It was a year or so after i started my new life that I met John Davoren. i had been indulging in petty crime, having fallen in with bad company. After a few arrests, and a couple of stays in a remand centre, I had decided that I hadn’t left my entire family behind in a cult to end up as a criminal. I left the bedsit I shared with my negative role model and fellow petty criminal, and walked the streets of London for a few hours with my meagre belongings packed into a holdall. I slept on Victoria station that night, my one and only brush with homelessness, The next morning, I decided to walk around the pubs in the vicinity of Victoria station to see if there were any bar jobs available. The first pub I went into, the manager looked me up and down and said ‘We don’t have anything available’. Remember, I had been sleeping rough and I must have looked somewhat dishevelled. In the second pub, the response was more encouraging. The landlord sent me to his friend’s pub a few hundred yards away. It was there that I met John Davoren for the first time. He took one look at me and offered me a job and a place to live.

Not only did John, and his wife Pauline, take me in off the street, but months later, when the police caught up with me for some of my previous misdemeanours, and I was sent to Borstal, they kept my job open for me until I was able to return over a year later. John was also the first employer ever to praise me for my work. I learned so much from him, although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, looking back over my life, John was my first positive role model and therefore the first real inspiration in my life. RIP John Davoren 1936-2008.

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Recently, I decided to up my game. I have a message that can help other people to move forward with their lives, and I need to be getting that message out there. One way of achieving that is through speaking to groups of people, and one way is through writing regular posts here about what I am up to and what I am thinking about.

So, over the next few weeks, you will see some of my thoughts and feelings appearing in print again. Not just on LinkedIn, where I have been writing quite regular posts, but also here. I hope you’ll join me now and then, and we can help and support each other. Until next time!

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