I spent a long time, too long, living behind a face that wasn’t mine. I didn’t even know I was doing it until the whole world decided to rip it clean off me. It wasn’t a face I chose. It was just one that everyone else, the media, the mess my life was in, just shoved onto me. It was the face of that ‘con artist’, the ‘villain’, the ‘monster’. Just a cheap drawing of a complicated, painful story. And for a good while, a suffocating while, being stuck behind that mask felt like I was in my own prison. This is about me finding my way back, about public reinvention after scandal, and why getting rid of that mask wasn’t me being angry. It was just me trying to survive.
Before the Willy Wonka Experience blew up on the internet, before it became that joke everyone knew, I was different. Or at least, I tried to be. I was the bloke who helped out in the community, the loving dad, the partner who’d do anything for anyone. I poured myself into things like the Gowanbank Hub, really believing we could do good there. But underneath all that, things were cracking. The money for the charity dried up, and my own life, if I’m honest, was already a proper mess. It was in that boiling pot of stress that I went chasing the Wonka dream. I truly just wanted to make something magical, but I was biting off more than I could chew. My head was all over the place.
When that whole thing fell apart, so spectacularly, the world didn’t just see a project gone wrong. They saw someone to blame. The media, they were quick, just painted me with the darkest, biggest brush they could find. ‘Scammer’, ‘monster’, ‘villain’ – those words, they weren’t just words. They were like shackles. They weren’t saying who I was. They were saying what they needed me to be for their story to make sense.
And what happened next, right after all that public shame, that deep humiliation, my life just fell even harder into chaos. I was in a terrible way. And in that awful, desperate state, I made some truly awful choices with an old partner. I sent those sexual messages. Said those completely wrong words. “I am a wolf, you are my prey, I’ll get you.” I cringe just thinking about them. I was trying to say I’d win her back, make her come back to me. But it don’t matter what I meant. I caused harm. Big harm. I pleaded guilty. I took my sentence. And that conviction, it landed right after all the public ridicule, it just made that monstrous image of me even stronger. The mask, it got heavier, it started to suffocate me for real. It wasn’t just the media’s invention anymore. It was cemented by my own terrible actions.
Living with that mask, being the ‘Billy they invented’, that was like a slow death. Every time I talked to someone, every look I got, it felt dirty. Every silence felt like I was being judged. The very air around me seemed to whisper all the things they accused me of, things that had become my whole public identity. Those old me’s – the community man, the dreamer – they just felt like a cruel joke now. They were shattered. Replaced by this twisted thing. I was living a lie, but it wasn’t because I was trying to trick anyone. It was because the whole world had decided who I was, and me, in my hopelessness, I started to believe them.
But then, down in the deepest, darkest bit of my own personal hell, something started to shift. When you lose absolutely everything – your home, your family, your friends – there’s nothing left to pretend about. When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to protect. Not even a fake identity. That massive loss, along with finally having to face up to what I’d done, forced me to be truly honest with myself. Brutally honest.
I saw it clear as day then. That ‘Billy they invented’ was a prison. Built out of what everyone thought of me, and the proper chaos that was inside my own head that I hadn’t dealt with. And the only way out was to burn it down. It wasn’t about being angry, not really, though yeah, there was plenty of anger at how simple they made me out to be. It was about staying alive. It was about saying, “No. You don’t get to define me by the headlines. Or by my past mistakes, no matter how bad.” It was about taking back the right to tell my own story. All of it. The good bits, the bad bits, and the really, really painful lessons.
Burning that mask meant facing the hard stuff. Not just the public stuff the TV focused on. But the deeper, darker truths from my own life. It meant owning the harm I caused, properly owning it, without making excuses. It meant admitting that those words I used, ‘wolf and prey’, no matter what I thought I meant, were wrong. Plain wrong. It meant deciding that taking responsibility, that wasn’t a punishment. That was the only road to actually being free.
This journey, this public reinvention after scandal, it ain’t about making the past disappear. You can’t burn history. What it is, is about refining it in the fire of truth. Letting that heat melt away the made-up stories, and all the lies I told myself. Leaving only the raw, messy truth. It’s about knowing that the person who made those mistakes, both in public and in my private life, yeah, that was me. But that person ain’t all of me now.
I’m still building. Piece by painful piece. The marks from that mask, they’re still there. Inside my head, in my memory. But now, when I look in the mirror, I don’t see that caricature. I see a man who walked through fire, some of it my own doing, some of it just the world. And I chose not to just vanish. I chose to change. I see a moth, heading for a different kind of light. A truer, cleaner light. The light of being accountable. Of really connecting with people. And of living my life with genuine honesty. I burned that mask not to hide. I burned it so I could finally be seen. Unburdened. And honestly, terrifyingly, just me. And you know what? In that honesty, I’ve found a strength I never even knew was there.