Having one arm hasn’t stopped me enjoying a daredevil lifestyle: mountain biking, karate, motorbikes – I’ve done them all
When I was 13, I wanted to be like Jimi Hendrix, but when I told my parents I wanted to play the guitar, they looked at me as if I was mad. I was born without a right arm: how was I going to strum chords? That’s when I designed my first prosthetic. I drew it on a piece of paper, then adapted a prosthetic I already had with a socket and a plectrum. It worked. I learned to play Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers. OK, I was never going to be Hendrix, but I had realised making my own arms was possible.
Doctors would say I’m a congenital right-arm amputee from birth, but I don’t really use those terms. I was born in east London in the 1980s. I took inspiration from my dad who had more than his fair share of hard knocks, and was caught up in the polio epidemic of the 1950s. My parents instilled in me an attitude of “there’s no such word as can’t”, so they shouldn’t have been surprised about my rock star ambitions.
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