All About Me

By Keith Anthony Preddie

Simply Shamonetastic is an insight to ME,my life, my ups and downs, the good and bad times, happy and sad times.
It's not a tell, I'd get sued lol... there is a lot that I will take to my grave and out of respect to others, parts of my life that I won't talk about in this book.
This book was originally titled 0-2-50 and should have been published way back 2018, but as they say better late than never. It’s finally here and worth the wait.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665594882

Book preview

2021 Keith Anthony Preddie. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/14/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9487-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-9488-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Temple Road

Shot, Burnt, Run Over And Ouch

Best Mate

Temple Road Girls

Church

Running Away

Boarding School

Hair Cut

Not A Pet Lover

Moving Away From Temple Rd

My Surrogate Families

Secondary School

Suspended From School

Child Development

End Of My School Days

A Star Is Born

Job For Life Or So I Thought

Mother & Daugher

Condom

Shades Of Black

The Thriller Kids

MJJ And The Dorchester Days

The Bubble Was About To Burst

The Birth Of The Dangerous Boys

My Mj Challenging Times

1994 Re-Birth Of The Dangerous Boys

Michael Jackson Meets Aaron

Keith & Aaron Preddie Perform With Michael Jackson @ Wembly Stadium

Michael Preddie Meets Michael Jackson

My Last Mj Shows

Retirement

Michael Jackson Is Dead

Tina Turner

Temporary Jobs

Winning Britains Best Dad 2010

My 40Th Birthday

Conviction

Medication

The Police Lied To Me

Bail

Sacked

Change Of Name

Fame & Fortune

Achilles Heel

Acting

Kingpred Sharmone

Cars

Marriage And Colour

DJ-ing And Entertainment

Dad Dancing

Becoming A Grandparent

Proposal

Granny Grunt

Losing Mother, Daughter & Son

Death Of My Biological Father

Jamaica

Nearly Sexually Assaulted

Night I Nearly Died In Jamaica

Racists Attack, Hospitalised And Front Teeth Knocked Out

Hair On Fire

Knocked Off My Motorbike

The Day I Nearly Lost Ryan

My Mum, My Sons

0-2-50 My Party

Father In Law

God-Children, Step-Children

Half-Siblings

Thank You’s

Prostate Cancer

Skiing

Covid-19

Hitman & Her

Drama

Working With The Vulnerable & My Disability

The Future

I was born on Saturday 21st September 1968 @ 08.35am in Islington, London and soon transported to what I called home for 13 years. Temple Road, Croydon Surrey.

As far back as I can remember I was always an active boisterous child. I was an only child from my mums side, which consists of 7 cousins & 1 adopted sibling, 6 of them girls and 1 boy living with me in a 7 bedroom semi-detached house in Croydon Surrey, along with my gran, Granny Grunt we called her, Uncle Michael, Auntie Rose and my mum. We had what seemed to be a massive garden, part of my recollection stems back to between when I was between 3 and 8 years old. We had a large tree that I would always climb up like a monkey, especially whenever I was in trouble as no one could get me from the top of the tree. The only downside was that eventually I would have to come down face my punishment.

Life in Temple Road was filled with fun, laughter, heartache, tears, blood, death, arguments, injuries, happiness, relationships, and a 45+ year friendship with 2 of my oldest friends, one being my best mate and godfather to my youngest son Ryan.

Temple Road

Temple Road was shaped in a square, I lived at no 42 my best mate H lived at no 6 and my 2nd bestie friend MT lived at no 36. The only other black family that lived in Temple Road at that time were the W’s there were three girls and one boy, both our families interacted and grow up together and to this day two of the female family members NW & JW regularly attend our local church down the road. There was also an Asian family who live several doors down, however apart from the odd hello we didn’t really engage with each other but not for any particular reason.

I remember I was playing outside our home with my cousin Mag and others, I told her to get on the back of my Tonka truck so I could pull her along the pavement which she did, I pulled it too fast, Mag fell off & cut her head open on the corner of a brick wall. Mag got up screaming and ran inside.

I can’t remember the exact situation, I was between 5 and 8 years old, I was outside the front of our home and I was having an argument or disagreement with my auntie, I must have said a rude word like shit or something like that, the next thing I know I was being dragged inside the home, upstairs into the bathroom and had my mouth washed out with soap. Now if you ever had soap in your mouth, you will know that it taste absolutely disgusting and the worst thing about it, is when bits of the soap either get stuck between your teeth or in your mouth and it takes ages for the taste to clearly go away. Again I learnt my lesson the hard way.

I was an outdoor kid and would play outside as much as I could and in the road, there were times I would stupidly play chicken with cars that drove into my road, I would lay down and wait for them to drive over me, most wouldn’t, however there was one resident would drive up to me, I then lay down on my back in the road and he would drive his car over me, I could actually see the underneath of his car, it was stupid but amazing at the same time.

At the end of Temple Road was a mini forest and trail which led to an alley adjacent to the railway track, H and myself made an adventure camp and used it as our hideaway, we would go there many times over the many years until my first encounter with matches. I lit some paper with the aim to have a mini camp fire but stupid me once lit I couldn’t put it out and jut ran off, resulting in not only the campsite burning down but most of the forest. I never told anyone it was me until now.

Around the corner from my house was this brick wall which we used as a goal, the only problem was, above the wall was a resident’s window, despite being told a million times not to play football there we did & yes I kicked the football over the brick wall and it smash right through the window. RUN, in trouble again.

My front room was on the 1st floor at the front of the house which had a balcony, many times late at night, I would remove the single window panes, climb onto the balcony, then down the drain pipe & off I would go to get up to more mischief. There was this one time when despite many attempts, I could not get back up the drainpipe, so I rang the doorbell, it was well after midnight, my gran answered the door who rightly told me off & told my mum who also told me off, resulting in a server punishment. I didn’t do that again.

Just before I reached puberty, I remember I was staying at H’s house we were being babysat by his elder sister, we was in our pyjamas and decided to play a game called truth or dare, basically I was dared to run around the whole block naked, well me being me what I do, I took my pyjamas off and ran round the whole block naked, the only downside was they wouldn’t let me back in the house and thought it was really funny watching me holding my bits, naked begging to be let back in.

Once I got caught nicking a toy car out of a local newsagent. I would wait until the local milk factory closed then I would climb over the wall and pinch as many coke and lemonade bottles I could carry, take them to the sweet shop in exchange for 10 pence per bottle, 10 pence was a lot of money back in the 70’s and could get me loads of sweets. There was an art gallery down the road next to a factory and every Saturday evening me and my mate would climb over the wall leading to the back of the art gallery where a BMW was, it was never locked and always had loads of money in the arm rest which we would nick and spend on more sweets until the BMW owner cottoned on and locked his car

I was always getting in trouble with the residents in Temple Road, mostly for being a pain in the backside. I was constantly being told off by Lindsay and Richard, they owned the house on the 1st corner of our square, I would always either kick a football or whack a tennis ball against their wall, which really annoyed them to bits and me being me would never listen to them.

1977 our street was closed for this festive event, tables and chairs were covered in union jacks and pictures of the queen, food and refreshments were on all the tables Everything was going well until the evening, opposite my bedroom was a Blackman and white woman having sex & they never shut their curtains, being a curious 9 year old I invited other kids from the party into my room to watch, thing was we all made so much noise laughing and stuff that the couple having sex saw loads of faces staring at them, got up, dressed & banged on our front door and ended up having an argument with my auntie who told them they should have closed their curtains then.

A racist family moved into Temple Road, would often call me names like wog, coon, nignog & tell me to go back to where I belonged (she didn’t mean my house at 42) all because I was playing in the street outside their home, where I had played since I could walk and way long before they moved into Temple Road. One time I went and told my auntie who confronted the racists, which turned into a full blown argument, resulting in them never calling me racist names again thanks Auntie.

Shot, Burnt, Run Over And Ouch

I can’t actually remember how old I was but it was between 6 and 8 years old, my eldest cousin Curtis, most people know him nowadays as Michael, he was like an older brother to me, all we did was play and fight, fight and play, laugh, cry and get up to all kinds of mischief and trouble, many of the shenanigans that we got up to I’m not going to mention in this book, he would properly kill me for real, but I’m going to mention this one incident. We used to watch a cop American TV series called Starsky & Hutch. We were at my uncle’s double glazing yard in Beckenham, he had an air rifle on site, the one that you put pellets in, we decided to play a game called cops and robbers and to re-enact a typical Starsky & Hutch scene, I went to the shop and bought a plastic toy gun with little plastic