Growing up in a small village in north-west England, Gadge Roberts's free and easy childhood was spent "climbing trees, building rafts, endless summers running through fields - everything you'd expect of a pastoral childhood".
His mother worked in a factory sewing clothes so "textiles were her 'thing'. I would be playing in my room and suddenly I'd hear my mum booming my name. I'd run down thinking I'd done something wrong, when in fact she just wanted me to see the latest outfit being worn by performance artist Leigh Bowery or the latest couture show by Jean Paul Gaultier."
