CHILDHOOD AMBITIONS: CAR THIEF OR CRIMPER?

MY AMBITION was to be a car thief or a hairdresser. The idea of being a photographer was so middle class, it wasn’t even on the horizon.

My mother used to say. ‘You’ll end up like all of us, driving the 101 bus.’ It wasn’t very encouraging, but encouragement was in short supply — from anybody.

The fact is I didn’t go to school much at all, and nobody really checked on you.

One year, I counted I’d been there about 50 days in all. I don’t remember learning anything much.

Nobody knew about dyslexia then: they just told me I was an idiot. Sometimes I’d even spell David wrong; I’d put the ‘v’ and the ‘i’ in the wrong place.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I got tested by Mary Lobascher, the guru of dyslexia, who put me in the top 5 per cent of intelligence in the UK.

From being an idiot one day to being Einstein the next — it was ridiculous.

I’ve realised since that if I wasn’t dyslexic, I wouldn’t be a photographer. Thing is, if you tell me something, I see it as pictures. And I still can’t spell but it doesn’t matter.

After I became successful, my dad never mentioned what I’d achieved. People thought you were showing off if you said anything about your work.

There was no concept of success. People from the East End didn’t have success. Success was getting an off-licence or a second-hand car business.

My dad thought you only took pictures on holiday in Southend or on Brighton Pier. It was called being ‘on the smudge’ — because the pictures always came out smudgy.

Even after ten years at Vogue — in the late Sixties — I’d bump into Cockneys who said: ‘Still on the smudge, Dave?’