Professor Green "didn’t have a clue" how to fight when he was younger.
The ‘Good to be Green’ hitmaker – whose real name is Stephen Manderson – was raised by his grandmother, who taught him to walk away from scraps in the street but on the occasions when he did get involved, it led to him letting out all his pent up frustration.
He said: "I remember when I did fight, and apart from not having a clue how to, I was disproportionately aggressive, like everything I’d walked away from that left me with that feeling of cowardice had all come out at once. I wouldn’t say I’m a fighter now, but there’s definitely still a fight in me."
The 34-year-old star had it instilled in him that fighting wouldn’t "make [him] a man", but when he did walk away from confrontation, it left him feeling "emasculated".
He recalled: "Don’t get me wrong, I never suffered any kind of gang initiation where you have to be jumped in, but there were times when I did walk away from confrontation. I felt I was strong enough to handle it and felt emasculated for doing so.
"Every time, I was left with this horrible repeat of other possible outcomes playing over and over in my head and a knot in my stomach I used to describe as a stomach ache. A stomach ache I had most days."
And the ‘Read All About It’ hitmaker admitted he struggled with the conflicting advice he received from his beloved nan and the other people around him.
Writing for new website The Book of Man, he recalled: "Already as a boy I was having to learn how to ‘be a man’, through various different sources and uncovering lots of contradictions – always with what Nanny Pat had told me in mind. But her advice often conflicted with my environment, the advice of my ‘olders’ (how we’d describe the older kids) and I suppose the idea of the more alpha-male. The archetype.
"My mate got his bike stolen and his stepdad told him if anyone ever tried to take anything off of him again, to, ‘Bite their f***ing lip off!’. Quite different to my nan’s approach."
The musician and documentary maker will be writing a fortnightly column for The Book Of Man, which aims to act as a support network for men by showing them that there are different ways of being a man.
Read his current column at https://www.thebookofman.com/heroes/professor-green-column/
Professor Green didn’t fight as a youngster
