Do you wanna be in my gang?

In order to be down wid da kidz nowadays, you have to be part of a gang.

In London alone, there are 169 different gangs, each with their own patch, their own rules and their own way of doing things.

I was once in a gang. In fact, I used to be a gang leader.

It was a family affair. It was started by my mother, I became leader and set about recruiting new members.

The tiny village I lived in had never seen anything like it before. Suddenly gang emblems were springing up all over the place. People wore their membership like a badge.

That’s right. They were members of the Happy Gang.

I was never entirely sure what my new gang did. We didn’t have a secret handshake. We didn’t have an initiation.

We did have badges though.

And headed paper.