Johnny Kinch

Johnny Kinch has written a book called Johnny Be Good - Out From The Darkness. Jonathan Bellamy caught up with him to hear his incredible true story - from alcoholic and dealing drugs, gambling, prison and homelessness, through to acting with parts in The Bill and other shows, Johnny has lived it all! Now free from drugs, a Christian and with a life that's being re-built, he shares candidly with Jonathan.

Johnny: I was in the Royal Marines; I trained in the Royal Marines for a couple of years. When I left there, I decided I'd go abroad. I went abroad for a little while and then wanted to try my hand at acting, completely contrary to being in the marines. So I went to Melton Drama College and finished a BTEC course in performing arts. I went on to Rada in London which is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. While all this was happening I'd set my sights on the goal of becoming a well known actor, but I had a drink and drug issue. It started off socially, drinking in the pubs as it does with most people and dabbling in a bit of smoking the odd joint and mixing in the club scene. It kind of crept up on me really. I was always looking for fulfilment in life. I believe we're all born with that gaping hole in our lives that we try and fill through one thing or another, and as I was searching for it I was trying to pour more drugs into it and trying to pour more alcohol into it.

I started gambling and picked up a really serious gambling addiction, so things started to get worse. I got kicked out of Rada after a year and a half; after squandering £40,000 sponsorship fee's that I'd won in scholarships. I blew it on cocaine and just fast living in the West End in London. I vowed to everybody this is not the last you've seen of me, I'm going to make a name for myself - I ended up homeless selling the big issue on the street in the West End! I couldn't see a way out of it and so I lived in the hostel system for a number of years until eventually I got into a programme called Soap Stars, which was on ITV years ago. It was like a pre-cursor to Pop Idol and now X Factor, but this is where they were looking for an Emmerdale family, sort of like a reality show but we had to go and audition. Tens of thousands of people auditioned, I was in it for the Dad role in the family and I got through to the last two in the whole country, so I got quite a lot of exposure - about 10 million people watching every week! Through that I got quite a good agent in London and then he started sending me around the BBC and ITV and different places auditioning for different programmes. Before long I started getting parts, the first part was in Doctors on BBC 1 and then I worked in the Bill for a little while on ITV and then I worked with Morrissey and Ralph Little on Paradise Heights on BBC 1. I went on like that and I did some adverts, but all this time I was still drinking really heavily and it was the drugs; I was mixing in circles where drugs were even easier to get hold of, especially my drug of choice which was cocaine. It's very expensive and it's not the kind of drug that people frown on in those kinds of circles because it's like a social drug, which is a shame cause it has dire consequences if you take it long term or even short term.

I then started to mess up on my acting jobs as I'd go in drunk and I started to lose contact with all the people I'd been acting with as they started to see the bad side of me. I would start having mood swings, flippin, getting violent and eventually my agent dropped me and that caused problems. I was dropped by everybody, even my partner at the time kicked me out onto the streets again, so after all that I found myself on the streets again selling the Big Issue and you can't imagine what it's like inside somebody's head, mine at the time having gone to the depth's of despair, you know, been to Rada, been on TV with all this acting and then you're back on the streets. So from the odd person recognising you and signing the odd autograph to now trying to get people to buy a Big Issue. It was completely de-grading and obviously messed my head up completely.

I then went into the hostel system again and ended up in prison due to alcohol related violence. When I came out I decided I had had enough and I was going to take my own life. I sat in a park in Leicester one evening, when the sun was just setting and I necked a load of tablets down and drank it down with cider and thought that was it, but you know as the sun went down that night, I was watching it, it was a beautiful pink hue in the sky, (I always found solace in the sky), for some reason it was almost something out there bigger than me and my problems and I didn't realise that it was God and I felt this voice inside me saying "there's more for you, you can't give in". So I staggered my way to A&E collapsing there and then got put onto a bed. The next thing, I came round with wires all over me and I saw a Doctor and I got checked over. After hours of being there over night, I was then basically sent off to a hostel with no after care or anything like that, nobody really trying to find out physiologically what was going on inside my head.

I went into this hostel and eventually came over to Loughborough and thought I can't even commit suicide properly, I can't do anything properly. So I came into hostels in Loughborough and got evicted from all those as well, until eventually I got my own flat.

I had a tag on my ankle because I'd not long been out of prison; it was an order the court had put upon me. While I was in this flat a strange incident happened. A friend of mine called Johnny Cave, who I'd known for years, had become a Christian a few years before. This guy's a millionaire, you know, plenty of money and never in my opinion would need to find God because he had everything he wanted, so it wasn't because of hardship that he turned to help from the Church or from God. Still he had that void as well and he had become a Christian and he felt whilst praying one night that God had said to him, I want you to go and find this guy Johnny Kinch and tell him the Gospel message because he is going to receive it. So he spent weeks looking for me, couldn't find me, in and out of bookies and the pubs until eventually one day he had enough and on this Sunday afternoon he went into Tesco's. Now earlier that same day I'd gone to my mum's flat to try and get some money off her and she wasn't in, I rang her on her mobile and she was in Tesco's. She was walking out of Tesco's answering the call when Johnny walked in and bumped into her. He knew her and that was when the kind of connection was made and he asked if he could come and see me. So he followed her in the car and on the way down she rang me and said that Johnny was coming to see me, but he's become a Christian now - I couldn't believe this at the time. Big Brother was on and it was the one where they got Nadia on there who used to be a guy and had a sex change and so for me it was more realistic if she'd of told me that Johnny's had a sex change I would of believed it, but when she told me he'd become a Christian I couldn't believe it because for me it was so far fetched. To become a Christian with the life we had lead it seemed so contrary, because my idea of a Christian was somebody that perhaps shopped at Clarke's. I'm not putting Clarke's down but you know, someone who was very square and boring and had floppy arms and had no relevance in my life. But my mate Johnny is completely not like that, so this kind of blew all my precepts out of the water! He came to see me and we went and sat in the house and chatted and he told me about Jesus and I was like yeah, whatever, I'm glad you've found a crutch and you know lend us a tenner kind of thing.

We parted company that day and he kept in touch with me on a regular basis and was helping me out financially and in the end he just kept saying do you want to come to a service, just come and see what it's like, but I wasn't interested. But after a while he'd helped me out so much I thought I'd go. I didn't even believe in God, some airy fairy nonsense in the sky, but I thought I'd go anyway just to please him. I thought it was gonna probably be full of old blue rinses but I'd get a cup of tea and biscuit out of it all and I might be able to cadge a fiver off someone! That was my attitude.

I went along and when they opened these doors of this Baptist building, there were some old ladies at the door. They opened these doors and the only way I can describe it is like when you get out of a plane when you go abroad and the heat hits you like someone's got a hair dryer in your face. Well it was like that, this atmosphere hit me, one of kindness, genuineness, love of something I hadn't experienced before. At first it felt lovely, for the first couple of minutes, but in the light of it I had to look at myself and I felt completely dark and dirty inside and so then I put my barriers up and then went in and sat down. They were all singing and everyone was happy and I couldn't open my mouth to sing and this Pastor came out from Los Angeles, Barry Thomas and preached his message and you know it was like he was talking directly to me and telling me about how Jesus could set me free and how I could go from being a victim into a victor. How God could turn my mess into a message. I hadn't heard this kind of positivity for a long time and you know I was thinking I could do with some of this positivity, I could do with some of this transformation he was on about, but I wasn't sure whether I believed it. Even though I was broken and I had had enough of myself, I needed something, but I wasn't sure whether it was God.

I went away that day after the Pastor had made a plea for those who wanted to give their life to Jesus and I didn't, I daren't do it and I got home and I had my dinner and I wept into my dinner. It just came from nowhere, completely out of the blue and I couldn't understand it. I was the kind of guy that if I was to cry, even in my own company I'd be embarrassed with myself, you know I just wasn't used to it. I'd put these barriers up for years, I had got a thick skin and nothing would hurt me.

I rang my mate Johnny and asked him what he'd done to me! I said 'you took me along to this church setting and now I'm crying into my dinner'. He said its Jesus knocking on the door of your heart and he told me about this picture a guy had painted years ago and basically it was of a man holding a lantern at a door, with thistles and thorns up it, but somebody had pointed out to the artist that there was no handle painted on the door and he said, 'well that's right because the handle is on the inside and there's only one and Jesus won't force His way in, but you've got to be willing to let Jesus in'. I didn't know what was going on, I put the phone down and I just wanted to keep away from these guys and so I kept away from them. Eventually I did go back though and the Pastor spoke again, and the same thing happened...this atmosphere and I decided I was going to give it a go. I realised that I'd been sitting on the throne in my life for 33 years and made every decision and every one lead me down the wrong path so I wanted to see what would happen if I let God sit on the throne and make the decisions from now on and let the Bible be my guide as to where to go in life and what to do and how to deal with situations and let the Holy Spirit into my life to give me the strength in my weakness and to guide me. So I did that! I didn't come out the back room that day after saying this prayer of repentance and acceptance with wings or a halo, I wasn't walking ten feet off the ground, but inside I new something had happened that was real. I'd made a choice, a real decision, and a wilful decision, to give my life over to God. You know things changed from that day, I literally stopped smoking, gambling, swearing, drinking, doing drugs, the whole lot! I haven't done any of those things now for 4 years.

I went off to study theology at Bible College and met my wife on the first day. We were engaged 6 weeks later and we've now been married 2 years. I work at a hostel, I've written a book, I got my own TV show on Sky, me and my wife where we talk about these real issues and I'm just about to go and start as a Radio presenter for the BBC doing a Faith programme. God can change your life if you just give your life over to Him. God brought liberation and He turned me from somebody that was err you know shunned by society into somebody that is now useful in giving back and only God can do that long term...I really believe that.

Jonathan: I just want to ask you about your thoughts on something in your book. You say, 'I'd been binge drinking coming down from coke and my head was buzzing with the million and one thoughts telling me I'd never amount to anything, that I was doomed to a lifetime of bad luck and that this was my lot in life. I was full of negativity and no matter how hard I tried to push the thoughts away they were too strong and just kept coming back again.' Then later on after you'd given your life to Jesus, you felt like God had dealt with stuff in your head, can you talk a little bit about that and what God did?

Johnny: Yeah! That's just awesome when you know when God say's He's going to do something, He does it, if you allow Him to, but you've got to allow Him to. In Roman's Chapter 12 verse 2 it says 'Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of mind so that you know what is good and is pleasing and is perfect'. Basically I was thinking, what does this mean let God, why is God asking me to let Him, why He's God, He can do what He wants to, He created the universe, He created me, He can just end everything now if He wanted to, but He's asking me to let Him! I started to think about what it meant to let Him and I saw a building in town and it said 'office to let' and I thought oh that's odd, what happens for them to let that office, well firstly somebody has got to vacate it and then the other people can then move in and you know that has to be an empty space and you have to let somebody in, so I thought, right God what you're asking me to change my mind, is that you want me to get out of it so you can come into it and I thought, how do I practically do that? Well, how I do that is when I am thinking of negative things which I had, which you described in that bit from the book, I had to then say ok hold on, I recognize these thoughts don't match up with the word of God the word of God says that God wants to get into my mind, in those area's I can have the mind of Christ and God has got a hope and a future for me and not harm for me and so I've got to stop that thought there and then and say that's it right now, I'm gonna replace that thought with what God's telling me to do. So I'm letting God in, I'm shutting myself out, which is my old self and I'm letting God in and through that He's transforming my mind.

It was literally like God had got His hands in my head and at one point I can remember distinctly while I was in the kitchen like they were cogs in my head and that one time before I met Christ He used to turn one way and I couldn't do anything about them but then it was like God was turning those cogs back slowly like click, click, click, and going back and reversing my mind set, changing my mind set and making me think in a different way and because of that thinking, that ultimately helped to change everything; because you know out from the mouth comes the overflow of the heart as well as a man thinkest so shall he be and so you know, as I started to think differently I started to manifest those, those thoughts into actual righteous actions for God and my life started to change as a result of that.

Jonathan: What about the memories in the mind because you admit in the book to having mugged people, obviously you were in prison, electronically tagged, what do you feel about yourself today looking back?

Johnny: Well you know, I obviously don't like the fact that I've done such terrible things and if I ever have the opportunity to see anybody from my past that I have harmed I would always take that opportunity, I always like to think I still will as well with courage take that opportunity to ask them to forgive me and to pay debt wherever possible, because I've left a whole trail of things in my past. You know I did for a time feel very guilty about the things that I had done, but you know there has to come a time when you say you know ok, I can't keep bringing my past into my present day and I've got to look to the future and allow God to move me forward and to move forward in Him, but that doesn't mean that I've forgotten, it means that I'm choosing not to remember, but I, but if necessary you know like I say, if I see somebody I will apologize. I'm not saying the thing's I did were good, they were terribly wrong, but you know, I'm a changed person now, I'm not that person and I can't allow those thoughts to control me, because if I allow those thoughts, if I wake up every day and my mind starts to say you're a mugger, you're a mugger, if I concentrate on that, then it will ruin my day and it will ruin my life, because that's what happened before. The negative thoughts in my head were saying to me, you're useless, you've got to kill yourself, you've got to do this, you've got to do that and I believed those voices, (which is the enemies voice) and so I made choices based on those voices, but now I make decisions, choices, based on the right voice, the voice of positivity, the voice of God in my life. So yes I did some terrible things and I'm sorry for those things but now I'm trying to do the right thing and listen to the right voice, which is God and hopefully now I'll make a difference not in just my life but in others too.