A Locked Bedroom, A Half Crown, And The Start Of A Writing Career

A child is handed a half crown, and the car ride home turns into a lesson about power, surveillance, and fear. That small moment opens up a much bigger story as I sit down with music writer and author Paolo Hewitt to talk about growing up in foster care, moving into a children’s home, and carrying the after-effects of being controlled, punished, and kept apart from the world.

Paolo shares how he survived by building a life in his head and in his body: devouring books, disappearing into Greek mythology, focusing on football, and feeling his whole world shift when he first heard the Beatles. We talk about why these are not just hobbies but survival tools for many looked after children, and how creativity can be the most practical form of resilience when you feel trapped, useless, or unable to speak up.

We also get honest about safeguarding and social work in the UK. Paolo remembers neighbours suspecting something was wrong but choosing not to interfere, and we dig into the impossible pressure on social workers, where decades of good work can be overshadowed by one visible failure. From there, the story turns towards stability and repair: the relief of safer care, the importance of not being moved endlessly, and the adults who made a children’s home feel like somewhere you could finally exhale.

Then comes the spark that changes everything. A teenage Paolo discovers the New Musical Express and realises writing about music could be a life, even after a teacher laughs at his dream of becoming a writer. If you care about foster care, children’s homes, trauma recovery, and how talent forms under pressure, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review telling us what helped you feel seen when you were young.

For those interested in what Palliative care looks like at home there is "The Last Kiss" (Not a Romance)
Available on Amazon now
 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Kiss-Romance-Carers-Stories/dp/1919635289/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13D6YWONKR5YH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._59mNNFoc-rROuWZnAQfsG0l3iseuQuK_gx-VxO_fe6DLJR8M0Az039lJk_HxFcW2o2HMhIH3r3PuD7Dj-D6KTwIHDMl2Q51FGLK8UFYOBwbRmrLMbpYoqOL6I5ruLukF1vq7umXueIASDS2pO91JktkZriJDJzgLfPv1ft5UtkdQxs9isRDmzAYzc5MKKztINcNGBq-GRWKxgvc_OV5iKKvpw0I5d7ZQMWuvGZODlY.fqQgWV-yBiNB5186RxkkWvQYBoEsDbyq-Hai3rU1cwg&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+last+kiss+not+a+romance&qid=1713902566&s=books&sprefix=The+Last+kiss+n%2Cstripbooks%2C107&sr=1-1

Transcript

Welcome And Why Paolo Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello again, and here we are. So uh today I'll be interviewing uh Paolo Hewitt from the New Musical Express. He's um I say he's from there, he's written from them for years, uh, and he's still writing for many other people. He's just a writer. One of his best books, which is what I'm interviewing him about, is The Looked After Kid, about his childhood growing up, uh, through foster care, which was a bit horrendous for him, and then uh into a care home, and then into boarding school. Uh, what a journey, but it's inspired him to become as creative as he is. He's also got another book coming out, or it is out, I know you have to check it out, uh, called But We All Shine On. So then he interviews, I think, people from the care home of the kids' care home that he was at. And so it's an amazing literary fest you should get into. Uh his life is fascinating, it's really interesting. He has also agreed to be a judge on our um national poetry uh rap spoken word competition uh for kids in care, which we're trying to put together. Hopefully, it'll launch next year and foster fortnight, somewhere between I think April, March, and April. Uh yet to be confirmed. So uh it's a brilliant, brilliant interview. He's a great guy. It cuts off at the end a little bit abruptly just because I'm an idiot when editing, but you know, well, I'll get better up there eventually. People have asked me about this poster, by the way, this thing at the back here. And uh what you have is these three dancing kids, all happy and uh exciting, and one's looking a bit confused. And uh that's kind of like how a lot of kids in care feel, uh just slightly on the outside. You know, ev all the other kids got families, they've got a normal-ish life. And then to be in care, whether it's a care home, whether it's uh with foster kids or kinship care, they feel slightly apart. And uh what we're trying to do is give kids a voice so that they can put their talent out there. Um so if you're a rapper, if you're a poet, if you're a spoken word, do you just wanna create something? We're looking for you two and your carers uh to get involved. More on that later, but right now Paolo Hewitt.

Meeting Paolo And The Memoir

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Well, hello, and welcome to Everything Foster Care with me, Jason Trell, and Paolo Hewitt, who is a bit famous, that's gonna be said. Uh, but not just new Musical Express, but interviews, books, a whole whole host of things. What a life you have led. So hello, Paolo.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Nice to meet you, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, I'm good. Um I'll just put this straight up because this is the book.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yes, it looks after kid.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah. You'll know it's a bit dog-eared, uh, because I I got mine on Amazon, and for some reason I ended up getting a second hand copy. Uh I think there's some nice irony in there. I enjoyed that. The book itself follows your life from foster care upwards, and as I put in the description, you you know, your first experience of foster care wasn't the greatest. Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

I thought it was great. It was one.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

You had you had this uh matriarch who

Surviving Control With Books Music

SPEAKER_00 3:45

was trying to mould you into some university professor at the age of five or six. That sounds horrendous, really, you know. I mean, you must have built up all these these strategies to survive.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Boom boom boom. I don't know if I did actually. I mean I I think um I don't know. I mean she was all It's a bit in the book where I talk about we go and see her her mother and father, my grandparents, and uh the uncle slips me up, takes me outside and slips a slips uh what was then uh called a half a crown.

unknown 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Until the early sixties and half a crown was like five shillings? Yeah. I think it was that like it was a lot of money. Yeah. And then on the way home we were driving in complete silence. He suddenly went, give me the half crown your uncle Josh gave you. And I was just like, This woman is all seeing, all knowing, all powerful, you know. So I suppose the strategy I had was to retreat into books.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Um I you know, I was a fast reader, I read from a very early age, thank God. I would just picture myself, I would read Greek mythology, and I suddenly I'm, you know, I'm hanging out with Hercules and I'm you know, I I'm I'm in the Trojan Hall. You know, it was that fantasy thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

And I got a a a fair bit of that being called Jason. Uh the um Jason and the Argonauts used to come quite long to my childhood.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

That was one way. Playing football with another. Yeah. Uh and also when I heard the Beatles, She Loves You, I heard that was the first music I really heard, and it just it just gave sent me to another dimension. So I think those three things, as you know, all those three things put you in the present. When you're playing football, you're not thinking, Oh god, my life's shit, you're thinking if he gets me the ball, I can go past that defender and score.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

If you're reading a great book, you're not thinking, Oh, my life's shit, you're thinking, Oh, I'm I'm I'm Oliver Twist, I'm I'm with the artful dodger, I'm doing this, I'm doing that.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

And um so with music, they they all put you in the present, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

So It's an interesting thing you say that, 'cause you know, some people would call it an escape from reality, but I would actually call it that is your reality.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

I spent an awful lot of time on my own. I was very isolated. She had locks on the outside of the bedroom door, you see, so I couldn't get out anyway. So I'd spend a lot of time in that bedroom.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, it was. I mean she was. She she sh you know and then when the s when Mr. Bishop used to come along, he would talk to me for five minutes, and I didn't realise the deal until I read my files, but he would get exasperated with me because as the other social worker had noted, I was inarticulate. I couldn't talk, I couldn't you know, I couldn't express myself. And so he would just get annoyed. He'd go and talk to the foster mother, and the foster mother would un we'd get a therapy session with him for about an hour or something. Uh BBC did a documentary on me and we went back there. We went back to the house. Okay. And um uh I was standing out, so one of them technicians came up to me and said, Oh, one of the neighbours just asked what we were doing and I told them, and she said, Yeah, we thought there was something wrong going on there, but we didn't like to interfere.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's the worst thing ever, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, we didn't we didn't want to win the video on that, and that's terrible.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

So, you know, that's that's that's kind of how my I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, he he's he had a traumatic childhood as well. I said the main thing I felt was useless all the time. I just felt useless. Everything apart from football, I was good at football and I was good at reading and I was. But she wanted you to be really academic, wouldn't she? Yeah, yeah. She she had a brother who had died early, and the brother was very the brother brother was a kind of pie flyer who was in the RAF and she decided that she wanted me to become the brother who had died.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Um I later found I don't know why, because it was a crazy idea, because the brother had actually taken all the family's love and attention. She didn't get any. This this is why she was so angry, and this is why she was taking out on every kid. And uh and honestly, Jason, she was she was she was ordering kids in like pizzas. I remember it being uh I'm there's a bit in there's a bit in my files where where she writes to social services saying that she wouldn't mind getting another kid. Um it can be this, it can be that, um, but not African, could be Indian, go as far as Indian, but not African. Got to be bright, ought to be, you know. It's like she was ordering a pizza, you know, mushrooms on top, bit of pepper, and hold the hold the pepperoni, you know. But that's that's what it was like at that time. You know, the the social workers just they just weren't up to it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Yeah, well you know, I I like to think things have changed a bit. I mean I can't imagine uh any of the people I've met in in uh Eastern Fostering Services in our particular corner of the world, um, being anything like the person you you are describing. The fact that these two guys got away with that, they are out there, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And another coup, you know, there was another one, wasn't there? Not the the Indian, the uh the down in Woking, which is my own town. The uh the little girl who was beaten by the the dad and the uh and the stepmum again, just and again social workers going around. Again, people saying we can hear her being here. I mean, how much more do you know?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

I just you know, it just Well Jenny's uh Jenny did you know Jenny, obviously you know Jenny Murroy very well. Yes, I love Jenny Jenny. Yeah, she's a just a force. We've said this before, she's amazing. Uh and she did a session with our uh agency, um, and in it she, you know, showed us these pictures of a of a couple, a little video of a non-communicative kid and these two very disheveled parents who and the very dishevelled house, and she's you know, she kind of pointed out how much more do you need? Okay, so you work with these kids, and we saw meeting after meeting with social services, and they went on for weeks and weeks and weeks, and it's saying you can see that this is an impossible situation. There is no way these this pair can look after a child.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

So what's the point when you make that decision? And I think it is tricky for social workers because there's a lot of pressure out there, isn't there, to say you social workers just want to take children away for no particular reason. Yeah, and I think that's what a lot of the theory is.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

And oh I you know, I you know, I I actually well I didn't stay in touch with her, but I got when I wrote the looked after kid, I got back in touch with my old social worker who was great, and we've maintained a relationship ever since. And talking to her, I you know, you do I I I think to myself, God, social workers social work is like being a f a goalkeeper in football. You can be do brilliant for 89 minutes, right? And nobody says anything. But if you let in the last minute goal through your legs, everybody kills you. There's so much good there's so much good work that social works workers do, which of course goes unnoticed because that's what they should be doing. But of course, yeah, you know, things like these two guys or the thing in woking just just render social workers in people's eyes as, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Um and uh you're clearly not passing that on to yours, having learned. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

You haven't seen you play football with him, have you? Slight tackle, elbows in the ribs.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

No, I I uh no, I I couldn't, you know. I can't No, of course not.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

But then you went

Leaving Foster Care For A Children’s Home

SPEAKER_00 11:28

into care. You you were uh or she I don't know, she didn't want you anymore because you weren't living up to her expectations, is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I'll tell you I wasn't living up to her expectations, but the thing about it was her expectations were so high she knew that she set them at this high, such so high that she knew that I would never reach her. It w it it wasn't about that, it was just about her taking out her anger and making these ridiculous demands and and like I asked you to do A and you haven't done it, therefore, you know, I have every right to cane you or to lock you in a cupboard or lock you in your bedroom. I mean it was just it was just and the thing about it as as well, Jason, was that it was she was also very capricious, meaning you never knew where you stood with her. Right. Like, you know, you you just you just didn't know, you know, was she in a good mood, was she in a bad mood. She'd she'd turn like that. One minute she'd be laughing, next minute she'd be slapping you around the head. I mean it was just you were just always difficult. On to yeah, I was just always on t tinder sticks with her, you know what I mean? Yeah. And um and anyway, what happened was that um w I got to about ten years of uh first first of all there was one incident where I I used to steal from her purse. First of all, it was a penny, then it was uh two pennies, then it was sixpence.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And then one time you document that in the book.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah, and so she calls the school up and they and the my form teacher who was a lovely man, you know, sat me down and he was just trying to, you know, is everything all right at home? And of course I kept saying, Yeah, it's all fine, you know, it's fine, yeah. Do you love your mother? Yeah, I love my mother, you know, it's all that. Um and he actually tried to um adopt me.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah and she could tell you were lying, basically, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

You know Yeah, she found out and um and and had me taken away from the school. So any outside threat, you know, she nullified. So I was just stuck there. Anyway, what happened was one day I was at school and I said to her, Oh, um everyone's going s you know, there's a swimming thing after school and she went, You're not going to that. You I want you home by four o'clock or wherever it was. And I just thought, everyone's going. It's you know, I'm not going off to rob a bank or you know, or whatever. Or go and smash a shopper. I'm going s you know, I'm going for a swim. What's the so I went. I'd I'd I went and uh and sh and she was just I I think by then she she she she'd already she'd got three others in by then. So there were three others living in the house. And I think she thought, well, he's he can go because I got you know, I'd love to meet those other three actually, because find out what happened to them, because I bet they got the same thing. Uh so on the so that was on the Friday. On the Saturday, she didn't even come near me. I knew something was up. And then on the Sunday I was just in my bedroom and she walked in, she said, um, and she s she had a suitcase, said pack your stuff. I was like, okay, and I packed my stuff, said come downstairs. I went downstairs, she opened the door, and there was a car there with two social workers, and that was it, last I ever saw of her. And she I was throwing a car and taken off to first of all a children's home called Woodruff in um Bramley, which is near Guildford, run by two beautiful people, John and Molly Smith. And I was there from April till September, and I loved being there. I mean it's a it's John John Brown was just like he was the dad you always want. You know what I mean? He was just fantastic. He used to let me come in and watch, you know, TV at lunchtime, watch the cricket, and don't tell anyone I'm doing this. And he was just, you know, because he could see how I sat in a tree for three days. You know, that's what I did for three days. I just sat in a tree and he just he gently metaphorically coaxed me down from that trick. So when I had to move to Burbank, I was just so distraught. I was like, you know, I'm really, really happy here. You know, everything I wanted is here, and you know, I feel so much better and happier, and now you're sending me somewhere else. But I went off to Woking, I went to Burbank Children's Home in Woking when I was I was ten years old, and I stayed there till I was eighteen. And I was quite lucky in some ways because a lot of kids get moved around, but I never did. I stayed at Burbank till till I was eighteen, so I at least had some kind of stability.

Finding NME And Choosing Writing

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Well, it was kind of at school, well obviously English, but also history, because I liked history and I would I would write a lot there. Um and there's a book, I think it's by Plato, it's called The Republic. It's like this huge book. It's huge, you know. And I used to walk around school with it, you know. I was like 13, as you know, this is like a a university course book, you know. And teachers would say, Have you read that? I'd go, Yeah, yeah, I've read it. Um but anyway, one day I walked in Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and then one day I walked into school and my good friend Enzo Spazito was um was reading uh the enemy, the New Musical Express, and I was like, What is that? And he was like, It's a music, but I'd never heard of such a thing. I'll just read it, you know, because I kept on it, what do you mean it's about music? It's a paper about music. What just music? Yeah, just music. Well, don't you talk about music, don't have football in it. No, yeah, you read it, you know, and he gave it to me. And I just it was like the light went on boing. Yeah, I just looked at it and I thought, my god, this is what I want to do. I'd you know, I was 14, I was very lucky because, you know, it gave me a direction, it gave me something that's what I want to do, that's what I'm going for. Um and then I made a big mistake in English one day when I I had to stay behind and talk to the English teacher because my my my um grades were dropping and uh she's she was like, You've got to get your grades up. I mean, what are you gonna do in life? I said, I'm gonna be a writer. And she burst into laughter and she and she laughed at me and it just killed me. It just absolutely killed me. And I thought I'm not telling anybody ever again what what I want to do. So that's what I did. I just put everything I had into um into um in into writing for the enemy. Oh I know, it was awful. She was a she was a real snob to her writers were like Shakespeare, Joyce, Dickens, you know. So um Well, the three daughters, the three daughters uh sing and dance at the end. Oh we love you really, Pop. I I always thought that that was a real thought of the English system because I mean my friend, you know, my friends read books, but suddenly suddenly we're introduced to this Shakespeare and Chaucer. This can be a completely different language. Everyone's like, what is this? What is this? You know, if we'd have been given Dickens like Oliver Twist or, you know, stuff like that, then they they would still be reading books. Everybody just like, you know, gave up on it. It's still really important to me. I I panic if if you know, I go on tubes and buses and if I haven't got a book, I'm like, Oh fuck, I haven't got a book, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna I've gone home. I've gone home before to get a book.