'I'M PROUD OF MY STORY'

Joe Wicks reveals how he went from living on a council estate with an addict father to owning a multimillion pound fitness empire

- HAYLEY MINN

He’s become ‘the nation’s PE teacher’ while parents up and down the country home school their children during isolation, with Channel 4 and the BBC even fighting over Joe Wicks to host a daily workout show! But life wasn’t always like this for the 33-year-old fitness coach, who’s sold over three million bestselling healthy-eating books.

Joe – who is said to now be worth £14.3 million – previously described his upbringing to Woman as ‘hectic’. He was born to parents who never married, and grew up on a council estate in Epsom, Surrey. His roofer dad, Gary, was a heroin addict, while his mother, Raquela, was ‘on the social’.

Now Joe has opened up further about his troubled childhood.

Battling addictions

In an interview with Femail, he explained, ‘Dad was in and out of the home because he was battling with addiction, often in rehab. He had been a heroin addict from a very young age, and I was exposed to the damage of that on a daily basis.