IT'S MY LIFE, MAKE IT INTERESTING! AND HELP PEOPLE

Teacher’s Pest

Why do we drag certain memories up from the past? In my case there’s nearly always a nasty twist waiting at the end.

I was always involved in sport at school. I played on the football and rugby teams and ran athletics. But alongside my sporting achievements, I stood out as a disruptive boy. They didn’t call it defiance disorder back then. They just called you a nuisance.

I picked up some bad habits along the way. Smoking occasionally and my wheeling and dealing landed me in...

I dangle from a rusted hook in the corner where the damp smudges the plaster. One dodgy frayed lace. That’s the only thing keeping me off the deck.

The air reeks of ammonia and sweat soaked into the bricks before most of these kids were born. It smells of stale piss and failure. It burns the throat. I stay in the dark. We don’t need to talk about it. I am done.

I used to be proper kit. Oxblood red. Stiff cowhide. I stank of the tannery and I hurt people. I was built for a ruck, built...

Our Kid
Only a fool thinks of death all the time, but you’re a bigger fool if you never think of it at all.

I learned young: you don’t back down, you don’t show fear, and you don’t fucking cry. Not even when they break your nose and your eyes start to water. Men don’t cry.

You push it down. Turn your head. Hide the pain. You head to the bog, turn on the tap, and take yourself anywhere they can’t clock you blubbing. If the tears fell in the playground, you were a mardarse. Mates took the piss....

I have always believed in destiny.

Not the fairytale kind where everything works out because it is meant to. I mean the harder version. The kind that drags you through places you would never choose, then drops you somewhere unfamiliar and expects you to stand up and carry on.

Fate pulled me through a Jamaican prison and dropped me back onto the streets of Notting Hill.

I stood up.

I stayed standing.

From Jamaica to Notting Hill

For more than twenty years I...

Listen to the Interview above on YouTube with a picture of the sea and a tree.



They say writing is a lonely game.
You sit in a room.
You stare at a wall.
You give the page a bit of blood and hope it gives something back.

Life does not work like that.
Life comes at you swinging.

This interview pulls me away from the desk and drops me back where...

I go back to Birkbeck next week, Monday 12 January. It is also my brother Anthony’s birthday. Before I travel in, the family will raise a glass in his memory. Then the day continues, because that is how it works.

Returning after the Christmas break always sharpens things. Time away strips the noise down. You come back knowing what matters and what no longer deserves space. This year, that clarity carries weight.

Returning...

I was at Whatton Detention Centre in 1974 and 1975. Long before slogans hardened into policy. Long before politicians had a neat phrase for it. The violence was already there. What later became the “short, sharp shock” didn’t start with Margaret Thatcher. It was baked into the walls from day one.

Whatton Detention Centre: Discipline or Fear?

Whatton, in Nottinghamshire, was sold as a youth detention centre focused on reform and discipline....

Thanks to DMC for filming my brother Anthony’s funeral service.
They handled it with care and respect, kept a low profile, and captured the day exactly as it was.

I am grateful to them for preserving those moments for our family.

They filmed the service, the burial and the wake ar the Irish Club . Massive respects to David from DMC Media x

.A New Year: Grief and Keeping On

We laid my brother Anthony to rest on the thirtieth of December.

There is no neat way...

When a Legend Knows the Score: Chris Salewicz Reviews Nightmare in Jamaica

Legendary music journalist and author Chris Salewicz reviews Nightmare in Jamaica. Read why the man who wrote the book on Bob Marley and Joe Strummer calls Tommy Kennedy’s prison memoir an "extraordinary story."

The Dub Side of Life

You write a book and you send it out into the world. You hope it lands. You hope someone picks it up and understands that the ink on the page is actually blood and sweat and years of your...

I’ve seen plenty of autumn leaves in my time. They’re the sort of people who drift in when the sun’s out and the beer’s flowing, only to blow away the second the wind picks up and the clouds turn grey. You find them everywhere. They’re common as muck and just as fleeting.

But the diamonds? They’re the ones who stay. They’re the ones who stand their ground when the grit gets under your fingernails and the world starts to squeeze.

I wrote Nightmare in Jamaica for the...

Ten Books by Tommy Kennedy IV

I don’t write one book and vanish. I build. Over time.
On this site, you’ll find ten books I’ve published—autobiographies, fiction, biography, and flash fiction. Together, they form a continuous body of work that defines my voice as an author.

Autobiographies

Nightmare in Jamaica – My first autobiography. Raw, unfiltered, and lived.

Notting Hill Ponces – Second autobiography, direct follow up to Nightmare in Jamaica. Same voice,...

Meat Space Explained: What It Means and Why Younger Generations Use the Term
Meat space is a term increasingly used by younger generations to describe the physical world, the offline world, the place where bodies exist and consequences land. It exists in direct contrast to cyberspace, which is everything that happens online.

This is not tech jargon or theory. It is a practical word for a real divide that now shapes everyday life.

What Meat Space Actually Means
Meat space is the world you can trip...