People always ask, 'Were you outsiders at school, were you really weird?'. No, we just stayed in our bedrooms and watched TV. We never had anything else to do. We made no effort to make other friends because we felt so happy with each other. Richey (1992) If you built a museum to represent Blackwood, all you could put in it would be shit. We used to meet by this opening called Pen-Y-Fan. It was built when the mines closed but now the water has turned green and slimey. The put 2,000 fish in it, but they died. There's a whirlpool in it where about two people die every year. Nicky (1994) A long terraced street. Steps down into the valley. Football field. Swimming pool. Then to the left there was a big disguised slag heap with trees growing on it. We played there, everything happened there - Bonfire Night, Hallowe'en, a lot of people lost their virginity there. If there was a fight, it happened on that slag heap. It's gone now, levelled. When I go back, what strikes me is there's less places for people to hide. Hide and just be innocent. Lose their innocence too. James (1996) Me and Richey used to play football for a cup my dad found on a rubbish tip. It was a crown-green bowls cup, but we ran down the street with it when we won anyway. Richey was on my team (Woodfield Side) and one day James brought Sean to play for Pont Nicky (1996) I don't think we could have done this if we hadn't grown up in a shithole where the only way to escape was to create your own reality. Nicky (1992) We're the sad victims of 20th-century culture. The cinema in our town, which is the poorest and most boring town in the country, closed down when we were eight, so what do you do? You go out and get pissed and have fights, or you stay in and get on with your boredom. We were happier to go along with the boredom. Richey (1992) The most exciting thing was sitting around reading the rock press. When New Musical Express said things like Eddie Cochran was an antichrist, we went 'yeah'. We fell for that because our lives were really boring Richey (1992) Nicky tried joyriding once. He stole a car when he was 17. He didn't drive it into a shop. He just sort of rolled down the street, didn't get very far. He was a stunted joyrider. I think he fell asleep, drunk, at the wheel. Richey (1991) A lot of going to university was three more years of not having to decide what to do with my life. I've literally never done a day's work in my life, not even a paper round, so I couldn't handle going to work in an office Nicky (1994) We grew up very early. By the time I was 16 I'd read and studied the complete works of Philip Larkin, Shakespeare, all the Beat generation, every film. I find it unbelievable, the intensity of us as people and as a band. Nicky (1994)

When we were growing up, Richey's nickname was Teddy Edwards, after the cartoon character, because he was so cuddly. We just generally had a blissful childhood, in the sense of being free. Especially Richey, up until he was about 16, when he just hit the wall. Nicky (1996) We were never particularly victimised for being weird, because nobody ever saw us. Nicky (1994) Maybe that's what fucked us up, not that we had bad childhoods, but that our childhoods were too good. That sense of freedom - we weren't just reading books or watching films, experiencing second-hand culture, we were building a dam, messing around in the dirt, things like that which, looking back, seemed much more worthwhile. Nicky (1994) Up to the age of 13 I was ecstatically happy. People treated me very well, my dog was beautiful, I lived with my Nan and she was beautiful. School's nothing - you go there, come back and just play football in the fields. Then I moved from my Nan's and started at comprehensive school and everything started going wrong. In my 20s, there's nothing that's been spectacular since. Richey (1994) I wanted to be someone like Napoleon. Then I discovered Music - or the Clash to be more precise, and that was it. My destiny was determined. James (1991) Comprehensive school was the most depressing time for all of us. They either write you off or you fit in. If you're not academically gifted it's 'fuck you'. If you are, it's 'the banks are coming next week for a talk, and we think you should go.' Richey (1992) I enjoyed A levels because you had a certain freedom to write what you liked, and also you had teachers who wanted to teach you, whereas at university all the lecturers really want to do is write books. They haven't the first idea about how to teach and they don't care about making the subject interesting. They Just indulge themselves. Nicky (1994) Most people look back on their childhoods with more fondness than their early twenties or their teenage years which are pretty horrendous. As a child, you put your head on the pillow and fall asleep with no worries. From being a teenager onwards it's pretty rare that you don't end up staying awake half the night thinking about bullshit. Richey I was much more outwardly nervous then. I always had a kind of quiet arrogance, and slight bitterness against the world, but I don't have the guts to do anything about it. Nicky (1994) Depression is just our natural mood. Where we come from there's a natural melancholy in the air. Everybody, ever since you could comprehend it, felt pretty much defeated. You've got the ruins of heavy industry all around you, you see your parents' generation all out of work, nothing to do, being forced into the indignity of going on 'courses of relevance'. Richey (1994)