The Bedford Podcast
Local Bedford podcast hosted by Ken Parsons.
The Bedford Podcast
Ken talks to Neil Mills - Part 1, Trouble, Choices and a Life Heading the Wrong Way
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Neil Mills grew up in South London surrounded by gangs, drugs and chaos. Bullied at school and labelled a “lost cause” by teachers, he drifted into crime at a young age and quickly became the person everyone expected him to be. In this raw first half of the conversation, Neil reflects on the environment that shaped him, the mistakes he made and the reality of life on the streets. It’s an honest look at how easily young people can fall into the wrong world—and the moment when Neil realised he had a choice: keep going down that road or fight to change direction.
Welcome to the Bedford Podcast. Today we're talking about second chances, discipline, and choosing a different path. My guest is Neil Mills, a builder, a father, a husband, and a man about to run, walk, crawl 950 miles across the UK to support Young Lives versus Cancer. But this story didn't start with an endurance challenge or charity runs, it started in South London with a young lad who didn't quite fit in at school, drifted into trouble, and one day realized that he was becoming the person everyone expected him to be, but who he did not want to be. Instead of accepting that future, Neil made a decision to change direction, and what followed is a story about resilience, family, hard work, and proving that your past does not have to define your future. This is Neil's story. Good morning, Neil. Morning mate. Thanks for having me. No, no problem at all. It's a pleasure. We've chatted a couple of times, we've exchanged some information, it's an amazing story. So I think it's important that we say you're an honorary Bedfordian, you've moved into the area, and I wondered if you could just take us back to the beginning and tell us a little bit about your childhood growing up with your mum and your brothers.
SPEAKER_00So I was born in Leutium in 1977. No real memories of Leutiam apart from my nan lived there, so we used to visit there. My at that time two brothers. Oh sorry, one brother and me. And then my mum soon met someone else. She had two more children, my brothers, Jamie and Darren. Their dad soon left, and my mum became a single parent. So I've got memories of living in Woolwich, probably not the best of places, not the best of opportunities, probably more opportunities to do the wrong thing rather than the right. Okay. If you get mixed up in that world, which is what started to aspire very young. Um I'm gonna probably skip to used to get bullied at school a lot in my early from the age of six upwards. There was a turning point for me there where my mum was fed up of me coming home beating up. Um, she said to me, if you come home beat up once more, I'm gonna beat you up. And probably not the smartest thing because it triggered something in me. Um, I actually went to school the next day, and everyone that was picking on me, I one by one beat all of them up, apart from the ringleader. Um, but that then got me suspended from all breaks. My mum used to have to come to school to pick me up. I wasn't allowed to mix with any of the other kids, so straight away they've pulled me away. Um, I've already got learning problems, as they said. We can get into that in a bit. What's aspired for me about my learning difficulties is that I wouldn't focus, I wouldn't concentrate. If I didn't like something, I wouldn't do it. Very strong-minded. If it wasn't for me, it wasn't for me, you're not gonna make me do it. So I actually started truing it in school, very young, um, 10 years of age. I couldn't imagine. I've got my youngest boy's 12 at the minute, and if he truant in school now, it'd blow my mind.
SPEAKER_01And so how old were you when you started truant in?
SPEAKER_00Uh 10. At 10 years old. 10 years old.
SPEAKER_01Um, and your son's 12.
SPEAKER_00My son's 12. My youngest is 12.
SPEAKER_01You must look at him and think, oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00It's so high. Like when you look back and you think, I think of my mum, and I'm like, my mum had four boys on her own, and I was the way I was. My brothers were no angels either. And I look back and I used to think, what an overreacting woman. And then I look now and it petrifies me to look back at me and look at my mum, because by the age of 12, my son's 12, I was taking drugs and smoking. Um, I was sniffing glue, smoking weed, um, doing things that I couldn't imagine. By the age of 14, I was taking LSD, um selling drugs and getting into all sorts of trouble.
SPEAKER_01Right. Hold that thought on a drug, so we're gonna come on to that shortly. What age do you think you were when you just realised was it pretty much straight when you're in school and you're thinking like I just don't quite fit in here, I I don't get this school thing.
SPEAKER_00So age 10, I started getting the problems. I started secondary school age 11. I broke both my arms at age 11, and I think that was the moment when I realised that there was for me there was something better than school for me in my mind. So I broke both my arms at the age of 11. I fell 40 foot and snapped both my wrists, and I was off for three months. I deviously forged my mum's signature and kept sending letters into school, so I actually skipped school for 18 months. So I spent 18 months of walking the streets, going around with grown men, um, doing things that kids don't do, mixing with all sorts, and then I came home one day and my mum was being overly nice to me, and she was like, Oh um, nice that school? I was like, Yeah, because I used to go out, come out, and then I used to sit behind with a mud hill behind my mum's house. I used to make a shack up there, and I'd sit in the shack till it was time to come in, and she's all over oh go go and sit down in the front room, you know. And I got in there and there was two men in there, and it was the school board. So at that point the school board was there, and then it was like, but I knew I just didn't like school. What I was doing seemed far better than what they was expecting of me at school. Yeah, and then I then made a big story up that it was the school, as kids do, and I blame the school, so they got me transferred to school. The first four months of my new school, I didn't go, and then they got a letter to say that I hadn't been at school. And I remember actually going into a lesson, and the teacher didn't even know I was, and I wasn't even on his register. And I'm like, no, I meant to be in this class, but it got to the point where he thought he had just had a and my name had been crossed off. So they sort of got me back into school. Um I got into some trouble with some rival gangs actually that fights.
SPEAKER_01What what sort of year is this?
SPEAKER_00We're talking yeah, I how they word it now, so it'd be the same. We're now talking year year twelve years. Gosh, oh age wise, 77, so with 1990, roughly. So yeah, age phone.
SPEAKER_01Gangs, gangs, London, it was all starting to kick off a little bit more back then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, gangs was really strange as well. So we was part of a gang called the Buckmars Crew. Um funny enough, there's some of them are quite famous now for the wrong reasons.
SPEAKER_01Um of the gang members.
SPEAKER_00But it's really weird because we would have yeah, some of the gang members are extremely famous. I'm not gonna name drop, but yeah, they've done some really bad things. And that gang of 2030 would congregate with other gangs which became hundreds, hundreds and twenties. It was really strange because you'd be enemies in the week and then you'd be fighting rival postcodes.
SPEAKER_01And it was all about postcodes in London, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00Literally, yeah, yeah. You couldn't go somewhere without being offended by another postcode. Um so then by the age of 14, I was out 14-15, I was out raving. I used to go raving in Peckham, Peckham, Rye Lane, you know, things beyond taking ecstasy, and um there was a there's a really story about I wanted to leave school because I just had it in my head and they actually agreed to it. But the story is my mum's boyfriend at the time, Terry, um, probably in sort of to be fair, he's part of someone that I've probably helped turn my life in a way because of how he treated me um badly, but in when you look back at it, it was good what he did. He had told the school, look, just let him leave, he'll be back to school in a couple of months. We're gonna put him on site looking after Brick Lads as a labourer, and we're gonna make his life hell basically. But what age? This was age 15, so just turned 15. I should have had another year and a bit left at school because I was young. Um I was I'm an August birthday 29th, so I fall into that category of young. And he took me to work, and I'd be sweating, it was awful, but I'd be doing this, doing that, get this ready, get that ready, load this out, we'll get it, and then all of a sudden they go, right, we're going over there, and I go, But I've put all the bricks over there. No, don't worry, we're going over there. And I'd now have for dead, what they used to call a dead start, so I'd have to get that ready, but I've already put bricks there, then another gang would get on there. Of course, for months and months and months, I just working like a dog, but I loved it. It like I thrived off it, it was like a challenge, and it was like, How do I get in front? I'd have no tea break so that I could get in front, so it was a game for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00My brain functioned like that. I realised quite like at that point, I realised that actually this is what I'm made for. So, again, you you're teaching yourself, really, you're teaching yourself to learn at that point, and then just after I was legally allowed to leave school, he came up to me and he said, You're a stubborn little shit, and I went, Why? He went, I've done everything to get you back at school. He went, You just your defiance is just like next level. He went, We really, and of course, then it all ravels, and I'm like, that's why they're doing this, this, and this and this, and trying to force me back to school.
SPEAKER_01Do you not make me want to do what you're doing there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you go back to school, but I loved it. Um well that backfired then. It did backfire, but and I was so good at what I was doing, so I wanted to learn to lay bricks because now I've got it in my head that actually I can do something.
SPEAKER_01Right, hold that thought for a minute because we're going to come back to this teach yourself though. Just tell me a little bit about the and for I've never been in a situation where like if I went into town centre now, I'm sure people who know drugs would be able to pick someone out and I could go and buy something. I I can go into town now and I would not have a clue what's going on, and I'd come home and I wouldn't be out buying drugs, I wouldn't know where to go, who to talk to, what to get. What did that world of drugs look like to a uh young lad, you know, 10, 11, 12 years old? How how how how do you did someone introduce you to it? Was it a a conscious choice you made?
SPEAKER_00So the first knock-ins with drugs was when I was skipping school early, young ages, and then you get in with somebody and they're linked with somebody, and then it's all about ages. So the person I was um knocking about with at that time had a family that was into drugs. Um he was selling drugs for someone and doing what he's doing, so then you get involved that way, and it's all about ages. Everyone's using someone younger to do.
SPEAKER_01So to you, kinda he's a mate, but to him you are sort of oh and you can help me do what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00At first it didn't really feel like that. Right. Um it was more he came from a really badly broken home. Right. Um, and like he was clearly doing what he was doing because he was looking out for anything to distract his mind, I'm guessing. Right. Um and vice versa, and I just think two people come together, you're in it wasn't all just him because then it becomes apparent, then like attracts like everyone that you're associated with now is in the same world, and you're looking if you're looking for validation in what you're doing, you're just gonna look out and you're just gonna find these people, and people fall into your lap all the time. Yeah, um, you saying that you wouldn't know where to get drugs from, but when you want to find it, you'll find it, right? And I'm not saying I remember that. Yeah, if you want to find it, you'll ask the right questions in the right places. Yeah. For an adult, now you just go to a club for a child, you look for those boys that are a little bit woo and a little bit white, and and they they pump it out to you, like you know, everyone's just trying to push it on you. Have that, so the next thing you're smoking that, and then the next thing it's where do I buy that? Oh, that's okay, I've got yeah, and right, okay.
SPEAKER_01And then you get drawn into it then.
SPEAKER_00And I'm not sure who designs it that way, but I don't think the guy that I was knocking about with designed it that way. Right. I just think he was caught in a trap the same as me, and then before you know it, you're trying to work out where you get it, because you now want to. What starts it off is somebody somewhere is getting him hooked, he's going out with his mates, they're getting me hooked. That's part of the upper plan that I can see. Right. They've now got us all hooked. We now want somewhere to buy it, we're now going out thieving to buy it because that's what goes on. So we're now shoplifting, um, breaking into cars, doing anything we can to get it, but then they give us an easier option. The easier option is why don't you sell it to your friends? And then you can have your bit, and you don't have to buy your bit.
SPEAKER_01So this starts, so the plan is already there at the very top. Not necessarily the person that you're associating with as he's a mate, as far as you're concerned. Um, so quite relatively quickly, then you end up with an opportunity to to earn earn some money as well as get drugs, but no doubt you're gonna spend some lap on drugs anyway.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you you don't take money, you take the drugs.
SPEAKER_01That's and so your payment was not money, you weren't getting richer on it then.
SPEAKER_00No, they know what you're doing. Um, if you know about drugs, I know loads about it. It's the more you take, the more you can take. Um, and I won't touch on now I know why, because I'm amphetamine-based personality, but the more you take, the more you can take, the more, and of course, it's a foregone conclusion. You the money is irrelevant. Um I'll touch on bits later where I actually was working, earning loads of money, selling and earning loads of money, and waking up Monday, I can't even pay my rent. That's how much it gets you in the end. You're not only earning, you're not only taking what what they're giving you to to you know to sell the drugs or hold the drugs. They have the levels of it is you know, there'll be people being paid to hold it, so they'll keep it in their house. There'll be people being paid to sell it, and you'll all be linked together. So he'll hold it, you'll pick it up off him, you'll do the deal with him, and then the guy that's taking the money, none of you have met. Um, no doubt, no doubt the guy that you think it is, it's definitely not him.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, it's very carefully so you couldn't at your level, you could not get rich on what you were doing.
SPEAKER_00Not as a child, no, um, as an adult, a young adult, when I got later on in life, had I not been taking it myself, probably there was opportunities to be rich. Um, there's also opportunities to die and go to jail, yeah. Which I learned quite young.
SPEAKER_01Could um so you've you've taken it, you're selling it, and that's feeding the habit. Did it feel did you feel like you were successful? No, I think it was just a need for the drugs, that that was that was the goal.
SPEAKER_00I think a part a lot of it was a need for for being a purpose, like for feeling like you've achieved something, you've got something, and constantly you're chasing you're chasing somewhere where you're never gonna get, which is you know, it's the glamour of it. You see the people. So if you go back to school and I'm constantly chasing you'll never make something of yourself, which we'll go into, which is yes, was the big turnaround for me. Um so you're constantly chasing that you will never have nothing. So your brain or my brain's looking for it's really weird, you call it the easy options, but when I look back now, it's not an easy option. Like when people say, Oh, people that sell drugs, they they're looking for an easy option. That's not easy. Like when you when you think that you're constantly looking over your shoulder, are you gonna get beat up? Are you gonna get stabbed? Are you gonna get killed? I mean, I've been stabbed, are you gonna get killed? Are you gonna get arrested? Are you gonna go to jail?
SPEAKER_01No, I'm sorry, I'm just smiling. It's just quite a matter of fact, I've been stabbed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um funnily enough, technically not over drugs. Okay, that was that I'll say that for another podcast. Yeah, that's another podcast.
SPEAKER_01It's so you it sadly your your mum died when you was you was young, and she was young.
SPEAKER_00My mum died. Yeah, my mum died in her early 40s. Right.
SPEAKER_01Where were you in life at that point? What had you had that moment where you turned a corner? Were you still in that?
SPEAKER_00I always break life into ten years, so I was I'd had one of my moments where I'd adjusted a bit, but I was still far the person that I'd want my mum to see by far. I was 20 I was I might have been 20, so I was four to five years away from where I was when I turned in point, right? But I'd had my oldest son, so I'd turned some corners, so my life turned a corner but turned a corner and I went back around. Okay, so I'd met my oldest son's mum. I'd had a child, I was 18 when he was conceived, 19 when he was born. Settled a little bit but didn't settle, still living in a bad world, mixing with the wrong people, but trying to draw myself away from it. It's a very hard world to get away from. Um, it's really hard.
SPEAKER_01Can I just ask you about your mum? That situation you were in then, she's not seen this nil running a successful cut uh partner in a successful construction business, you know, great family. Can I just ask you what you you know, what would you if you could have a chance to say what something to her? Um or if you look back now. If I look back.
SPEAKER_00So it's really funny actually, because when we get to the running bit, I'll tell you something that I do when I go running when I first started running, when I couldn't run. But when my mum first died, I've got a very I really struggle to deal with emotions. Um always have done another ADHD thing. So I suck everything up. So I sucked it up. I didn't cry when my mum died for four years. It took me four years to cry for my mum. Um not because I didn't love my mum, because I didn't love the relationship I had with my mum. Right. That I used to blame on her. But when I look back, it's me. Okay. So it's one of my regret moments that my mum kept it from us as well. She had an aneurysm, she had an operation. She didn't tell us that when she was having the operation there was a chance she'd die. She just told us it was a routine operation, so no one took it seriously. So I didn't actually get to say goodbye. So I always had this regret that so in me I wanted to prove her wrong. Not that I didn't think she believed in me, but I think she'd in her head she'd given up on me, and I wanted to prove her wrong. So I always had this beating thing in my head that I had to spin it around, but then when she died, who do I prove it to? I've got no one to prove it to, so I went backwards for a little bit. Okay. Um so it sort of went forward, backwards, and then I just I'm very good at blocking things out, and I think that I'll touch on that again with an ADHD. I think that's a I don't look as ADHD as because I only got late diagnosed. I look at it as a gift, not a not the other way around. Okay. I look at the positives in it, which is one of the positives wrong or right, is you can shut the noise out with ADHD because it's your brain's so busy, you can make it busy in a the right direction. So I managed to block things out. They come back and get you, and when they get you, they get they get you, really get you. Um Which is where runnings come into life as well, which has really helped. So yeah, my mum hit me. She wasn't that wasn't my turning point, but maybe part of it was.
SPEAKER_01But what again, but what would you say if you could say something now about either because you kind of accept and you're telling me that really a lot of the relationship issue was prob probably Yeah, I always say, look at look at the four boys that you know that my mum's raised four great boys, like yeah.
SPEAKER_00We touched on a personal conversation when I was speaking to you before about my younger brother, yeah. And if she looked at her four boys, so I often look up, I'll skip to the bit where I'm running. So I always salute my mum when I'm running, because I had a really mad relationship with running where I couldn't run a mile. And one day I looked at my mum and went, Come on, because I put myself up for a marathon that I didn't realise how hard it was, and then I couldn't run a mile. And when I ran my first mile, I saluted my mum and I went, Thank you, mum. Look at what you've done and the four boys that you've raised, because she she did that amazingly on her own. As much as and now I'm a parent, I actually realise you don't actually raise your kids beyond their teens anyway. You you literally borrow them to their teenagers, and then you guide them, you push them, but they're gonna find their own way in life. So she had done her bit. She had done her bit on her own.
SPEAKER_01So there's a turning point now. Um now from what you said it wasn't a light bulb moment, but you you've got to a point where you you you think you're becoming or you are the person that people are telling you, telling you as a youngster at school and growing up, you're gonna be this when you get older, and it ain't gonna be good. And you've just thought, hang on a second, that that that's not where I'm going.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my life was mapped out, so I I'll skip through a year. Mention my older my older son's mum, um, and me and him talk deep and a lot, and he knows I never shy my life away from him. Um when I split out of his mum, I did the cowardly thing, and I used it as an excuse to go on a rampage, so I literally took a full U-turn and went straight back to my worst point and went from there selling drugs, going out raving. What age? Um so now I'd be 23. Wow. So age 23, I'm now I've gone back, I'm probably acting like a 16-year-old again. Um I was out every week and still went to work every day. I've never had funny enough, I've never took a day off of my life of work. Never not turned up for I've been to work in some serious states when I was younger, but I've never not had a day off. And I went on this year rampage, I was selling pills in Bagley's Nightclub in London, but I was also taking a lot.
SPEAKER_01Um have you ever been arrested for it? Did you ever get picked up?
SPEAKER_00So funny enough, we got for not for selling drugs, I haven't. Um I've been down in the cells or the back rooms in Bagley's Nightclub, and there's a story that goes with that where me and my brother was at a rave, we used to all sell them. I was the holder that night, and I was holding them. Someone grabbed me and I chucked them down my trousers and they actually all soaked into my leg and I nearly ended up in a I was in a bad way for a whole weekend. Because your skin absorbed them. My skin absorbed the whole lot. Um, whatever was left in that bag, they let me back up. When we was driving home, my brother, I was going, they reckoned they could see through me, and I just felt really sick. And I was like, stop the car. My brother's like, stop the car, and the cab driver thought we was trying to rob him, so he wouldn't. But the next thing I'm just like throwing up like it's a scene out of the exorcist, it was like I don't even know how I lived that weekend. I literally I'm putting it, I put it all down to ADHD and the fact that amphetamines trigger me, and right I can take because we used to have moments I would take 10 when everyone else would take two, and I used to say, Well, maybe I'm getting the dud ones, but it's my personality unravels the fact that amphetamines is making me tick. But I'll skip through that year went absolutely chaotic.
SPEAKER_01So, this is when you you've reversed, you've gone back into big time.
SPEAKER_00I've diced with death a few times, I'm mixing with the wrong people, I'm fighting all the time. I'm literally, and it was nearly enough a year to the day, it was Christmas to Christmas. I split up my eldest son's mum just before Christmas. Um, and then the following Christmas, I went to an all-weekend thing at New Year, and then the following week after New Year, I went to everyone. Do you know what? I was sitting in, we was a big session, we were all out of our heads, and I went, I'm not doing this anymore in the morning. And we'd had these moments all the time. I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this. I went, tomorrow I'm gonna go to the gym, and when I go to the gym, I'm not gonna take drugs or drink ever again. And everyone laughed at me, they was all laughing because we've all seen it before, but I did. I went to the gym the next morning, signed up a gym membership, totally out of my head, still buzzing off my head, and I went to the gym and I never ever drank or took drugs ever since. So that was age 25 by then. And you are now I'm 47. 40, no, I'm not online, I'm 48. 48, right? I get confused because I tell my kids every year I'm 36.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So that that there was the point, but the point was the thought process in that was I sat and I thought, you're you're everything that like I've got flashbacks of my teacher calling me Dufferhead and and all these people. Duff ahead. I had a teacher, Miss, I don't even know her name, Miss Ira, she's the only teacher I remember actually. Um, and she used to call me Dufferhead, and she constantly tells me that's the person and my headmaster, you're never you're your your life's directed for you. So I was becoming everything I didn't want to become. Um that moment then I was like, right, the only person that's gonna fix this. It was the first time actually that I realised that everything I do is a choice, so I've made these choices. I now need to choose something different for me. Like to get I never have my own house, my kids are gonna like there's a whole chain of events coming behind me. If I don't sort this out now, I've got my son Joe, he's gonna follow my suit or not follow my suit. But the chances are you your home's broken because he's now even that part of me, the fact that my son is now coming from a broken home, which is something that I said I'd never do as a child. I I didn't I wanted my son to grow up with two parents, um, and he wasn't gonna, and worse so is I've now got the choice to undo that, and at least if he's got two parents, he's got two functioning parents that you know do what's right and do. And in fairness, I mean I'm not religious, and I tell my kids that I'm Jesus, and they say, What do you mean? I went, I suffered, so you didn't have to. Um because I believe in the stories of the Bible, I believe there's a teaching in there somewhere, so I say I suffered so, but my older boy, we have some deep conversations, and um we had an away day at Milan because we're Arsenal season ticket holders. Yeah, I don't want to talk about Arsenal, and um he he we was talking deeply then, and he's like he looks at the fact that I was openly speaking about it, and he looks at the person I am now and he said that's enough to defer him from following that path because he says there's a reason you don't do that anymore. So it makes me glad that I do because people say what you tell your kids. I say I don't openly tell them, but if they ask me, yeah, I'll speak to them like and I'll tell them like and I'll say to my son, if you're ever out taking drugs, talk to me because I might be able to help you in a tricky situation, or at least I can come and get you and we can you know deal with it.
SPEAKER_01Now mate, this is uh emotional roller coaster, this is mate. So we're gonna take a break, yeah, and uh I think this is a perfect opportunity. Um you've you've been down an alleyway that really didn't want to be, you started to get out of it, you've gone back where you were, and now I think it's fair to say that the turning point. So let's have a break now and let's start on the other side. Cool. Alright.