My stump is called Socket.
Well, Mr Socket.
I've got a really good party trick.
I'm going to spin it all the way round.
I, theoretically, have no height ceiling.
I can be as tall as I want to be.
"One foot in the grave."
"Haven't got a leg to stand on."
BOTH: "I've really put my foot in it."
If someone said to me "I can grant your wish of giving you two hands",
I'd say, "Nah, jog on."
I have been known to exaggerate what happened.
His brother's a bad guy
and he actually cut his hand off with a machete.
You know, saving a bus full of schoolchildren.
"You've got a robot leg. What happened?" So I'll tell 'em,
"A shark bit it!" And make a big story out of it.
All the little kids like "Oh, it's Iron Man."
Christmas 2012, we went to a pub, we had a couple of pints.
I walked home and halfway home, a drunk driver,
who was doing about 70mph in a 30 zone.
He lost control, hit me.
My right leg was torn off by the car.
Left leg was crushed and shattered.
I was carrying aircraft parts up a flight of stairs,
got my foot trapped, fell.
I took a chip out of a bone in my ankle.
I developed a nerve condition.
The slightest touches were incredibly painful.
I looked at where I could be with a prosthetic.
I was ready to say, "I'm ready to have my leg taken off."
In 2009, I hit a telephone post at 90mph on a motorbike.
I broke every bone on the right side of the body.
I shattered the pelvis,
shattered the collarbone, fractured the lower back, punctured both lungs,
tore a kidney and tore the nerves in my arm straight out of the spine.
So, I was born with amelia.
When I was younger, no-one really knew what it was.
I've got a little bit of the wrist and I have little tiny fingers
that do nothing, but, as I like to call it, this is my little hand.
I don't call it a stump.
I don't remember the accident.
I can't imagine it's a very happy memory.
It's a memory I'm quite happy to do without.
When I woke up, my mum was there by the bed.
She said to me, "Oh, you know, you've been in an accident.
"You're in hospital.
"You know, you've...you've got no legs."
Apparently, I just sort of looked down and went "Yep."
"Cool."
What am I supposed to say to that?
You know, "Oh, no. I'd like them back!"
Well, you can't have them back.
I do remember saying, in all earnestness,
I said "Is my tackle OK?"
For a long time post-accident,
I didn't like the way I looked.
I probably thought that if I was going on a date,
the girl I was going on a date with would be like,
"Oh, that guy is an amputee.
"That's weird. I don't want to go on a date with him.
"I don't want to be seen with him, or anything."
It's been difficult to get over.
Probably six years later, I am... I've mostly got past it.
Dating using apps is an advantage.
I have never put a photo of me in my entirety as my first photo.
I don't blame someone for making a snap judgment
if they see a photo of a disabled person first.
I think it'd be really easy to just not click on that profile.
I have no legs.
It is, in many ways, my defining feature.
But, at the same time, I would like people to consider me
before they know that.
The guy that hit me, my attitude has always been -
if he learnt anything from it,
he learnt it the second he learnt what he did.
And if he didn't, then no amount of jail or punishment
or me being resentful is going to make him learn that.
So, why on Earth would I be resentful?
Resenting someone is like drinking poison
and expecting that person to die.
It doesn't do you any good.
My limb difference was elective. I chose to...
..be this way.
I had the accident on the 30th October, 2013.
And it was years before I'd had the amputation.
When I was originally injured, I could never rest my right leg
on anything, because of the pain I'd get.
I had physio to try and get better
and I wasn't getting anywhere.
My best friend would come and visit and he'd have my daughter
up on his shoulders. They'd be running around all over the place
and it broke my heart.
In my head, I'm like, "It should be me doing that.
"I want to chase my daughter. I want to annoy her
"and steal something from her, and make her chase me."
And when I made my decision to take my leg off,
that was in the forefront of my mind.
It was an obvious choice.
I had my amputation and this is where I am now.
People look sort of sideways.
They don't want to make it obvious that they're looking at you.
You can ask me if you want,
or you can touch it if you want.
I'm not ashamed and I'm not afraid.
In my school, I was the first child
to actually have a limb difference.
When you're a young child,
you don't really notice it.
You don't really know that you've got these differences.
And the older I got, the more I realised, "Oh, I am different.
"This is strange."
People would, not maybe say something,
but it was the look of shock on their faces,
like "He's got an arm off."
And then more and more people would point it out,
making me feel weird and secluded from everybody.
I used to get a little bit bullied, especially during football.
A lot of the kids would say, "Well, you can't be a goalie,
"because you've only got one hand."
I generally just felt like a freak.
And I know that's a very strong word to use
but I was bullied out of my football team.
I think some kids would bully me
because they'd never seen someone with a missing limb.
They just felt, because I was different, that they must make me
feel like crap, to make themselves feel better.
I would hide my hand a lot as a teenager, especially.
Dating...very awkward.
I was so scared of the shock,
of what people would say about my arm.
It was always the build-up in my head that made things worse
and then actually, at the end of it, I was like, "Oh, actually,
"things are all right. I don't know why I panicked in the first place."
The leg was amputated a few months after the accident.
They tried saving it, they did their best.
I was in hospital for a year and three or four months.
And once I got home, I was in a wheelchair.
I didn't like the terms "disabled" and "stump"
and "amputation" and all that.
It was a hard time, I wasn't the nicest of people to be around.
Depression, obviously.
Everybody around you starts moving on.
That hits you hard.
I was doing stupid things.
Fell out with people.
You know, it was that bad.
I felt that alone, that separated, that angry and mad.
It was like, "Well, that's how I WILL feel if I don't accept it."
I always wanted to get out the chair.
I was very adamant, "I'm learning to walk."
When I look in the mirror, it's quite difficult, admittedly.
I train, obviously, bodybuilding and fitness.
Although, I know how off-balance I am.
I know how I'd like to look and could look.
And I know the goals, physically, I could achieve
if I wasn't put in this situation.
I've only recently got my leg,
so I'm still getting used to everything.
Even the pain, it's new.
I know there's a lot of unknowns and uncertainty about prosthetics.
I want to clear a few things up and share my experiences.
Being an amputee, going through rehab
and meeting other amputees is really interesting.
It's important to talk about issues that people
probably wouldn't normally come into contact with.
I would have had no idea what it was like to be an amputee,
or what it was like to think like an amputee, before this.
And I think it's nice to talk about that.
Three, two, one.
I got hit by a drunk driver six years ago.
And you know, since then, it's been quite a long time.
But I've been on and off prosthetics quite a lot.
I've been injured since 2013,
but I've only been an amputee for six-ish months now.
Is this the solution? Has it worked?
Yeah, massively.
It's going to be hard work
and I've got a daughter, who is the fastest thing.
She does not stop.
So, you've got to keep up.
I can keep up with her better than I could before.
For you, how do you cope when you're having a nightmare day?
When you wake up and you're having one of those days, I'll go,
"Eugh, I don't want to get out of bed.
"I don't want to put my legs on. "They're going to be sore."
And, you know, this is six years later.
I'm still having to face that.
But, the world isn't going to wait for you.
Like, you're saying you've got a seven-year-old daughter. Yeah.
Like, she doesn't care. She's too young.
And so, the world makes the choice for you.
Have you stubbed your toe yet?
Your non-existent toe?
No. Oh, wait. It'll hurt. Don't.
For a split second, it hurts.
Really?
For a split second, it's real.
I was in hospital for eight weeks. Yeah.
I had horrendous phantom-limb pain.
It was the most unpleasant thing
I've ever been through in my life. It was awful.
I'd rather live with the phantom pains than what I was getting
before, because the phantoms, for me at least,
they come and go really quickly.
There's a few things that are just pure entertainment.
The whole world of leg-related comedy.
You know - "One foot in the grave." "Haven't got a leg to stand on."
BOTH: "I've really put my foot in it."
The best thing out of this whole process
was meeting someone like you, seeing somebody do something
that I may be worried I'm not going be able to do.
Whether I can do it or not, you're motivation for me now.
You've sort of set a standard.
Yeah, that's going to help me, without a doubt.
Well, thanks for saying that.
I'm going to want a family, at some point.
Is it even a sensible thing for someone in my position to do?
Yeah. And to hear, you know, the fact that you've got a daughter
and you can still keep up.
You know, it's really nice to hear that.
The way my prosthetics work is I have a hard outer socket.
Like this.
If I take it off...
..and stand it up, I have a silicon liner,
which just peels down.
I'm quite lucky, actually.
I'm a through-knee, which means I can actually bear weight
through the end of my stump.
That is my foot and socket.
This is my liner.
This is the soft bit between me and the hard carbon fibre.
Three joints in the knee that allow it to completely freely move.
A spring in the foot, which helps power you forward.
I always said, with a leg, I didn't want it to look real
because I didn't want it to try and look what it wasn't.
This fits only my arm.
So, I turn it on.
HAND WHIRS
It's actually using the muscles in my arm.
So, how you would be doing that is how I can close.
And if I do that, it opens.
These ribs here push the air...
..and then that vacuum holds it onto your leg.
So, my three assistive devices would be full-sized prosthetics,
these are these small prosthetics, and a wheelchair.
The tall legs are, for me, the hardest ones to use, by far.
It's no small reason for me using my smaller prosthetics,
which are easier to balance on, more than I use the taller ones.
I just don't feel confident enough to go and do a lot of things
on the taller prosthetics
because I'm worried about falling over and everyone staring.
I don't like people seeing me vulnerable.
I don't feel disabled when I'm in a wheelchair.
But, ironically, I get treated as if I'm disabled in every sense.
I've had people coming up to me.
Whoever's pushing, they'll speak to them, "How's he doing?"
It made me feel very little.
Very...
Like I wasn't there.
I've had my change handed to my sister,
when I'm out shopping, instead of handed to me because, apparently,
someone in a wheelchair can't deal with their own money.
I was carrying my bag today.
I get up to get off the train and someone picks it up for me.
You can ask me and I might let you,
but I don't need you to do it.
The more awkward thing is that I'm left-handed,
so people shake with their right.
I would try to shake upside down with my left arm.
And people would be like, "That's really weird."
I'm a normal person.
I just happen to be a bit different.
I wouldn't say there was necessarily a turning point.
It just slowly started taking steps in the right way.
I set myself goals.
I have done a disabled category in bodybuilding.
I'm just getting into sprinting now,
with the goal of the Paralympics.
A couple of years ago, I started helping Open Bionics.
I was already into futuristic stuff and this is all 3D-printed.
I guess it's because I wanted a bionic arm,
but I didn't have any way of going about getting one,
and they being expensive back when I was a kid.
I've been testing these arms for a while now
and I'm just fascinated by the technology
and I'm just one of those lucky guys that gets to wear one
of these on a daily basis.
I started looking at prosthetics
and doing a Masters in Bioengineering at Imperial College.
There's a lot of work still to do to bring a prosthetic limb
to the point of replicating a biological limb
and I find that really interesting.
As an added bonus, you get to feel like you're helping people.
This is what I've been working for for the past two, three years.
The favourite part of my body is my prosthetic.
It is my body now.
Having it has given me my life back.
I see me as the person that I was before all this,
but I also see me now and it makes you think about what I'm capable of.