Title - Don't Ask, Don't Get                                                                          

Author - Steve Grayson

ISBN - 9781906546045

Retail Price - 9.99

Planned Publishing Date - October 21st 

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As an investigative photojournalist, for more than 30 years Steve Grayson has been the invisible man, the by-line on a picture, the seeing eye of national newspapers such as the Sun, the Mirror, the Observer and News of the World. He has seen more of the underbelly of life than most people would ever wish to. Stories have been told, lives exposed, but never his own. Now, he turns the camera a full 180 degrees and focuses the lens on himself to reveal a story more riveting, more complex, more funny and downright cheeky than any he has had a hand in reporting.

Raised in a post war London slum and poorly educated, he used his innate wits and gift of the gab to find his way in the world, escape poverty and go on to build a highly successful business, which he then lost. Following bankruptcy, he pursued his love of photography and found success once more, this time in the ruthlessly competitive newspaper industry, where his ability to think on his feet got him into, and out of, situations ranging from farcical to life threatening.

A Survivor First Class, he made his own luck, created his own opportunities and often taught himself whatever he needed to know along the way. He also looked life squarely in the eye when it heaped misfortune upon him. Not once but twice, he lost everything, faced the poverty he thought he had left behind and fought his way back.

He has been a rascal all his life ... but a rascal with a very big heart, and an artistic one: this same man has a piece of sculpture on permanent display in NATO. He has scaled the heights and plumbed the depths, and still comes up smiling with a quip always at the ready. With engaging honesty and in his own forthright style he spills the beans on his controversial life.

Excerpts - Don't Ask, Don't Get.

We were just rascals, my mate Jimmy and I. My parents never drank, but there was a pub called The Nevilles where my mother used to work because we needed the money, and she took me there once to look around. In the back yard, there were piles and piles of empty bottles and I asked her why they were there. 'People bring them back and get threepence, then the bottles are taken away, washed and filled up with beer again,' she told me. Immediately, I started to wonder if I could climb over the wall, get some of the empty bottles, take them to another pub and get the money back on them again. I talked to Jimmy about it and he wasn't sure but I decided to try taking them to the Off Licence. Sure enough, my plan worked! Every night we possibly could, we climbed over the wall, nicked a few bottles, took them to different Off Licences and got the money back on them.
We also used to walk to Hampstead, go into the gardens of posh houses and pinch apples, take them back home, wash them and make toffee apples. My mother used to help us: we would buy the sugar and wooden sticks and she would make the toffee; we would borrow one of her aluminium trays and go round the streets, selling them. Then I would give my mum the money. We also went round knocking on doors, asking people for rags. When we had got enough, we took them to the rag and bone man, got sixpence or a shilling, and I gave that to Mum too. My brothers used to go to the bombsites and get wood, chop it up nicely, put wire round it and sell that in the street or to a little old lady who had a shop close by.

Although we were poor, and it was rough, I thought it was all a lovely life: we had no aspirations or expectations, we never stole off our own and if we got our 'grub', that was enough. For my parents though, it was hard labour. There were no benefits like Income Support then. People were so desperate they would pawn their coats. What could you get for a coat?! The Welfare State started in 1948, but everything was means tested: someone would come into your house and put a value on your furniture or whatever you had, and expect you to sell it before any help was given. It was degrading. My parents never asked for, and never got anything. If you didn't have money, you didn't eat, and that was all there was to it. But despite everything, they were all nice people in our road, and we all helped each other.
Never knowing when the next penny was coming from was especially hard for my mum, who would only buy food day to day to make sure she had enough money, and then she would cook for everybody, including my nan up the road and the poor, mad, war veteran who lived upstairs. He had been gassed in the First World War and was a bit deranged. The smell of candles still reminds me of him because he did not have electricity, or could not afford to use it, and he always lit candles. He had matches all the way along the ledge where he lit the gas mantle that he had in his room, and there were always the pungent smells of sulphur and wax. The wax did not bother me but, to this day, I hate the smell of sulphur and the feel of matches: they make me nauseous. If I touch a match I have to wash my hands.
One of us was looking out of our window, one day, and saw that he had climbed out of his window and was trying to get onto the telephone lines. We all went up and dragged him back in. That man had fought in the war, won medals, lost part of a toe, been gassed, his wife had died, and this country had left him to rot. Nobody was looking after him, so my mother used to give me a plate of food to take up to him, and a plate to take all the way up to my nan at the end of the road. Then I'd go back for the empty plates and make sure they were all right. My mother had nothing but she coped with everything, and if she ever had any spare cash, she would buy a small bag of sweets and let us have two a day. She was a fantastic woman. I would love to have talked to her more and asked her about different things, but I didn't. You don't think about it until it's too late

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April 1993
It was unusual for the News of the World to ask me to go to Bosnia, and even the journalist I went with thought so, but he concluded that the thinking behind it was that if there were good stories to be got, we'd get them with me!
 It was the month when the IRA blew up the City of London. There was only one person killed: a photographer called Ed Henty, and if I had been in London, that would have been me. Ed was doing my shift that Saturday.

The whole experience of Bosnia had a very bad effect on me, emotionally. I'll never ever forget it. I was off work for weeks afterwards, genuinely ill. I drank and smoked twice as much. Anger and grief had hardened me and made me see life totally differently: nothing was the same anymore. I'm not a hero or a clever man, but I was not frightened when I was in Bosnia. It was afterwards that I kept wondering, why did I do that?  Until you've been somewhere like that - seen the children and the women there, seen the killing for absolutely no reason whatsoever - you can never ever know the suffering.  Forget the bodies: they're dead. It's the people left behind who suffer. And for what? So called religion that allows people to die and nobody cares, unless it's happening to them. I used to be the same: I would hear about something happening far away and not think much about it. Now I do. I realise. I saw people, whose lives had been as normal as ours, digging in the ground looking for water because there was no fresh water; they'd dig and dig and dig until, eventually, they would find some. When we first went there, we were looking for the tap and the soap and the bum paper!

Initially, when I went back to work, I could not handle it. I argued with people. I could not understand why we were doing the usual stuff; it had become stupid and immaterial to me. I was complacent before: I was earning good money; we had a good life, meeting stars, doing anything we wanted. It was a different world after being in Bosnia: I thought everything was a load of crap, and I did not know what I was doing here any more. It was like being on drugs: staring into space while everything was going in, and thinking how pointless it all was. At a dinner party or some such gathering, I'd look at my watch and think, that's half an hour of my life gone while that person is talking a load of garbage. We can't all be clever and talk about deep things all the time, but we don't have to talk sheer rubbish. I would get angry and have to excuse myself and leave.
I was so angry I wanted to go back to Bosnia and help, get back into the thick of it and then maybe I'd be sane:

I doubt the whole experience has made me a better person, but I appreciate everything now because I know that nothing is for very long; it's all temporary. I can never walk away from trouble either. If two people were walking towards me looking menacing, I might be terrified but I could not turn and expose my back. Even if they might kill me, I would still have to keep going because it would feel so real. Everything I do now is immaterial by comparison with Bosnia.