One of Stuart’s best mates, Eden, gave it all up to become a Muslim.

PUNK DOES A BUNK TO JOIN MULLAH’S ARMY
Punk rocker Eden Fernandez has swapped his love of the Sex Pistols for a Kalashnikov rifle and a life of perpetual danger as a fanatical Muslim guerrilla fighter.
The 23-year-old tearaway who used to spend his days sniffing glue and roaming the streets [looking] for gang fights, has astonishingly been accepted into the brotherhood of the Mujahadeen rebels who are struggling to overthrow the Communist regime in far off Afghanistan.
The tough mountain men could hardly believe their eyes….

Fiona Wyton, People Magazine, December 3, 1989, p45
Chapter 17: ‘Funny Days: Aged 15-21’

The first decade of Stuart’s life is easy to summarise. He does not remember it.
‘I blew it out.’
‘“Blew it out”? How can you blow your memory out? It’s a faculty, Stuart, something you’re born with, not a candle.’
‘Me mum says it’s a shame.’
Chapter 24: ‘The Forgotten Years: Aged 0-10’

‘So,’ I ask, ‘if you had to change one thing, just one thing to make it right, what would it be?’
‘Same answer. Don’t know. Changing one thing? How much is one thing? Change me brother – does that change me getting rageous? The Muscular Dystrophy? That don’t change the nonces, the System, do it? It’s such a mess. Not being funny, change one and you got to change them all. Be easier just to change me.’
Chapter 25

The first time Stuart became homeless he was high on glue, not heroin.
Aged 15, full of zing. The streets were not exactly cosy, but they were not friendless either – a sort of home from home – they suited his temperament. He wanted to live. His brain wasn’t fogbound by thoughts of death.
‘Where did you spend the first night?’
‘There wasn’t a first night.’
‘But there must have been a night when you stopped being at home and started sleeping rough.’
‘That’s what I’m saying, Alexander, no. I’d been running away since I was 11.’
Chapter 17: ‘Funny Days: Aged 15-21’

‘Stuart was a happy little boy. A real happy-go-lucky little thing.’
His mother says this was the way he started. Each time we meet, she gives one of her respiratory laughs, leans back in her chair or sofa, puts on a faraway expression, lights another Benson and Hedges, and repeats: ‘Yes, a happy, lively little lad. Always up, building things. Absolutely loved it. Anything that he could build he used to like. He’d sit for hours on his own, playing cars and building roads in the dust and the dirt. Yes, quite amazing really.’
Chapter 19: ‘A Plucky Little Lad: Aged 10-15’

‘Stuart Shorter, thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopath street raconteur, my spy on how the British chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning of the 21st century: a man with an important life.’ Chapter 0.

‘This Volkswagon Polo in which we are sitting is one of Stuart’s rare legal cars, in that it was purchased (from his sister), its transfer declared to the DVLA, and the fact that it has alloy wheels does not mean somebody else’s motor has been left with its axles balanced on bricks.’ Chapter 14.

‘Stuart said he wanted this protest to do two things. First – the obvious – bring publicity. Second, the bit that interested him the most: to teach me and any other person who’d had life “so fucking easy” what sleeping rough was really about. “You fucking want to campaign about it? You get on the fucking streets and learn about it.”’ Chapter 8.