sections:
Gun crime, gangs and the seediest side of the ‘glamour’ industry. Ghetto girl Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace has witnessed it all – up close and dangerously personal.
This is the most credible story yet of the biggest media obsession of the moment – the broken childhoods, the gun culture and the feral gangs running wild on our inner city streets. It is told by someone who has seen them all – and somehow managed to survive.
Aisleyne was brought up amidst constant threats and extreme violence on some of London’s toughest streets. Her father was in handcuffs when he went to the hospital to see his new-born daughter. As a child she saw the police drag him naked and bleeding from the bathroom after a drug-fuelled suicide attempt. Then her mother took her on the run to escape his influence. Aisleyne spent the next five years terrified he would snatch her back – but desperate to have him love her again.
Meanwhile her mother was fighting demons of her own. A hard-core punk she had been at the heart of London’s music scene. Boy George changed Aisleyne’s nappies and Siouxie Sioux was one of her first baby-sitters. But it had all gone wrong. Aisleyne’s mother gave it all up to become a terrifyingly devout Jehovah’s Witness. No more friends could come to Aisleyne’s house. Christmas and birthdays were ignored. Religious fervour overshadowed everything she did.
Bullied at school and unprotected by the courts Aisleyne left home at 15 to live in the first of a series of hostels. They were never safe havens. She saw her fellow residents beaten up, forced into prostitution and addiction. Immigration, asylum, religious persecution, racism, HIV and mental illness all cast dark shadows. One man promised to help Aisleyne escape the streets. But he was shot in a drugs battle, left paralysed and ended up begging her to help him commit suicide. She needed another way out of her nightmare.
At 16 Aisleyne thought she had found it in the glamour industry. She talks candidly about the sleaziest websites and the most exploitative photographers. From bikers’ conventions to bondage magazines she took any work going. And on one hostess job she met the world’s biggest bad boy – Mike Tyson. He fell for her and begged her to follow him back to America. But Aisleyne turned him down. She was going on to Big Brother instead.
Davina McCall said Aisleyne went on ‘the biggest journey of any housemate we’ve had’. She was the most popular female housemate of the year and in Witness she reveals every secret detail about the television show – explaining exactly what happens before, during and after the cameras roll. Two years later Aisleyne has fought to keep her life clean. She has succeeded. In Witness she explains what she has seen, how she has escaped it – and how others can be inspired to do the same.
book reviews
Sorry, no book reviews are available.
subscribe to agency's newsletter
Andrew Lownie writes a monthly newsletter, which includes details of the Agency's latest news as well as advice for authors. If you would like to receive this free newsletter, please enter your email address in the box below.