I think it was my English teacher who told us once that ‘some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ Well, I don’t know about you but I would certainly categorise myself as the second. Which, rather ironically some might say, is why I’m now at this woeful comprehensive school in Northolt, Greater London and not the London Oratory where I embodied greatness…and then promptly lost it.

I can pinpoint exactly what caused this downfall akin to Caesar’s. Lemonade. Bloody lemonade. That saccharine honey dew melon coloured liquid. Nectar of the Gods. Obligatory at parties attended by over excited five year olds. I loved lemonade and for a time it loved me too. It was my business teacher, Miss. Braithwaite who first mooted the idea to my class about a project where we would be in competition with each other – not just to see who made the most money but who had the best business model, the best product and finally, the best marketing strategy. Those who were successful would be rewarded with no homework for a half term and voucher to spend at the local sweet shop. We were twelve and I immediately decided that lemonade would be the answer to the prize.

As was to be expected, people immediately threw themselves at their friends to make their groups; no thought was given to whether those people would actually be useful or make a success of it. At twelve, I already prided myself on the fact I never let my emotions get the better of me, preferring to use logic instead. So when my so called best friend John gleefully headed my way, his freckles attempting to shine through his already pimply skin – he was given short shrift. I have no idea if he looked hurt or not as I sidled my way through the tables and chairs but my thought was on one person only: Mick ‘The Almighty’ Johnson; so called for the size of his johnson which, already at the age of twelve, had the boys in the locker room green with envy. However, the epithet wasn’t just about that – it was like a metaphor for his character too – that boy was magnetic. He oozed charisma and confidence. Girls and boys listened to his opinions. Adults loved him. This was the boy, I had decided 5 minutes previously, who would help my lemonade stand march us deftly to the sweet shop and nights and weekends of freedom.

Fortunately, for me, Mick also knew a good thing when he saw it and as our eyes locked we didn’t even need to nod in acknowledgement; we just sat down, got out our pencil cases and settled to work whilst all around us people were laughing and giggling and generally, as usual, not taking life and work seriously.

Mick agreed that lemonade would be a winner. The summer term was proving humid and lunchtimes long and tedious with football games rewarded with only measly water from the communal fountain (I have never been a fan of those things and also ensured I had a disinfectant wipe handy if I got caught out and needed to use one) so to offer hot and thirsty youngsters cool glasses of lemonade would certainly secure us the prize but as I pointed out to Mick, the lemonade needed to be special – not that 7UP crap, more the ‘old fashioned’ style you could get in Waitrose.

We parted ways at the end of that lesson with not just a business plan but a fire in our bellies and ambition growing rapidly like a virus. I remember the frission of that first night all too well. Latin and R.E. homework was due the next day but I decided to forego it and sit the inevitable detention because I had greater things to focus on – namely a new formula of Lemonade. I’ve always had a flair for science so after firing up my laptop I spent a few hours looking at recipes and thinking about the chemical compounds that would work best. My dad worked in a bank and was never home until late so playing on his career parent guilt I asked for money to buy the ingredients I would need and he handed it over without question, not even looking up from his ‘The Telegraph’ as he sat slumped on the sofa, his suit crumpled and his shoes in disarray beside him.

I won’t go into the details as that would be dull but let’s just say that what followed was one of the most anti-social and delightful weekends of my life. I hid myself away in the garage and within two days had the essence of a new strain of Lemonade. It was delicious. It was refreshing. It was addictive. Mick ‘the almighty’ Johnson thought so too when I walked round the block with just a cup containing the fruit of my endeavours to let him try it. I remember him standing on the steps leading up to his front door savouring his mouthful and swirling it around his mouth like a sommelier before gulping it down.

‘Awesome’ was all he could utter before he was called back inside to wash the dog.

That was all the praise I needed. If Mick liked it, everyone would.

Monday lunchtime could not come around quick enough. Mick and I were first to the playground in order to secure our pitch by the football field and tennis courts. My sister had done a fine job creating our stand (shaped like a lemon no less) and Mick and I had changed into suitably sunshine coloured attire. Our first customer was Melanie. Or Melanie Smellanie as she was known for her inability to realize her teeth were caked in tartar and needed a good scrub. If anyone needed a pick-me-up laced with natural acid, it was Melanie.

‘How much?’ the buck toothed wench enquired.

‘80p’ was the reply.

Silver was exchanged and Melanie supped on the fruits of my weekend. Her facial expressions seemed to go through a myriad of emotions: surprise, delight and finally…relaxation as her thirst was quenched and her senses revived by the copious amounts of sugar she had just ingested.

‘Give me another 3’ she demanded.

Her request met, she sloped away towards the dingy doors that led to the girls’ toilets and we watched as she gave it to her friends; who in turn were clearly happy with the purchase as they too came up, followed by a couple of hapless boys from two years below who clearly didn’t know better than to have a crush on the three most grotesque girls in the school.

Word soon spread and by day three, our stall was swamped with youngsters vying for a taste of my luscious lemonade. The other students in our business studies class would stand glumly by their stalls selling terrible bars of soap or dry muffins to maybe one or two customers if they were lucky. As I expected, Mick and I won the task and were rewarded by being called up to the front of the classroom to receive our sweet shop vouchers and to be informed that we were not expected to hand in any homework for the rest of the term (never mind that was only two weeks). Our success wasn’t exactly met with rapturous applause by the others in the group but the rhythm seemed to match our steps as we slowly made our way back to our desks inspecting the glittering ticket to sugar joy.

The only thing was, I had kind of enjoyed selling the lemonade…and the proceeds it brought us. The task was over but the demand was not. Mick and I took to opening up a bootlegger’s business in one of the toilet stalls in the boys’ toilets – the ones in the PE block, furthest away from the staffroom and prying snooping eyes. As long as a student brought their own bottle we were happy to fill it with the lemon juice as it meant we could continue undetected.

Those were heady days bringing with them the richness of success and popularity but like so many things that one eventually equates to positive feelings, I became addicted to selling the lemonade. It got to me. The power, the monopoly of break and lunchtimes. I became a demon – always after the end result – trying to make it better, particularly when it seemed demand began to dry up as the summer dissolved slowly into Autumn and eventually the frozen wastes of winter. It was at this point I began to play around with my chemical compounds and devised a new form of Lemonade – one that heated up upon the consumer swallowing it and the liquid touching the inside of their throat. It meant people got the refreshing hit of lemons…and the warmth that made it appealing in the chilly breaktimes spent out in the granite netherland of the playground.

Business picked up and both Mick and I enjoyed the money it brought us. We were the envy of our schoolmates, always having the latest phones, trainers and clothes.

But then, as with so many things, our success came to grinding halt in the middle of March. Teachers began to complain openly that the school smelled strongly of lemons – which, although pleasantly welcome after a decade of bleach and B.O. seemed out of place and inexplicable. Then, the local papers seemed to be full of letters from residents complaining that the streetlights weren’t being turned off at night as a strange glow was keeping them awake during the hours of what was meant to be darkness. The council in turn retorted that that wasn’t the case and residents simply needed to buy black-out curtains. Tensions about strange smells and lights continued to escalate slowly for a few weeks until the day Mick ‘the almighty’ Johnson took his dog out for a walk and noticed that when Dave, as he was affectionately known as, marked his territory on trees, the urine appeared to glow ever so slightly. After returning from this particular walk in the park, Mick discovered an empty bottle of lemonade in the garage and realized Dave had drunk it all. That was also the night that Polly Barnes from year 8 got up to visit the toilet at 3am and happened to look at her reflection in the darkened mirror as she settled down onto the toilet seat. Her ensuing screams promptly brought her worried parents scampering out of bed and to their daughter’s aid only to be met with an unholy apparition of what looked to be a glowing effigy having a wee on their brand new toilet.

It quickly transpired that all those who had a lemonade habit of more than 3 drinks a week had in fact started to glow in the dark. We might have got away with it if the International Space Station hadn’t picked up the fact Harrow seemed to glow particularly brightly at night – and then some idiot scientist told the Daily Mail.

The irony wasn’t lost on me as the bitterness of my classmates spewed forth. I watched through slitted eyes and gritted teeth as I left school during those ensuing weeks when one or two of them would be pulled aside to chat to a journalist who eagerly wanted to know how he or she could get their hands on this infamous lemonade, knowing they were no doubt saying all kinds of lies just to get their names in the papers. Of course everyone knew it was me and Mick at the bottom of it all but because the stuff hadn’t been condemned as poisonous nobody could do anything about it. Except the Headteacher who called us in one Friday afternoon.

‘That lemonade is an abberation’ was how he started his tirade. We were warned never to sell it again on school grounds…on pain of exclusion. This was enough to put Mick off having anything more to do with it and I was certainly happy to stop selling it at my private school as I had discovered a new market. Teenagers from the Norwood Estate.

Never under estimate the lengths some teens will go to for a laugh. I made more in those weeks after my lemonade hit the headlines than at any other point as those over fourteen years of age would dare each other to drink 10 in an evening and then run out in front of cars to scare people or stand in cemeteries pretending to be ghosts. But then, as is always the way, their behavior got out of hand.  Somebody drowned whilst drunk on vodka and lemonade pretending to be a light house and then falling off a cliff and then a group of skinny dipping teens aiming to impersonate bioluminescence were swept away by a rip tide.

There was no escape from those last two. As soon as I saw the stories on BBC Newsnight, I knew that at the tender age of 12 ½ my foray into the world of entrepreneurial business was over. And as I suspected, come the Monday morning after the news of the deaths broke, I was summoned to the Headteacher’s office one last time.

There was no explanation that could help me now. I was told to see out the term and leave the London Oratory for good.