I’m trying to think where would you see
someone like you and someone like Pat together?
A retirement centre.
[laughing]
What would you be doing at a retirement centre?
– Giving him his pills.
– To shut me up.
– OK, you let me know when you’re ready, Alex.
– Ready, oh we’ve got music on.
– I’m on my way to Brighton to meet up with this
group of men who work with
an organisation called Band of Brothers.
They have these groups who work with men coming out of prison
and who are in vulnerable situations.
And they do these weekends away, where they have this
rite of passage to being a man.
[cheering and applause]
I’m really interested in the work that a Band of Brothers does
because they have this generational aspect to it where they have
older mentors who have been through similar positions
to the younger men that they work with
and I just want to know more about that relationship, the dynamics
between the older men and the younger men
and basically what it is that they get from being
in this group all together.
– Have I got to behave?
– If that had been a prerequisite we wouldn’t
have fucking invited you.
[laughter]
– Well that’s really lovely isn’t it?
– Before I started ABoB, I thought it was going to be
another counselling sort of thing, another therapy group
that wasn't going to work, that I just go to just to see how it goes.
The best thing to date is the fact that
I don't get told what to do.
They've never once told me this is how you've got to do it,
this is what you've got to do, this is how this works,
this is how this works.
– When I was younger I tried the counselling thing
but then they sit in that chair and they go,
'Oh yeah, this is how you're supposed to live your life.'
You'll sit there and tell me your shit and the shit that's actually
happened to you, and then I'll sit there and go,
hang on, he's willing to open up to me,
so I'm going to be willing to open up to you,
instead of this dude just sitting there with his legs crossed
just looking down on me because apparently, you're better than me.
The sheer vulnerability. When you see someone else's vulnerability
or another man's vulnerability,
there's a sense of, 'I can really trust that man'.
That's what I feel.
– I've been in and out of prison since I was 14.
I've got 70 police convictions and it was only since
coming out of prison the last time, that was three years ago,
I found Band of Brothers.
I'm not there yet, but I'm slowly getting myself
more in my body.
I think that's the key to all of this,
is feeling everything that's going on inside
instead of trying to run away from it.
Like anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, it's getting me a long way.
I think that's kind of where us men go wrong is,
we're trying to run away from our shit that's inside.
There are men and young men in this circle
who've been in the care system, who've been to prison, who perhaps have
experienced things in their childhoods that nobody,
nobody should ever experience.
But Band of Brothers is about us as a community
of older men reaching out a hand to those young men
and saying 'we're here for you'.
– So while I would have really liked to go on one of these
rites of passage weekends that a Band of Brothers does,
they don't let women go on them and they
don't really like filming to happen there understandably
because it's quite an intimate thing, which they do there.
So after speaking to the guys at this group which they set up,
I wanted to speak to a few of them by themselves.
I wanted to speak to Pat because he just seemed
absolutely lovely and I wanted to speak to Ben
because while he didn't speak a lot in the group that I was at,
what he did say kind of sparked my interest a bit
and made me wonder what his experience was
and what his thoughts were behind a Band of Brothers
and masculinity generally.
Is that genuinely the toilet?
– Yeah, it's a hole with sawdust in it.
– That you helped make that?
– Yeah. – Nice work.
A lot of the people that seemed to have
been through a Band of Brothers
have gone through systems like care or prison
or they've gone through mental health services.
And these are all really official professional things
that they've gone through where you
sit opposite somebody whose job it is.
Is the solution always more provisions and the government
doing more stuff or are there other ways that you can,
within a community, provide networks and support
and stuff like that? – Yeah.
– I've done everything else.
All the psychotherapies and everything else,
where I've just been pushed into it.
If you're pushed into something you just don't want to do it.
You don't want to take part, you don't give 100%.
– Communities need to be enabled to help themselves.
You know, people are very isolated now, aren't they?
A lot of the problems along mental health is isolation.
It is helpful to have that professional kind of input,
but I think we're volunteers and we're a community
so we share a lot of stuff, not because we're being paid for it,
because we want to do it, because we all believe
that a social change needs to happen.
– When I first went to Band of Brothers,
I wasn't used to seeing geezers crying or
getting emotional over stuff.
So it was a big old change for me.
– But did that then let you feel like you could show emotion?
– I've always been really bad with showing emotion
or talking about gear.
It's just I can't, I don't want to express it to other people.
You know, I don't want to show weakness.
– I mean, there's that idea that people always say
guys find it harder to talk about their feelings than women.
Do you think that's true?
– There's a lot of the old kind of Victorian stiff upper lip thing,
especially in British societies where you don't show those things.
It's like putting on armour, putting on camouflage.
In a Band of Brothers, that is, if someone shows a vulnerability
you actually think I can trust that guy
because he's being honest.
– What do you think are the issues that quite a few men
are dealing with that, I guess, we're not really talking about?
– It's talking alone. It's who do you talk to?
Everything stays here and you're just emotionally
disconnected from everybody.
Other than Band of Brothers, I've got nobody to talk to
and it has been built up for ... which is why it's caused me
a lot of problems.
– It's interesting when I talk to you because it's like,
you definitely, you have so many interesting things to say,
but I still feel, even when I chat to you,
there is a little bit of holding some stuff back.
– That's because one of the things that Band of Brothers
tell us is like, it's your story, it's not everybody else's story
so if you're gonna give it to anybody else,
then let it be about you and I'm trying to explain.
There's a lot of things in there that's just linked to others.
– OK. I'm interested in that relationship between
the older generation and the younger generation
and kind of, what you see being your role in that?
What you get out of it.
– I think it's really important that communities
are cross-generational.
I think when you start segregating, an awful lot is lost.
That energy, I think that's what, you know, our energy, at my age,
my energy starts to dip.
When these guys come in, it's like anything's possible energy.
– What about you?
How do you see Pat as a person in your life?
– There's a lot of things that I like that he likes,
like the bushcraft and just being outdoors;
very laid back and really easy to connect with.
– Probably both coming from working-class backgrounds as well.
– Yeah. It's a real struggle to bond with privileged ...
not privileged as such, the ones that act more privileged.
It's a lot less down to earth. – That makes so much sense.
– A lot of say working-class lads, they would have gone into trades
and apprenticeships, which isn't happening so much any more.
I think there's a lot of emphasis on schools and academic achievement
and the actual practical skills are being lost.
– There is people that just aren't made for office jobs,
they need to be more hands-on.
– There's nothing wrong with that.
– Did you have, I guess, role models, or a strong relationship
with your dad or uncles or other people growing up?
– No, not at all, really. I just grew up on my own, in a way.
Through the care system, didn't care about old people.
They say respect your elders but it was quite hard for me
to do as a youngster 'cause all I heard was
people barking orders at me, so I didn't have to listen to them
or respect them or care what they said.
– Did you say Ben, you've got a daughter?
– A son. – You've got a son?
– Yeah. – Wow, so we're talking about
the older generation,
but you're already the older generation.
– Yeah, he's seven next month. – OK.
– So he's getting on a bit. [laughing]
– At the beginning of Band of Brothers they ask you,
'Where do you want to be?
What do you want?'
I told them one of the main things I wanted was stability
because I was facing prison sentences again
and just not finding anything to do in my life.
I needed the change and I've found it.
So now like, full-time work, got my son every weekend,
a nice house, so I got to where my goal was.
– When you're thinking about your son,
how do you decide what kind of dad you want to be?
– It's quite hard with the masculinity thing.
You don't want him to over show emotion,
'cause he'll cry over anything then
but I want him to be emotionally connected.
– You want him to be balanced, right?
– Yeah, I want him to be balanced
'cause I was shut off for years, which led me
down paths of aggression and just not bonding
with no one. I don't want that for him.
– D'you wanna? What do you want to do?
– Do some gardening? – Start gardening.
– Do you really wanna do? – Keep talking?
– I would actually love to. – Would you?
– I'm a city girl, you know. Look, look with these nails
– Look at those nails. – I never do any gardening, ever.
– Yeah, I can tell. – You can tell?
I don't have a garden. [laughing]
– Don't London have allotments? – Allotments? Only on EastEnders.
– Or patches of grass next to roadsides ...
Roundabouts ...
Look at the state of the grass
– Do you want to do some weeding?
– Are those weeds? – Yeah most of them are.
But they're pretty?
– Yeah, a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.
– Oh, right. [laughing]
– Do you know about gardening? – I can dig.
[laughing]
– This here, borage that's ... bees love that.
– Alright. – Milk thistle.
– Tell me what to do. – Just get that underneath there,
and lift that.
And then you're going to pull, once that's loosened a little bit,
then you've got to get all these little bits out.
– With my hands? – With your hands.
– With my actual hands? – With your actual hands.
– That's what you wanted weren't it? – Yeah, yeah.
In fact, you said you're actually a grandad?
– I am, I am actually a grandad.
– Do you see yourself as a grandad most of the time
for these guys?
– Erm, not really. [laughing]
– We're in our mid-20s. – I'm not that old.
– I mean, you did say that. I'm sure you said that.
– My role is ... no I am an elder, which is, I suppose
like a grandad, in a way.
– You've got children then?
– Yeah, I've got three. One girl, two boys.
– Having sons, do you reckon that helps you
when it comes to working with the guys in the group?
– Absolutely, I think I'd say my kids were my biggest teachers, actually.
– What makes you wanna go and work even more with other guys?
– I lived in France for a long time in isolation.
I came back to the UK and you know, I got involved.
I missed community, so I got involved with communities.
And if you'd have asked me that, say a year before that,
about working with young people, I would have said
I couldn't think of anything worse.
Say for example now, when you look at the way
I will say 'the media' portrays things,
it's always, generationally, they're like,
'Oh young people are like this and old people are like this'.
It's like they're pitted against each other.
Like young people are completely different,
especially in things like Brexit or whatever.
When I chat to both of you here, it feels like there's none of that.
It feels like you've got a lot of common ...
Or most importantly it's a respect,
do you know what I mean, it's a respect between generations.
– I think you're right, it's a symbiosis,
it's a respect both ways.
You can't demand to be respected 'cause you're older.
The young need to be respected in the same way.
They're the guys of the future so it's a two-way thing.
– The generational gap ain't just youngsters against olders,
it's olders against youngsters. It's judgmental.
– Yeah.
– What do you think old people judge young people for?
– Just misunderstanding. It's not being able to understand
where a person's coming from.
– What do you think are the stereotypes that
older generations have about younger people?
– I can see sometimes, like fear on people's faces
just because they see a group of younger people together
but that's them jumping to the assumption that
that younger group's dangerous because of
what they're seeing through media. – Yeah.
– Say for example, if we acknowledge that
there's been a separation between generations,
how do you decide to tell them how you've decided
what kind of man to be?
How do you kind of build that? – We'd ask them that question.
You'd ask them that question. Is that the man you wanna be?
There's no, kind of, prescribed formula to it, I wouldn't have said.
– So Ben, for example, yeah, if you're trying to think about
what kind of man you want to be, what do you base that off?
– There's two obviously, there's two ways you can look at it.
There's obviously the man you don't want to be,
so you can bounce off of that and see a lot of that.
– What kind of man do you not want to be?
– I don't wanna be this character that's just lost
and doesn't know what I'm doing.
I wanna know what I'm doing, I don't wanna sort of ...
Lost people end up usually turning to crime and drugs,
alcohol, 'cause they haven't got a path.
Being the man that I wanna be, is just ...
You look at a lot of other people
and you see happiness, the stability that they've got,
and you aspire to do that.
– Oh, look is that a potato? – Well done.
– Is that a potato? – Well done.
– You've caught your very own potato.
You can take that home with you and
put it on the mantelpiece and if you watch it very closely
it will turn into a bag of chips.
[laughing] – I want to put it
back in the ground.
So I really enjoyed the conversation that I had
with Pat and Ben, just like many of the others
I've had in this series.
It felt really open and interesting and I feel,
as a person, not just as a journalist,
I've had a lot of my own kind of ideas challenged,
there's been lots of food for thought
and I'd like to hear what you guys have liked in particular
and what you would like to see us do in the future.
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with everything that we're doing. Thank you.