CALL ME SETH

As Mark Fish’s son Luke forges his own path he speaks about being physically and sexually abused during a childhood fuelled by drugs & wild parties

- NASIFA SULAIMAN

HE GREW up in the public eye, the eldest son of one of South Africa’s most celebrated footballers and a woman who personified glamour from the top of her glossy head to the tips of her Jimmy Choos.

As a boy, Luke Fish was baby-faced and innocent-looking, all tousled hair and boyish grins. But the young man here today looks nothing like the former child model he once was. He has a ring in his nose, a cigarette in his hand, a beanie hiding his hair and tattoos all over his arms, hands and torso.

What’s more, he isn’t even going by the name Luke Fish anymore. He’s completely reinvented himself and wants to be called by his alter-ego, Seth Omen.

Now 23, he’s a rapper whose music revolves around his traumatic childhood and he wants nothing do with the family name anymore.

His upcoming song, Fish Pt 1, packs quite a punch. “Sad to say I came from trauma/Daddy used to beat my mama/ Magazines would doc the drama.”

And it’s all true, he says. He claims his father, Mark Fish – the former soccer star who helped Bafana Bafana clinch the African Cup of Nations in the heady days of 1996 and went on to play internationally – physically abused him.

“I grew up in a traumatic environment where I suffered a lot of physical abuse from my father,” Seth tells YOU.

He’d often get caught in the middle of the fights his dad had with his mom, Loui Fish, and “I fought him to protect my mom”, he says.

He fell into hard drugs and other self destructive behaviour as a boy after being introduced to prescription drugs at wild parties hosted at his dad’s home.