One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up: A Memoir of Growing Up and Getting On

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An evening with Labour MP and the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In One Boy, Two Bills and A Fry Up he vividly portrays the power of family and education to help him transform his life. If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us the vitality of the book lies in its directness and conversational candour… An engaging memoir’— The Sunday Times

the vitality of the book lies in its directness and conversational candour... An engaging memoir' --- The Sunday Times But on the other hand, it’s also transfixing, albeit in a way I struggle fully to explain. Streeting’s rise from poverty in the East End of London to the Palace of Westminster via Cambridge University is amazingly inspiriting – even now, he’s only 40 – and there’s something so unaffected about the way he describes it, details chosen for no more writerly reason than because he remembers them: the Wall’s coleslaw and He-Man jellies he enjoyed as a treat as a boy; the skate he favoured whenever his grandfather took him down the chippy. He has no discernible self-pity and seems never to judge anyone, not even those who (the reader may think) at times let him down very badly. Wes Streeting knows it was the help and inspiration he received from the great characters that surrounded him, especially his paternal grandfather (also called Bill), that ultimately set him on the way to Cambridge and then Parliament. He knew he could draw on the strengths in childhood to eventually come out, and to go on and face his now successful struggle with kidney cancer.

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Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In One Boy, Two Bills and A Fry Up he brings to life the poverty, humiliation and incredible struggle for them choosing whether to feed the meter and heat the flat, put carpet on the floor, or food on the table. And yet, there’s something missing here, which is where the fascination comes in. How did he make it, you wonder, absorbing the more chaotic details. What calmness and determination he had; what self-containment and aspiration. But if the reader cannot quite account for these things – where did they come from? – nor does Streeting, who writes as if he’s a stranger to himself. Either the inward is simply not available to him – some people, a touch robotic, are like this – or (more likely) there are feelings he still finds so painful, he can only push them away. The third possibility – that he’s some kind of saint – seems unlikely given his attraction to the knot of vipers that is party politics. At Cambridge, unlike many of his fellow students, he has to work at Comet in the holidays

For a politician to have such an extraordinary story to tell is rare. For that politician to be able to tell it with such eloquence and benevolence is rarer still. This book is a triumph.' --- Alan Johnson Almost two-thirds of this book is committed to Streeting’s early years in a loving if chaotic family. By comparing the titular Bills, not pieces of legislation but Wes’s two grandfathers – one a law-abiding Conservative voter, and one a jailbird – we’re given a window into two approaches often found in working-class families in the 1980s. Perhaps some of Streeting’s contemporary Labour centrism comes from this tension: being constantly pulled between the half of the family who wanted to escape to suburban home ownership, and the other half of his Stepney roots who were dedicated to maintaining a community in the inner city. An inspiring, witty East End growing up memoir by leading Labour MP Wes Streeting, vividly portraying the power of family and education to help him escape poverty and transform his life.He has a lot on his plate. But he’s stubborn – or at any rate, not easily led. He doesn’t mind standing out from the crowd. Though he wears his Arsenal shirt to school on non-uniform days in the hope of warding off bullies, he also brandishes a copy of Tony Blair’s New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country on the coach to games lessons. Helped by wonderful teachers, and the Sutton Trust, which sends him on a summer school to Cambridge, he applies to the university, and wins a place there, at which point, life changes. He may, unlike many of his fellow students, have to work at Comet in the holidays, but he’s on his way (at Cambridge, he’s also able to come out). A career in student politics leads to a job at Stonewall, and thence to his election, first as a Labour councillor and finally as an MP. Will Streeting one day lead the party, perhaps even be prime minister? I don’t know. But I can’t see this book, and especially the way he has written it, as anything other than a statement of intent. Compulsive reading: Wes's story is inspiring, surprising and full of compassion.' --- Jess Phillips