[00:00:00] Dale: I got into the house and the first thing I said is, what's going on? Really panicked. The police officer I recalled, looked like she was struggling. She just looked worried I knew straight away. Then.

[00:00:14] Alex Melia: Welcome to Stories of Men Beneath the Surface. I'm Alex Melia. Join me as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

This episode is about how tragic can come at you from out of the blue to completely change the rest of your life. As you know it, Dale Pollitt comes from Lee, which is in Greater Manchester, the next town to me. In 2008, age 17, he decided to drop out of college. He decided that the academic path wasn't right for him, but without a sense of purpose.

He began to struggle when Dale wasn't working at kfc. He was smoking weed and playing FIFA with his older mates. One evening after dropping out of college, he was driving in his car.

[00:01:06] Dale: I got a phone call from my mom and I could tell with the tone of her voice, some peoples said, right. The only thing she said to me was, you need to come home. It's serious. All salt is going through my mind. I pushed her on the call to give me more information, but she said, you just need to come home. That was it.

I was panicked. I was clearly panicked. I got that kind of sinking feeling in your heart. I remember my palms feeling slightly sweaty. I quickly got home as quick as I could. I was literally five minutes from home. I think I did the journey. Two minutes maybe. I remember arriving home and running up the front path.

I could already see a police officer sat on the couch. This history's closest in age to me, was sat on the couch. Together with my mom, my dad, and this police officer. I got into the house and the first thing I said is, what's gonna really panicked? The police officer I recalled looked like she was struggling.

She just looked worried. She looked upset herself. She certainly looked distressed. So what's going on mom? She said it. It's the worst. It's Nigel. Nigel being my, my brother of the eldest of five siblings who at the time was 34. Nigel had always had issues with alcohol abuse. I knew straight away. Then my mom burst into tears.

My sister consoling her. My sister was sobbing her eyes out distraught completely. My dad has never shown emotion. And he just kind of sat there with his hands crossed, went slightly forward and almost shaking his head. They didn't say the actual words, but unfortunately my brother, my brother had died and I was pushing at that point in time to know what had happened or almost immediately, and everybody wanted to keep it from me.

The reason they wanted to keep it from me is that he'd actually died a number of days before and they phoned, phoned him in, not the best of states in his council flats. I remember just being in shock, almost disbelief. It certainly didn't sink in on that day. We have a very large family, uh, both on my mom's and dad's side of the funeral was, was quite a large event and I was one of the cin buras, so I carried his, carried his coff into his eventual resting place.

I cannot remember a great deal about the funeral apart from my mother. That's the only person I was worried about was my mom. I could see visibly, emotionally she was, she looked, she looked dead. Does she look completely devoid of any hope? She looked pale, and my mom's always been a very, very strong person.

Probably the rock of the family and seeing her like that actually devastated me and pulsed the funeral was probably the turning point in my life where I thought. I need to do something with my life. I need to get a career, not waste myself.

[00:04:18] Alex Melia: So what happened after the funeral? What was

[00:04:20] Dale: the catalyst for that thought? I subsequently went back to my mom and dad's house at this point. Came away from the, the wake. And that was when I had a bit of a moment of reflection. That was when I kind of sat there and let the false process through my mind properly.

I was sat in my mom and dad's living room, so my mom and dad's living room is, it's always been the hub of the family. No matter whether my sisters have moved out or when they come back, whenever we all came together, we all sat in the living room together on, on the two coach in the living room. I was sat on the, the slightly bigger of the two coaches and.

Just letting my thoughts run through my own mind, and that was the first time I cried. I didn't think, cry at the funeral, and it kind of all came flooding out of me. I think it was because I probably felt scared to cry at the funeral. I felt like I had to be a bit of a man, whatever you described that as in this day and age, it certainly wasn't being a man, keeping my emotions inside, but that's how I felt.

I had to act in my immature state at 17. That's how I deemed her mom should act. And it was the first time I was alone and I, I kind of let, let it all out a little bit and I could think about was my mom. That is a whole thing I could think about was how upset she was, how distraught she was, probably how disappointed she was as well.

She just looked, she devastated, is the only way I can describe it. It sounds almost cliche, but I genuinely made a promise to myself at that time that I certainly wouldn't put my mom through anything like that for the rest of my life. And I think what I really wanted to do at that point was, was make them proud.

Make them proud that I could achieve something in my life. It must be awful to lose a child before, before you call yourself and. I can only imagine that my mom at that point was thinking she'd failed. That's how she was kind of coming across. She was, she was saying to us, she feels like she's failed and it feels like she's not done her duties as a mother properly, and it's just an awful thing to hear.

[00:06:37] Alex Melia: When you're in that living room and you, you make that promise to yourself, is it something you say out loud? Is it something you say in your mind? Is it an affirmation that I will make my parents proud? I won't put my mother through that?

What

[00:06:48] Dale: was it? It was certainly still in my mind. I, I didn't, didn't say it out loud.

I felt a little bit angry. It was such a weird feeling, and I know that sounds strange, that you'd feel anger at that point in your life, but I certainly felt like I was releasing some anger, like I. Oh, this was not supposed to happen. I was shaking visibly, but the thing I wanted to do then was spring into action.

So I'd almost channeled a little bit of that anger into wanting to, wanting to get out there and, and go by myself, a job and, and achieve something with my life.

[00:07:24] Alex Melia: And your life was very different after that day.

[00:07:27] Dale: I think that's what gave me a bit of an inner drive. I was always relatively self-motivated in terms of business and earning money, whether that be legal or illegal in my younger years.

But I was always driven to do it and I always saw that as my duty. I think the reason I saw it as my duties, I saw myself or the males in the family as providers, and that's really all alls I was getting down to that prime instinct to, to provide and protect people. My father definitely has the same.

Instinct. He's a kind of guy, no matter how much or how little he has, he'll give it to all. He'll give all of it to his family. Kind of feel. I've got that, that trait in me some post the funeral, I actually went to connections, if you remember it. Um, which was best way of describing it, job center for the youth and.

I wanted an apprenticeship. Uh, I'd kind of read a little bit about them and decided this is for me. I didn't enjoy conventional education per se. I wanted to be doing things and earning money and, and just growing as an individual. Um, so I went in with my cv, the lady behind the counter, uh, she looked a little bit confused at why I was there when she saw my cv.

I said, I don't really know. What I want to do, I just know I wanted apprenticeship. I want to work and learn at the same time. I feel like that would be a good mix for me. Um, so I was thinking plumbing, electrician, something along those lines. And the lady chuckled actually behind the desk, she chuckled and said, I don't, I don't think that's for you.

I said, oh, right, why? I was a little bit confused, said there are over apprenticeships that might be more in line with your achievement so far. Cause I did score well in GCSEs. Um, no doubts about that. And she actually brought up there and then on screen and accounts apprenticeship and me being the brash 17 year old I was, went just applying me for that one.

That was literally it. I went to the interview two weeks later and was offered a job the next day. After the apprenticeship,

[00:09:27] Alex Melia: then what was the journey that got you to where you are today?

[00:09:30] Dale: The apprenticeships? Three years. It's traditional apprenticeship, so you get day released to college. So I was at a very small, the county firm in Wien at the time.

I was kind of thankful to have a job. The year nos between 2008 and 2011, the whole world had crashed. In terms of the economy. I just felt lucky to have a career. Now, by this point, I'd met my, no. Very long-term girlfriend Tess. So things were falling into place a little bit. By the age of 20, I'd finished my apprenticeship, I'd just started charter county studies.

I then decided do chartered tax advisor studies as well, which took another about year to 18 months. So a long guard was process. You're talking eight years of solid training whilst whilst working alongside us. So it wasn't the easiest path. I'm glad I stuck it out now. I don't know how I stuck it out.

It's the only answer. I'm not sure I've got the aptitude for it. No, our appetite, but I managed to get through it, mate. So it was, uh, it was good.

[00:10:30] Alex Melia: It's amazing to see where you were and where, you know, where you got to. And I remember going to connections when I was about, 16, 17, 18 and getting absolutely nowhere.

As you say, it's the job center for the youth sort, the embarrassment or the shame of walking in there. And also as well, when you see someone from the same school as you in there and you look at each other and you both look away and you don't say hello and, and feel that embarrassment. Did you ever have that situation where you, you recognize people in there?

[00:10:58] Dale: I did indeed. So I actually walked out of connections and I saw a friend of mine from school and we joked with each other. We made a bit of a joke about it, say, This is worse than coming outta the sexual health clinic at the time. It's almost like being caught coming outta the sexual health clinic. I was like, whoa.

Really embarrassed and look back and think emotionally immature. Were we to think that was embarrassing? But I'll tell you a better representation of. Feeling embarrassed was I was on my first ever day on as a chance accountant. My mum cobbled together some as, sorry, a training accountant. My mum cobbled together some money and bought me a suit.

Um, definitely didn't fit me. It was awful. Um, but it was the best we could do at the time, so I was very thankful for it. And I was driving home in, said, clapped out via Punto and I stopped at the traffic lights and a guy who. Always lived on the same coast last day as me, pulled up on a, a mountain bike at the side of my car, and I run down the winter to say, hello, what you do?

And he said, he swore so I won't do that on the podcast. He said, where have you been, Dale? I said, oh, I've just, just finished work. I've got a job. He went, all right. I thought you'd been to call. That's all people usually do from Wesley when they're, when they're in a suit. And that was actually probably more embarrassing at the time than coming out of connections because it wasn't seen as the m thing where I grew up to have a normal job.

Yeah, you were, you were supposed to be committing crime and, and following a, a, a well-trodden, a well-trodden, but illegal path. Ultimately, that's what most people do. In that area. So I'm still remembering cause I almost chuckled driving up thinking, this is crazy. I can't believe I've got a job as an accountant.

[00:12:51] Alex Melia: Well you're, you're the product of your environment. So if that environment that you are used to, people are wearing suits because they've been to court, then that becomes the norm. So you are the anomaly. You are wearing a suit because you are and you're an accountant. Did you start to feel differently within yourself that you were different to the people on the estate from doing that?

And were you still hanging around with the same lads?

[00:13:10] Dale: That's good question. I was at first and that this is probably where me as an individual began to change. So I still very much felt like that counselor state kid. Masquerading as somebody else. Um, I didn't feel like an accountant. It was strange, I suppose, as my career slowly started to evolve in that first year or so.

I was 17, turning 18 and I started to, to go out drinking at the weekends, go to go to local pubs, bars, clubs, and I met a couple of different lads. There's a couple of lads who I went to school with who weren't from the EST estate and actually had. Normal families, whatever you describe as normal. But what I would describe as normal was mom and dad had a job, they had a house and a mortgage.

It was all rosy. I'd never been exposed to that previously. And I began to go out with these lads and we met another group of lads and a couple of other groups and we all started to, I would say, angry Boat together. You know, we were, we were all pals at that point in time and, I could see clearly. Then I had two distinct groups of friends.

I had the estate group of friends who also were, some of them were family. I had this new group of friends. All these guys had jobs, they had aspirations. They wanted to achieve something. And I suppose my innate ability to work out, actually, I think this is, I think this is the way to go. And it wasn't nice.

I, I just stopped hanging about with, with the people I'd hung about with my whole life. And I felt a little bit lonely. I certainly did. I felt lonely at that point in time cause I didn't really know these new guys too well and I'd kind of pined off and I felt like I betrayed people I knew deep down that was going to be for the best long term.

So it was just a bit of a turning point again in in my life where I decided to make a decision that could have gone one way or the other.

[00:15:03] Alex Melia: Mm-hmm. I've had difficulties with. Sort of letting go of friends that weren't serving me back, back at home in Abberton. And that decision has always paid off in the long run, but did you ever have that experience yourself where you had to let go of, of certain friends that weren't serving you?

And, and what was, what was the reaction to that from them? I did.

[00:15:23] Dale: I think the reaction from them was, Subdued, they probably weren't too concerned. Um, they, they would make comments, so I would see them back at family parties, um, mutual contacts and things like that. Um, so somebody turned 40 on the estate or 30, there'd be a party and I would attend.

Um, they would make comments or Dale's too good for us. He doesn't wanna vote with us anymore. And I just. Laugh about it. I think that's actually comfortable. Circle now, Alex, we've gone the hallway around that where they didn't get it. At first I was nervous about it, about moving in a different direction and I would say 99% of people I've known since being a child, no.

Uh, They're probably proud of what I've managed to achieve, and they get it now. They didn't back then. I think we were all emotionally immature back then as well. I think that's a, a good way of putting it. We were young and they were just thinking, oh, Dale wants to hang out with these new shiny friends.

It was, wasn't really that. It was Dale wants to, to achieve something different. He doesn't want to live on the estate for the rest of his life. I just will not let things get in the way of me, and I've always been like, I'm, I'm stubborn. I can be a handful to deal with when I don't get my own way or used to be.

Certainly when I was younger, I always had a desire to prove people wrong. So whether that be sports when I was younger, but I always had that desire to just. Tunnel vision where I wanted to be. Uh, that certainly helped me get through the studies. 15 exams to get through. It's two exams every six months.

Bank I know what I need to do. I got a lot of, from a lot of people throughout those first six years.

[00:17:07] Alex Melia: I dunno if you know this, but the stat that is really interesting to me is white working class boys have the worst results in the country, followed quite closely by white working class girls. So it's definitely an issue, I suppose.

But then again, if you, from the estates that we are from your parents. Perhaps weren't particular studios. I was the first one in my family to go to university, and then my two sisters have subsequently gone. But it does worry me. I mean, why do you think that's the case with white working class boys like

[00:17:37] Dale: us?

Uh, I think you've, you've identified a couple of points personally. Um, Family situations. So parents quite often did either, my dad did not go to school full stop. He, he dropped out really early. My mom had to drop out. She actually got into a grandma school, so she was one of 13 and she was the eldest. So when her mom, my grandma left the home and left, uh, my granddad alone with 13 kids, she had to step up and so she had to drop out school and become a bit of a, a, a mom to her siblings.

So, I think that's one part of it. They didn't have. They don't see possibly the value of education. I think the second part is it wasn't cool to be clever when I was a kid. I talked about you, Alex. It was if you were the clever kid at Wesley High School, you got bullied. That's what happened. Um, it was seen as cool to be kicked out of class.

It was seen as cool to be on report. It was seen as cool to be suspended from school, all of which I did quite often. And the funny thing was back then, Alex and I still remember the head of year at the time, Mr. Rome saying this. In front of me, in front of the head teacher. Um, Mrs. Brian, the deputy, had wanted me gone.

She did not want me in school anymore. She said I was too disrupted to the top sets. Mr. Rome came in and said, There's no point kicking him out now because he's gonna get good GCs E results and we need them at this school.

[00:19:03] Alex Melia: So you're the savior.

The

[00:19:05] Dale: savior of Wesley High School. Yeah. Funny thing was Alex, I thought as a student, I remember thinking this, I was 15 at the time.

I can do what I want. I'm never gonna get kicked out. That was, it's the crazy situation to be in. I should

[00:19:23] Alex Melia: have been laughing at that. It's funny.

[00:19:25] Dale: I know. It's very funny. I look back at it and laugh. I think how stupid that is a situation I coasted was the best description of me in high school. I wasn't one.

These kids that. Put loads of effort. I never did my homework and I used to get detention for it constantly. Um, by the way, I'm, I'm not thinking this is big or clever right now, I'm just giving you facts of what actually happened. Um, Like I said, I was on report twice a lot the time and I kind knew I would get enough grades to get into Win Stanley College, which I think at the time you needed, I dunno, maybe four a's a couple of b's, something like that, and you would get in.

I knew I get that regardless, and there was no real incentive for me to push myself, which sounds so foreign to at hope. I am now as an individual I'd be thinking well, I've got some intelligence, I've got some stability. I want to get all a stars. I was kinda like, well, I've got enough. And I was doing the bare minimum to get me through.

I feel like I was, my life has been split into two. Pre age 17 and post age 17. Um, I've probably got in with the wrong Crohn's in my teenage years. That didn't help me. Certainly. Uh, cause I always recall in primary school in juniors, I was, I was a model student, dead choir, always studied hard and, uh, but you are right.

It was too easy for me in high school. I was given a, a golden platter and, There was no incentive for me to behave myself. To push myself hard.

[00:20:51] Alex Melia: Yeah. I wanted to ask about your relationship with Nigel, because you are the youngest. He's the oldest. Where in my family I'm one of four, so I'm the oldest. So I'm in more like Nigel's position.

And you are in more of the position of my brother. Ben. What was your relationship like with Nigel? How did he teach you to be a man?

[00:21:09] Dale: Distant was probably the best description of it, um, for a large part of my life. Um, so. The way my siblings look. You had Nigel, Leslie, Niccola, and then had quite a decent size gap between them and Vicky and myself.

So it was always us, me and Vicky and them. Okay. It a definite, definite divide between us. And we had different dads. These three had a different dads and me and Vicky have the same dad. Um, So Nigel, by the time I was growing up and, and coming in, he was already 20. He was, I I do recall what event where he was sat on the back fields with his friends.

They were drinking beer and they had no rifle, was shooting birds. And I thought that was so cool. When I was a kid, I thought, wow, look at him. And he was like, Look, my brother though, he is amazing. He hated me being around him, obviously, because he was the older brother. He sent me back in the house constantly.

But, but my relationship was always distant. Um, once he had, once he'd left the house, um, we only used to see Nigel for a number of years at Christmas and birthdays and things like that. Um, he was struggling with alcohol abuse at the time and. My dad was quite harsh with him. My dad struggled with alcohol abuse in his younger years and managed to get through it.

My dad was also really harsh with him. That's probably the reason we didn't see much of him is the honest answer. So he'd, he'd absolutely rip him a new one when he came into the house. Look at the state of you. You stink. You need to sort yourself out. You, I got you that job at such a factory. What are you playing at?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so it was always really distance. So in terms of terms of life lessons, uh, honestly, I can't say that he gave me many, um, At all. Um, we had a afraid relationship, certainly, and I think that's what his eventual death when I was 17, he was 34. I think that's what made it tougher to take, that we'd grown apart as a family at that point in time.

The only silver lining to that is we grew much closer as a family afterwards. So my sisters who have moved out and had their own kids and got married, they all tended to, to knuckle down together as a family again. Uh, we saw a lot more of each other for a little while.

[00:23:24] Alex Melia: Yeah. With my, with my brother. We've got 16 years age gap, so it's pretty much similar to your, you and Nigel in 17 years.

And I, I try, I tried to, I tried to guide my brother. I tried to give him help. Do you, do you mind sharing, and feel free if you don't want to share, but how did I, how did Nigel actually die?

[00:23:41] Dale: He died, unfortunately, alone in his flats, uh, of the couch, went to sleep and didn't wake up. The actual diagnosis was young adult death syndrome, which to give you a description of what that is, Medics don't know.

People go to sleep and don't wake up again, so there's no sign of a heart attack, no sign of obvious a and failure, et cetera. That was difficult. That was very difficult for my mom. Felt like no closure, didn't have a clue. I, I, I struggled to accept that as a prognosis. He abused alcohol for a long time and I have no doubt that affected his health.

Um, so that was the, the official diagnosis, but, I don't know. It still feels, I must admit that Alex, that's been difficult for the whole family to take cuz you don't feel like that book he's ever closed. There's always that doubt of what actually did happen. But life moves on. Um, so you kind of accept that he's gone, he's not coming back and you try and learn a lesson from, from his life and the decisions he made.

How

[00:24:46] Alex Melia: did that death change you as a

[00:24:47] Dale: man? Initially, raw anger, raw anger. Me, uh, really struggled with it initially. Um, going into a lot of fights, um, when I was out drinking and things like that. Um, really didn't come to terms of it very well. I would say eventually, once I'd got comfortable with someone, and this someone was Tess, who's my know.

Very long-term girlfriend. Once I got comfortable with her, I opened up and finally spoke about my feelings. I was 20 at this point in time, possibly 21. Um, and that was the first time idled it out. I actually spoken openly out loud to somebody that helped me deal with it. That was when I started then to get my head around, actually, Dale, it it's, it's not all about you.

Um, cause that's what I, I was being very selfish at one point in time. Oh, I'm upset because my brothers died. Um, it's definitely not all about me. Um, and I started to come to Sterns bit and then I started to actually then get into personal development and wanted to know more about what's going on up here, um, rather than what's going on in here.

Cuz I was definitely being led by anger and emotion rather than trying to understand why I had anger and emotion and what it was all about. Um, so long term. It was good and it made me a lot more rounded. I'd say it made me more of a man short term. It was, it was hard to deal with, and it probably at St hindsight now, it made you realize your own mortality.

It made you realize, actually we're not here for very long. You don't want to upset other people when you realize the impact it has on their lives. And I'm not just talking about dying and, and, and. Such catastrophic event like that I'm talking about just generally. I've been arguments with people and things like that, so I, I would, I would love an argument when I was younger cuz I was so competitive.

Anybody, anybody who wanted it would have an argument. I, I, and I would. I would continue it for days if they wanted to continue it. I'm no so anti argumentative. It's unbelievable. I'm like, life's too short. Let's just get on with it and I'll, I'll keep each other happy.

[00:26:58] Alex Melia: Dale had to make a very difficult decision to leave friends behind from his youth that weren't serving him. I met people that had very similar backgrounds to Dale on the councilor state that I grew up on. Unfortunately, a lot of those people went down the path of drug addiction, went to prison, or long-term unemployment.

So Dale's story is very much a rare one. Was it the fact that Dale was the only man left in his group of siblings after his brother died? Was it the fact that Dale wanted or assumed a protector role? It serves as inspiration for people who come from a similar background to hear a story like Dale's. I remember in 2008 when I applied to work and live in New York as part of an internship program after university.

I remember friends asking me at the beginning of the application process what I was going to do with myself after I left university and I told them I was going to live and work in New York for a year. About nine months later, I remember these same people speaking to one of my best mates at the time and asking them whether Alex was going out.

Ron Wiggin tonight. And he told them in a matter of fact way, oh, Alex has gone to New York. Apparently, according to my mate, they were shocked by it. And my mate said to him, he told you ages ago he was going, they replied, yeah, but we didn't think he was being serious. For someone who enjoys proving people wrong, I took a lot of satisfaction out of that.

Dale has done the same. As what he's done in becoming the director of an accountancy firm, definitely wasn't expected of him. Death can have a big impact on our lives. It can either make us feel depressed or it can galvanize us to achieve. Dale definitely did the latter, and after many years of Tyler's work, Dale was then in a great position to be able to buy his parents, their council house outright.