Street Boys: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

‘Eight years old. That’s when life went downhill. From eight years old nobody looked after me. I just lived on the streets and made do by myself. There was no one except me and my friends.’ Seven kids. One estate. Welcome to Angell Town. This is the story of Elijah (JaJa), Simon (Phat Si), ‘Bloods’, Nathan (Inch), Michael (Birdie), Byron (Ribz) and Darren (Tempman). These seven young boys have one thing in common – they grew up on the Angell Town estate, south London. Phat Si comes home from school one day to find his mother gone, so he takes to the streets. He’s eight years old. JaJa looks out of this kitchen window to see drug dealers, pimps and whores. Overwhelmed by what he sees, JaJa slowly descends from petty theft to life as a kid in a street gang. Ribz’s mother sells crack and is sent to prison. He doesn’t know who his father is but is drawn to Angell Town, knowing that his dad has an unknown number of kids living on the estate. He’s determined to find some kind of family. Street Boys tells a powerful and important true story of courage, determination and hope – of creating a family from your own friends and starting again when the world seems against you.