Thomas Curran

And I suppose this is where I first learned about shame, what it meant to feel ashamed and embarrassed about where I am in life and what I have.

And I sort of learned that you kind of got to buy your way out of that shame in this world.

And that became, I guess, an early motivation.

So they had these what we call hot hatchbacks in the UK, you know, the really fast, exciting pieces of machinery, I suppose.

And everybody around the town would be asking, you know, what car are you going to get?

And you're going to get this one, you're going to get that one, you're going to get these plates.

And what about these trims and these wheels and everything?

I used to love looking at car magazines and craving for a car of my own.

And I would always say, well, I'm going to have this and I'm going to have that.

And when I get my car, it's going to have a silver trim and chrome wheels and all of these things that everybody else was talking about.

I would say that one day my dad's going to come back and he's going to buy me a car or it's not going to be long now, you know.

And I kind of wished, I hoped that that would happen.

But of course, unlike them, my family didn't have the means to be able to buy me these things.

And that wasn't my fault.

There was nothing that I could have done to change those circumstances.

But you feel in some way that you're inadequate, you're less than yourself.

Tell me about it, Thomas.

So I came through the education system, actually, a really unique time.

In the UK, Tony Blair was the prime minister and he had a great education push at that time.

This was the late 90s, early noughties.