WORKING IT OUT
Our door was kicked in by cops and drugs were hidden down loo during horror years with heroin addict dad, says Joe Wicks
HE was the nation’s PE teacher for millions of kids during the pandemic, but Joe Wicks is now taking a look back at his own painful childhood.
Joe admits he has blanked out swathes of his upbringing with two mentally ill parents on an Epsom council estate in BBC One documentary Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood.
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The film - produced by Louis Theroux - sees Joe speak to his dad Gary about his heroin addiction and mum Raquela Mosquera about her OCD and eating disorder.
In the show, Joe said: “There’s definitely things that went on that I’m just, I’m not choosing to remember.”
Through tears, he added: “The worst thing as a kid is that you feel like it's your fault, you feel like you’re to blame, or that you're not worth enough, or your parents don’t love you enough.
“Those feelings are hardcore man, you can't carry them as a kid.”
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His brother and Body Coach business partner Nikki, 38, protected Joe from some of the worst times.
Joe said: “He saw police breaking down the door, he saw the drugs being stashed in toilets.”
This week he revealed filming his new documentary was so tough, the BBC even urged him to get help with his mental health.
Speaking on Wednesday, Joe said: “Even the BBC offered me the psychiatrist to speak to and I didn’t feel the need.
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“I’ve done it, it’s there and it exists and I’m now just getting on with being positive and I’m not going to dig too much up again.”
Fitness guru Joe set up The Body Coach in 2014 and since then he’s written ten healthy cookbooks and amassed an estimated £9.1million fortune.
Last year he was even awarded an MBE.
But his fame and fortune is a far cry from his upbringing - some of which is so painful he has blocked out.
Mum Raquela went to rehab for five months to get better when Joe was 12 and his younger brother George was just one.
In emotional scenes he revisits his difficult childhood with his mum.
They discuss how she obsessively cleaned their house twice a day and lived on just cigarettes, chocolate and cans of coke for days.
Joe told how they would argue everyday about how clean the house was.
'Chaotic, manic experience'
He said: “It was like living in an Ikea show home. Everything was perfect all the time.”
He added: “Everything got pulled out the cupboards and it was bleach, everything smelt like Dettol and I just thought that was normal.
“I just thought all mums just do that.
“When I was a kid, if I didn’t make my bed right, if it wasn’t tight like really tight - I’d have to do it again and scream and we’d have an argument and I’d swear and we’d shout and it was like this big chaotic, manic experience.
“Looking back, that weren’t normal was it? That was quite extreme.”
Tearful Raquela admitted she staved off getting help from doctors from fear social services would take Joe, Nikki and George away from her.
She said: “I just knew that it was something not right. But yeah, I suffered from really bad anxieties.
“I feared people, I feared literally going out of Epsom. Being at home was my only form of safety.”
When she eventually got help, she was forced to leave Joe and his little brother with dad who was using heroin.
Raquela said: “I can't even imagine what all that stuff felt like for you.
“Your dad being on drugs, not being there, being there, not being there, being there, and also having me who was not well herself.”
Roofer Gary struggled with his smack addiction after he first tried sniffing glue and booze aged 13.
Joe believes Gary was dealing with abandonment issues from his father leaving him when he was young.
But growing up, Joe says Gary’s addiction was at its worst while they were living on the Curtis Road estate.
Dad's heroin addiction
While visiting his old home, Joe said: “There used to be, you know, holes in the wall where my dad would punch the wall and stuff.
“I definitely remember the bathroom door is the one with the holes in it.
“It was a stressful place to live.”
Joe told how his dad used to hide his addiction from him and his siblings when they were younger by saying he was nipping to the shops.
Speaking to Gary, Joe said: “You may as well have just said, ‘I’m just going to go and score some gear’.
“You never came back with milk, but it was like I knew that that's what it meant.
“I almost just didn't want to let you go. I always used to think, ‘why can't you be clean, ain’t we enough at home?’”
At that time, Joe began to act out with bad behaviour - becoming totally hyperactive in his teens and childhood, unable to cope with his home life.
Joe said: “I wasn't a kid that could sit still. My brain couldn't focus on anything.
“There's no doubt being amongst all that chaos affected me emotionally, I would have definitely, you know, felt anxious, felt, you know, frightened at times.
Bad behaviour in teens
“But I just was always a kid that chose not to sit there and think about it too much.”
He confessed he would run five miles to school rather than get the bus - to feel pain.
He said: “That’s quite weird isn’t it now when I think about it.
“I liked the pain of suffering because it really in my eyes, it was like the best way of letting go of all those feelings.”
The one positive which came from Gary’s drug use was that it put Joe off from taking them.
He said: “I thought if I try drugs, I’m gonna become a drug addict.
“It used to frighten the life out of me.”
Instead, he got a job and a gym membership and began working out seven days a week - spending a quarter of his wages on a David Lloyd membership.
He said: “The gym was my sanctuary. I just felt like I wanted to go somewhere where I could just let out all that stress and tension, all that frustration.”
Joe told how the turning point for his dad came after he issued him a stern ultimatum - get clean or never talk to him again.
He said: “Maybe that helped in a way because otherwise he’d never hit rock bottom.”
After years of therapy and Narcotics Anonymous meetings Gary kicked his addiction and is now close to Joe.
He says he now understands he was suffering from depression and self medicating.
Gary told Joe: “I'm lucky you still talk to me.
“Thank God we have what we have today. But, I need to stay clean so that your kids never have to see me like that.”
Dympna Cannan runs charity Our Time for kids whose parents are mentally ill.
She tells Joe that kids who have parents with OCD, anxiety or depression can feel guilty for not being able to fix the situation.
Joe said: “I remember that feeling. I was kind of confused. I was scared. I was anxious.
“I also remember being really angry as a teenager, it played out in different things.”
But Joe turned his life around by building a fitness empire and starting his own family.
Feelings of guilt
In 2019, Joe married former page three girl Rosie and together they have daughter Indie and son Marley - and a third on the way.
And Joe’s childhood has massively impacted his parenting style.
Joe said: “I learnt to slam doors because my dad slammed doors, and I learnt to punch walls because my dad punched walls.
“And now as a parent, I don't want to be that person. I really try so hard like to break that cycle.”
But while Joe found happiness from exercise, he still at times can struggle with his mental health.
The fitness expert told how after 18 weeks of doing PE with Joe during lockdown, he struggled with his own mental health after stopping.
He said: “When PE with Joe ended. I actually felt really low. I felt, although I was exhausted.
“A few weeks later, I started to think, I'm not valuable anymore. I'm not useful. Like people don't need me anymore.”
Now Joe worries that he still has that urge to help people fix their problems.
He told the documentary he has eight house “benders” where he purely replies to fans.
He said: “I can do seven eight hours a day on the phone and I'll look, I’ll go through at the end of the day and I’ll look and the inbox is still not empty. It's like, ah, it's really disheartening.”
He added: “Helping people makes me feel good, I just think there’s an addictive part of that.
“Where dad had a drug issue, issues, maybe my addiction is in a different way.”
And it seems his followers can’t get enough of Joe either - with 4.4million Instagram followers who message him in the thousands every day.
His YouTube channel alone has 2.79million subscribers and once broke the record for most watched live stream - reaching almost one million viewers.
Joe said: “When I was a kid people used to tell my Mum she was a bad parent and that me and my brother would end up on drugs and achieve nothing.
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“But I know she always did her best and in the end I feel like we’ve proved them wrong.”
Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood airs Monday May 16, 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
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