Theo goes back to his roots to give kids a chance
MILLIONAIRE DRAGONS’ DEN STAR HELPS FUND YOUTH CENTRE
BUSINESS mogul Theo Paphitis says he hopes a new youth centre in the Manchester suburb where he grew up will help disadvantaged kids ‘find their talent’ and escape poverty.
The self-made millionaire and star of TV’s Dragons’ Den is one of the donors helping to fund the £5.8 million centre near Belle Vue.
The facility, due to open later this year, will offer a range of activities, from sports such as football and boxing to rock climbing and cookery, hair and beauty, and film and media for an entry fee of just 50p.
Dad-of-five Theo, 60, who is donating part of the annual £1.3m running costs, was this week given a behind-the-scenes tour of the centre on Hyde Road, which is still under construction.
And in an exclusive interview with the M.E.N. the entrepreneur – worth a reported £300 million – said it was a project very close to his heart.
Despite spending a large part of his life in London, Theo and his family spent several years in Manchester after arriving in the UK from Cyprus in the 1960s.
Born in Limassol in 1959, Theo moved to the north west when he was six and briefly lived in a rented terraced house in Old Trafford, before his dad bought a two-up, twodown in Gorton when he was aged seven.
“I was a first generation immigrant and I couldn’t speak a word of English when I got here”, Theo said. “I knew ‘water’ – that was it. That was the only word I knew.
“So it was really strange coming here and going to school where there was no support for anyone that didn’t speak English. They just put you in a class and you thought ‘what the bloody hell is going on here.’
“There was no way of communicating, it was tough. Eventually you learn a few words so you can communicate and then eventually you integrate within the place.
“It wasn’t so bad, nobody had anything.”
Looking around in the middle of the modern centre, situated close to the huge Tesco store that now dominates the centre of Gorton, Theo said in many ways it was unrecognisable from the terrace houses and cobbled streets which characterised the area in the sixties.
“I used to live just up the road from here. I was a latchkey kid wandering around the streets,” he said.
“There was Belle Vue here, we used to bunk into there, hang around on the railway sidings, play on the trains, get into mischief.
“Whenever I brought my kids to Manchester it was always a source of amusement for them - ‘oh God dad’s going to drive through Gorton and show us where he used to live.’
“In the end they got fed up so I stopped, but I’ve been back a lot.
“It’s so very different now. Most of the streets have been knocked down. Some of them have been re-named. My old school (Peacock Street Primary School) has been knocked down. Some may say it should have been knocked down a lot earlier. I never used to go there a lot in fairness.
“Don’t forget, we’re talking just 20 years after the war when I was here. So it still had residues of the war everywhere, even 20 years on. If you looked at the railway sidings you could find an army helmet still lying there, half broken, on the floor which a soldier had just discarded.
“It was that sort of place. There was coal coke that would fall off the trucks and trains.
“You could collect it and sell it there was that much of it around.
“We used to collect it and light fires and sit there all night, lighting fires, talking nonsense.
“The church had a youth centre that was open for one evening, I think it was a Thurs
day, for about two and a half hours, and you would go there. But other than that there was nowhere to go, to do anything, to see anything, to talk to anyone.”
It may have changed architecturally but Gorton still remains one of the city’s most socially disadvantaged areas. And Theo says his experiences growing up here inspired him to want to give something back to the area.
The £6.5m HideOut Youth Zone is been being built on land donated by Manchester council, using a generous donation from Salford bookmaker Fred Done and being overseen by the charity OnSide who also run the successful youth centre in Harpurhey.
However, it will also cost around £1.3m a year to run, and, as it’s costing just 50p a day for kids to use, the contributions of donors, of which Theo was one, will be vital.
“The fact this place exists, as a place to come to first of all, is amazing,” said Theo, one of the centre’s founder patrons.
“Then when you look at what you get when you walk through the front door, it blows your hat off.” The centre, due to open in late spring/early summer, will have an indoor climbing wall, a four court sports hall, an outdoor 3G football pitch, skate park, dance and drama studio, enterprise and employability suite, a fully equipped gym, an arts and crafts studio, a boxing and martial arts gym, a music room, a recording studio and much more.
And Theo says he hopes it’ll help people find their calling in life just as he did.
“It’s not just about things to do – it’s about awareness and opportunity,” he said.
“Every kid has got a talent. It’s just the opportunity they are lacking.
“What you get here is an opportunity for them to see things, find their talent and be guided towards those opportunities. “Whereas that wouldn’t normally exist. “Kids don’t know what they don’t know. That’s a fact. In fact a lot of adults don’t either by the way. So to come here and see things in the flesh is massive.
“Yes, they see things on television, but it’s a difference between seeing them on television and actually climbing a wall. People watch Spider-man but they don’t think they’re actually going to be climbing a wall. You can turn up and do that here. You can do so many things – music, or media or boxing or martial arts. You name it – football, skateboarding.
“All these things exist but in most kids’ lives they exist either on telly or on a computer game. Not for real, you can’t really have a go. You can here. “Everyone has got a talent – whether it’s business, or sport, or with their hands. It’s getting the opportunity and finding that talent that is the key.”
Theo, who co-owns Red Letter Days with fellow Dragons’ Den businessman Peter Jones, revealed that he didn’t hesitate when he was offered the chance to help the centre.
“I got a phone call from (AO.com founder and OnSide chairman) John Roberts when the centre first got onto the starting blocks,” he said. “He said ‘you’re a Gorton boy aren’t you?’ and I said ‘yes.’
“He said ‘well we need some founder patrons because we’re starting one in Gorton’ and I said ‘never.’ It took me a millisecond to say yes. Manchester is an amazing city. It has so much wealth, so much potential, it’s such a vibrant city.
“But then at the same time, you look around and see how many children are living in poverty in this area. Which is tragic. I think it’s around 60 per cent, it’s a mad figure.
“So whoever has come from the area, and by that I mean Manchester, and who has been able to grasp the opportunities Manchester has given them and benefit from it, wouldn’t it be great to just give a little bit back?”